First off, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. The poor game's gotten overshadowed with all of the other RPGs that came out around the same time, but I'd vote it as the best of the bunch. Why? It's like Vagrant Story, but without the crappiness. I admit that I've been growing tired of standard RPG play mechanics that have gotten so old that even the most moronic of elements (random encounters being the worst) are kept out of tradition. I really only slogged through Suikoden 3 because the story and characters were so interesting - the actual game was sorely lacking. Dragon Quarter not only featuress one of the best battle systems in memory, but some of the more innovative features that I've seen in an RPG.

Now, onto Resident Evil for a second. Most everyone seems to think that "survival horror" games are synonymous with "Resident Evil-clone", and I'll blame that on the marketing clods at Capcom of Wherever. Structure wise, Resident Evil games are simply action/adventure titles, but the defining elements are the constant fear that you are put under. You're constantly making decisions based on limited resources - do you try to kill that zombie in front of you, or save the ammo for some other monster you could potentially come across? Should you bring lots of herbs with you or arm yourself to the teeth and hope you don't get scratched? Not only that, but it threatens you with limited saves, so each time you make a permanent record of your progress, you're forced to consider its importance. And if you haven't saved in a long time and suddenly you end up at that infamous "YOU DIED" screen - you've got to suck it up and live with consequences. In many ways, I don't particularly care for this method of game design, because it not only limits the gameplay, but also could force yourself into a dire situation that could possibly require to restart the game.

Dragon Quarter has been termed a survival RPG, not because it plays like a Resident Evil game, but because you have a fairly limited inventory and access to items. At the beginning in the game in particular, you're always strapped for cash and healing items, so it forces you to win battles efficiently. While you can temp save at any time, the amount of "hard" saves you get are preciously limited. And finally, there's the D-Counter - you can transform into a dragon and basically maul anything in your path, but when that counter hits its maximum, you lose the entire game and have to start from scratch. It forces you to be absolutely sure that you need this power, and constantly makes you worry whether the transformation was worth it.

That got me thinking - Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance were fairly easy, but what if there were a Castlevania game that forced you into situations like these? That you could only carry one or two weapons at a time and be forced to choose which one was the most important? What if you had a special attack you could only use a few times during the game? Some of these elements would work, some wouldn't - for example, a time limit would be out of the question in an exploratory game, and somehow I think forcing someone to start from scratch every time they died is a bit harsh.

Anyway, it just a passing thought, but I figured it'd be interesting to hear what other people thought of this, and it turned out there were some pretty good ideas.

Having recently finally been able to buy and play Symphony Of The Night, I think that a more "limited resources" style inventory system is much needed. In SotN, you can carry as many of each item as you can hold, and have pages and pages of space to store them in. Think about how much different you would have to play SotN if you could only carry 2 or 3 weapons at a time (or perhaps even only one for the truly hardcore at heart). The same could apply to sheilds, armor, and accessories as well. A limit on the ammount of healing items would increase the difficulty as well. This might inspire people to "keep only the most powerful item at all times", but for the more initiated player this makes decisions much more involving. Do you take the Crissagrim for its damage dealing, or keep the Alucart sword for its luck bonus? Further, if you could only choose to only use one of the three transformation spells, things would get even more interesting. Take mist form and you can dodge attacks and fly, but you cannot attack bosses from a distance in the air. Take wolf and you can easily cover large distances and deal great ground damage but lose the ability to fly. Take bat and your air combat is unrivaled, but you cannot pass through attacks. I think the Castlevania series would greatly benefit from this style of gameplay. If the whole game isn't like that, at least include an option to play though the game in that fashion for those who want to.

This was definitely the idea I was trying to get across, but for it to work, it'd require some balancing. There should be no "most powerful item", but a series of weapons that each have their advantages and disadvantages - and the game should somehow imply what item would be most useful in whatever situation. This has its faults though, as it could potentially require more experimentation that most people will have the patience for.

One of my primary ideals of game design is that you should have a variety of options available to you at any time. That way, it's up to you to decide the best strategy to defeat an enemy. When you limit the possibilities, you force players to think ahead, and have them deal with the consequences of poor planning. In many ways, it's more punishing than it need to be, but it is decidedly old-school and would probably fit within the realm of classic Castlevania.

