Comments on: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 04:09:35 +0000

Unfortunately, that's a dead link now.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 03:59:54 +0000

Interestingly, a lot of the names in Symphony were changed for the Western release; some were to thrown in random Lord of the Rings references (Crissaegrim should be Valmanway, for example). Grandfalloon is supposed to be Legion, the demon from Mark 5:9 and Luke 8:30, and its descriptions in the series usually refer to it as "one who is many."

"Granfalloon" is a term from a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, describing a group of individuals who claim a shared association which is actually meaningless. It's not a particularly good name for the creature.

Beelzebub appears to be a form of the name of an old Semetic deity; it's used twice in the Bible, once as the name of the "God of Ekron" in 2 Kings and later in the Gospels as the name of the "Prince of Demons" when Jesus is accused of driving out demons in Beelzebub's name. If you're wondering why anyone would actually worship a "lord of the flies," apparently they believed that flies were the cause of disease, so if their lord called them away from a patient, he'd be spared.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:32:42 +0000

P.S. Even though it's labeled as a Pentagram, it's actually a "Star of David," since it has 6 points, so either the Japanese accidentally put a Star of David as a Pentagram or they called it the wrong thing, which would be considered Engrish, a common thing in Japanese video games in the U.S.

By: Rekkusu

Rekkusu — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:40:30 +0000

@Balrog: Just a note: Alucard is just Dracula backwards.

By: Theophilus

Theophilus — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:05:36 +0000

It should also be noted that Richter Belmont is an unlockable (playable) character, however this requires that you first play the game through (200% or so) as Alucard (and even then you have to type in a code in the player-naming menu to get Richter). Playing as Richter is a lot more difficult then playing as Alucard.

By: Theophilus

Theophilus — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:50:20 +0000

@B:

Part of why people can enjoy games like these is because they don’t feel there’s any issue being given them by their conscience. When I played it through for the first time I had no problem with it; it wasn’t that I was trying to justify the evil in it so I could enjoy it without any moral objections. I honestly did not feel my conscience telling me that there was a problem with it. However, after considering some of the objections other people have had to it I have become more aware of the dark aspects of the game that I wasn’t aware of before. I still think that the game can be enjoyed alright and that at its core its still a good game it’s just that the game gets caught up in its gothic trappings enough so that I can’t recommend it now to every Christian gamer out there.

Also, at least part of why there is occult symbolism in the game is because some occult serve Dracula and are responsible for him being raised from the dead (according to the game’s story). So that explains (at least in part) why there are some occult references sprinkled throughout the game. I do agree though that they could have toned down some of the dark references a bit. But yeah I don’t think that the occult references are in the game just to serve as some sort of form of “decoration” or anything like that but are in there because of the details given by the game’s story.