Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The much anticipated Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has come and gone on Xbox Live Arcade. I have completed the game and have unlocked all of the game's achievements.  Symphony of the Night is the game that reinvigorated the Castlevania series. It's the one that rescued the series from itself. The pure action titles of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras have been replaced with the more action RPG like Metroid style gameplay. You character can now level up and become stronger. He has weapons and armor and items to deal with. He's no longer on a predetermined path and the well defined stages have been replaced with a sprawling castle that limits your movement based on your abilities. Find whatever it is you need that enables you to advance. The new format allows for hidden rooms and secrets aplenty. The items and weapons and armor allow you to find a play style that more suits your preference by experimenting with combinations. The real star of the show is the attention to detail. The art style in the creatures and the backgrounds both are lush. They're both quite varied. There are just little extra details everywhere you look. The bosses are fun and plentiful. The game's challenge is much easier than I remembered it. It's an all around great game. A classic. In coming to the Xbox 360 they've improved the graphics. The graphic update is much appreciated as the original game hasn't aged all that well. It's just tough to look at those early 32-bit game graphics on a technical level. The original version is available as an option for the purists. The game's original voices are left untouched. The game has without a doubt the worst voice acting ever used in a game. It's just awful. This provides for a game that so unintentionally cheesy that it somehow becomes charming in and of itself. The game's FMV segments have been removed. They've added achievements of course. Two are particularly noteworthy. The Seeker achievement is for completing the game with 200.6% of the castle explored. And the Belmont's Revenge achievement is for completing the inverted castle as Richter. Both of these tasks I couldn't be bothered to do originally ten years ago on the PlayStation. Those achievements really do add some incentive and replay value. I don't think I would have bothered this time around without them. It's interesting to note that most of the people on my friend's list have bought the game. And most of those peoplestill own the original PlayStation version. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a great game and hopefully the sales will be such as to start a trend in porting worthy Saturn and PlayStation era games to Xbox Live Arcade. I'm giving Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the X360 a 9.