Ah, when you visit the Dungeon everyday you're bound to see some surprizes. This is a welcome one. Right now Castlevania rumors are a dime a dozen, (the latest being that if the Metal Gear Solid remake does well on Gamecube that a Contra and Castlevania will follow) so it's nice to take a break from all that and hear some speculation and ideas. First of all, I can't say that the new Breath of Fire sparked my interest very much. And I most certainly can't say that I'm at all thinking about it when I have Skies of Arcadia, Tenchu 3, Dot.Hack and Xenosaga to contend with it. BoF 4 was the only chapter that I really liked, but it doesn't shock me in the least to hear Dragon Quarter called a survival horror RPG. In the last 5 years or so Capcom games have convieniently borrowed ideas from each other,... for better or for worse. The worst case scenerio being the recent Devil May Cry 2 which tried to regress to an Onimusha style game and progress into uh, something else... is a good example of Capcom losing their friggin' mind. It seems so many once highly respected companies are drowning these days. For instance Madhouse studio's half-assed Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust movie, (cut-away editing replacing true gore and honest action sequences that were a Ninja Scroll staple? Talk about lazy animation, come on people!!!) But I'm way off-topic. You asked if Castlevania should go the survival horror route,... let's see shall we? To me, Castlevania 64 felt like a survival horror game. Although there were no limited anything, the puzzle solving elements and eerie vibe reminded me very much of a Resident Evil title. However survival horror isn't about action, and this is where a SH Castlevania would falter. I'm sure many people have varying opinions about the roots of the series, but to be sure the foundation was always action and adventure with jammin tunes and classical villians. If you take that away, (which Caslevania 64 almost did IMO) you're changing the premise. So I cannot approve of the series going in that direction even just as a one-off job. I suppose some elements of the survival horror genre could leak into the series. But I think that is an insult to IGA's team's creativity. Many people have suggested that the game become "scarier". I don't see how this is possible frankly. Especially since there were never any elements of the series that scared me to begin with. When I play Dracula X on the Turbo Duo and they're playing that ridiculous "Slash" song with that rumba beat, and I'm playing as a little blonde-haired girl in a pink dress fighting with her animal friends,... I'm can't help but wonder what on earth Castlevania could do to frighten me? Personally, I'd like the series to return to a more Simon's Quest style adventure. Where leveling up was a factor but wasn't necessary for success, and you could explore anywhere you wanted to in Transylvania with plenty of people to talk to and some of the best Castlevania music ever composed. Also there was none of that sub-weapon trading nonsense, you got to keep all of your items! The Castle part of Castlevania is becoming a very claustrophobic place if you ask me. I was never a big survival horror fan anyway. Why should I be limited on the number of items I can carry and use? These are video games not the real world! Maybe I'm too old to understand these new fangled games. I still think that the NES had the best games ever made on it. But some people say that about Intellivision, and I think the cheese fell off their cracker a long time ago. The Last Belmont

You also bring up some very good points - it's very possible that survival horror just won't work with an action game. The example that immediately pops into mind is Maximo, as you're very limited on continues. As a result, every lost life has heavy consequences. Unfortunately, given the difficulty of the game, this type of design completely sucked the fun out of the game.

Well this is an interesting topic. I think there should be more Survival Horror games out there. I used to consider Metroid to be Survival Horror.. hell I still do. And Metroid is fun as hell.. rather too hard. But it was from games like that where you feel like you have reached a level of accomplishment. Like in Resident Evil 2. (I preordered, so I was one of the people who got it first) There weren't any FAQS at gamefaqs.com ; so I had to go through the game by myself (when I later found out that EGM and Gamepro did magazine selections on it.) I wasn't scared at the zombies in resident evil, I was scared because of situations like: "Okay.. I'm low on health and ammo. I better not get into any more battles.." and then BOOM! The tyrant crashes through a wall and then you say to yourself "Oh shit! I should have saved!" Then you run like hell actually yelling at the screen "RUN LEON RUN!" So, yeah, I can imagine a Castlevania that is Survival Horror-istic. Though I had something different in mind... If Konami were to make a Castlevania of this playing style, then I would want there to be more than one character. So that there can be more than one storyline evolving at the same time.. like if vampire killer a gets into a bind and vampire killer b has to go save "a" , will he be alive when you get there? I suppose they'd have to put like a 10 minute time limit on getting to the room. And the story changes accordingly. Or, to have a Castlevania that has all of the Belmonts to make a 2d-ish type of CV where all the Belmonts use the strengths and abilities of each to overcome obstacles. Scenario: There are rings on the ceiling. Only Simon Belmont can swing from ring to ring. Once passing that obstacle, There is a huge block of ice. The player switches his Belmont to Juste where he does a fire move to melt the ice. I want a type of game like Wild Arms where success depends on each of the characters. And using them all, when you know that you're not very good with Trevor, but you are SUPERB with Sonia. This topic has gained no relevance whatsoever, but that's my little view from this vantage point. Vampiro170

Metroid brings up another very interesting argument when it comes to survival horror, even if it doesn't really have many of the elements that have been defined. The biggest thing Metroid has going for it is that you always feel like you're lost - you're running through corridors after corridors that look exactly the same. The game threatens you with deja vu, even if you're actually making progress. But then came Super Metroid and its successors - while the automap makes exploration much easier and less repetetive, it removes that sense of fear. This is an unfortunate trade-off, and there's no real way around it.

