Game #1230: Koumajou Remilia - Scarlet Symphony

  Castlevania Hell.

 Look, inspiration is one thing but Koumajo Remilia: Scarlet Symphony went the whole 9 yards when it came to borrowing elements from Symphony of the Night. That said, the inspiration is mostly skin-deep. Y'see, when I first looked at screenshots I thought "Neat! Another 2-D Metroidvania!", but it's not! It's actually a Classicvania merged with bullet-hell mechanics.

 First thing you'll notice is that the game is kinda ugly. The 2-D sprites are fine, but the backgrounds are sort of a muddy mess of pixels that got airbrushed further out of recognition. What will strike you the most is the fact that about 80% of the enemies are almost ripped off wholesale from Castlevania, particularly the sprites they used in the Rondo of Blood/Symphony of the night era. The Minotaurs with the huge mallets, the skeletons are pretty much identical, et all. Pretty much the only original enemies are the floating anime fairy-type enemies that look completely out of place when compared to the rest of the enemy menagerie. The hand-drawn character portraits, however, are gorgeous. That said, the clock-tower stage, because of course they had to copy that too, has this quirk with sprites... everyone, meaning both you and the enemies, are about a millimeter or two OVER the actual ground. It drove me nuts! Oh! And they also copies the classic Classicvania final stairway to the boss. They were absolutely shameless.

 Basic gameplay follows after the Classicvania formula, Remilia, the playable heroine, is equipped with a whip, and your objective is, well, reaching the end of each stage. You can destroy candles to obtain souls that can be spent either in weak, useless bullets, when you are flying, or when calling in a sidekick to perform an assist attack, which is a bit more expensive(10 a pop) but way more useful. You'll gather these sidekicks as you play through the game.

 Ah, yes, flight. In this game you can just fly by pressing jump again after a jump. It's pretty much useless during most stages, although it makes some platforming easier, but it's real use comes when facing bosses. And this was kind of an issue, y'see, stages are straight up Classicvania affairs, jump and whip the opposition to the ground, and they are very easy. But bosses are a whole 'nother story. For someone such as me, who doesn't really like scrolling shoot'em ups nor plays them... bosses are incredibly hard, and the stages that come before the fight don't teach you or prepare you to get used to dodging these bullet curtains bosses will shoot at you. There's a Super Easy mode, for people like me, and when starting a new game you can start from any stage you've played previously, so if gets too unmanageable you can just lower the difficulty. I did after stage 5 I think, it got too hard and I didn't care about getting good at dodging pink glowing lemons.

 And that's the thing with this game... I really don't think the genre fusion worked very well. Stages and bosses feel like two very different elements that don't really work well with each other. Every time I reached a new boss I felt completely stumped since by the time I got to a new boss I got used to simpler, jump and gun(whip?) gameplay. Maybe this could work for someone who enjoys both genres, but clearly, I don't belong to that niche. It's also fairly short, after you are done with all 8 stages you unlock a bonus, long stage that has you fighting against some of the bosses from the main campaign and ends on a new boss.

 Koumajo Remilia: Scarlet Symphony was a very forgettable experience. Honestly, the only things worth talking about are its excellent hand-drawn art and how amusing trying to pinpoint every single thing it borrowed from Castlevania was! I think the game could've worked much better if the stages themselves had challenges that involved dodging stuff, in order to prepare you for the bosses. And even then, I'm not sure how much I liked the flight mechanic in the game.

 4.5