I Thought Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Was Just Another Game—How Wrong I Was

The first day I got my PlayStation, I suddenly found myself with over 100 game discs. It was overwhelming—every new game seemed cooler than the last. I couldn’t focus on just one; I kept jumping from one title to another. On top of that, I had promised my parents, who had loaned me the money for the console, that I’d sell half of the games to pay them back.

As I started sorting through them, I came across Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I was familiar with the series from the NES (or Dendy, as it was known in the former USSR), but I didn’t really grasp its significance at the time. I popped the disc in, and what I saw was just... 2D graphics. Nice-looking, sure, but after experiencing Resident Evil and Tekken, it didn’t impress me at all. I was about to put it in the "sell" pile, but something about it made me hesitate. Maybe it was the coffin animation during saves, or my love for horror themes in general. Whatever the reason, I decided to keep it. But for a long time, it just was on my shelf, untouched.

I had no idea how wrong I was.

About a year later, my collection had shrunk significantly. I had sold many games, traded others, and was left with around 35–40 titles. I decided it was time to deal with the ones I was reluctant to part with but also hadn’t felt like playing. That’s when Symphony of the Night resurfaced. I reluctantly put the disc in, thinking I’d beat it in a day or two and move on.

At first, everything seemed easy. I figured I’d breeze through it and be done. But then the game started revealing its hidden depths. More mechanics opened up, and suddenly, the experience felt completely different. The bosses, despite being in 2D, had attack patterns that were more intricate and visually impressive than anything I had seen on the previous console generation.

And then came the loot.

I’ve always been obsessed with loot drops in games—years later, I would sink countless hours into Diablo because of it. So when I realized that every enemy type in Symphony of the Night had a unique set of potential drops, I went all in. I started grinding hard, trying to get the rarest gear. One day wasn’t enough. Two days weren’t enough. I was barely making progress, too caught up in farming.

Then I accidentally found a hidden passage.

To my shock, there wasn’t just a small room behind it—there were entire new areas, even secret bosses. When I finally reached the end of the game, my completion percentage was just over 50%. How much had I missed? At the time, I had no idea that the real goal wasn’t 100% completion, but 200.6%. I started combing through every inch of Dracula’s castle, backtracking to every previous location. The game kept growing before my eyes, and the difficulty ramped up dramatically.

I envy my past self for knowing so little about Symphony of the Night when I first truly immersed myself in it. The joy, the discoveries, the pure magic of exploring that world—few games have ever come close to delivering that feeling. The only downside? I had no one to share it with. None of my friends cared about Symphony of the Night or even wanted to hear about it.

Today, it’s universally recognized as a masterpiece, so there’s no point in telling you to play it—most of you probably already have.

Or have you?

If you’ve never played Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, you need to fix that. It hasn’t aged a day. It’s still a masterpiece. Every true gamer should experience it at least once. Don’t waste any more time—grab a controller and dive into the world of Symphony of the Night. You won’t regret it.