And as much as having control of multiple characters a la Resident Evil 0 might be interesting, it might turn into too much of a Lost Vikings type affair and would require putting puzzles into the game. The hardest you ever have to think in Castlevania is "knock the big lumbering knight off the cliff to break the rock", but personally I like it that way.

If your definition of survival horror is "always balancing limited resources in order to stay alive, to make decisions regarding what items or weapons are really necessary to your survival." This usually means a limited supply of ammunition, small inventories, time limits and some sort of restrictions on the save system, then isn't that kind of what Circle of the Moon was with only one life, enemies that took multiple hits while they were knocking the stuffing out of you, and almost non-existent life restore and antidote bottles? Just a thought.

You're precisely right. Circle of the Moon is the best example in the series of what I'm getting at - as strong you try to make yourself, you're still overpowered by a large factor and the amount of healing items are preciously few.

Enter the survival horror... Castlevania as a survival horror? These mailbags get better and better... I am somewhat inexperienced with survival horror games (which means I've played Resident Evil on the Cube, and that's it) but what I have played impressed me. Perhaps it was just because I was new to that type of game, but Resident Evil was very different to anything I'd every played. This was immediately compared with a slightly different type of horror game, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I try to avoid comparisons between different game types, but when thinking about Castlevania as a horror game of some type, I couldn't help imagining it between these two. Some would say that Castlevania is already horror. I'd have to say it's an adventure with a horror theme, actual horror games can usually scare you in some way. It's this very idea of being scared (or at least uncomfortable) that I associate with horror/survival horror, and a merging of that and Castlevania is something that I would find very exciting. But which type? A Resident Evil survival horror, with limited daggers and a spooky castle of vicious demons jumping from every corner? Sadly, no. Simply because of the logistics. In Resident Evil, the game is scary because of the circumstances. You have a little ammunition in your pistol/shotgun, and only a weak, melee knife to fall back on. The control scheme is irritating, but then again if you felt comfortable with the controls, it wouldn't be scary anymore. This just wouldn't work with Castlevania in it's current form. The basic weapon, the whip, is just too powerful to be anything basic. You can't make it very powerful, otherwise it'll be overused. And how do you run out of whip? Also, an irritating control scheme (which, in a twisted way, is a large part of the atmosphere of Resident Evil. I guess that's why they've kept it for so long.) would put off many Castlevania fans, understandably. Scooby, who has perfect sanity, thank you very much.

Eternal Darkness has the absolute coolest way to start a video game, ever. You begin the game, and all of a sudden, you're thrust in a room, armed with a shotgun, and surrounded by undead monsters. Me, in typical male fashion, didn't read the instruction manual and end up panicking, screaming "HOW THE HELL DO I PLAY THIS GAME" and fumbled as I might in order to survive the situation I had suddently been thrust into. Utter genius. You could pull something off something like this in Castlevania, by simply throwing your character into the action with little warning and little resources, although given that it is a standard 2D game, it wouldn't present that fear of not understand the controls.

Although I've never been a fan of games like Resident Evil and the like I can definately acknowledge that they are good games. The biggest drawback to adding in the survival horror element into Castlevania is that it takes away from the action element that makes Castlevania fun to begin with. I've always liked the "kill swarms of monsters" style. I can see the limited resources working well to increase the difficulty but for the actual "horror" element to be implemented it would require fewer enemies scattered around and more of a "wandering about being ambushed at times" style ala "The Villa" in Castlevania 64 which I think the horror aspect was executed to perfection in that stage. That brings about another issue. The survival part can work well in 2D but the horror part can't considering there's very little surprise involved in a side view environment when you can easily see everything around you. There's no "what's around that corner?" and "where's that sound coming from?" atmosphere. The 64 games had enough survival horror elements in it to justify another try. Perhaps with more polish it could have turned out better. I for one, still think that the cut scenes in those two games were some of the best I've seen when it comes to conveying emotion. Konami's good at that in any game they try it in though. Just play Vandal Hearts II if you want to see how well Konami gets you to hate the bad guys. A survival horror Castlevania could have promise if they use what was done well in the 64 games and tweak what hurt them. Tony T. Tiger

There are ways that you scare people in 2D, you'd just have to be more inventive about it. I pretty sure that rampaging Behemoth in the PC Engine Dracula X scared the hell out of people when it first came out. I'd trust the Konami designers to come up with stuff like this.

That about does it for this week, but I'd like to try for something a bit simpler for the next mailbag: what's your favorite Castlevania moment? Your favorite boss battle, favorite stage, favorite memory, whatever really stands out in your mind when you think of Castlevania.

Kurt, looking to achieve burnination.