Maps and Graphs - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Patreon)

Hello! I received a number of comments on my latest video, which is about the world design of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, lamenting the fact that I didn't show any graphs! 

If you're not aware: I've designed a graph system that can be used to map out the structure of non-linear games. Here's a Patreon post about how they work. 

I've decided that while they can be really useful, they're quite complicated and take some time to explain. And sometimes I want to keep a video snappy and easy to watch. But that doesn't mean the graphs will be gone - sometimes they'll just be in a behind the scenes post. Like this one!

So, here's the graph for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's critical path. This is only the items you need to find to finish the game (and get the proper ending):

And here's the legend:

So, key takeaways:

Like I said in the video, the game sometimes lets you explore multiple places (see the two Jewel of Open locks, the three Leap Stone locks), but they're dead ends until you explore the "correct" path.

You know how Super Metroid shows you the door to the final boss really early? So does Symphony, in a way, as the place with the Holy Glasses (the clock room) can be visited at the very beginning of the game. It's just not quite telegraphed like the room in Super Metroid.

We can see how the progression is linear in the first part, then completely free-form when chasing down the bits of Vlad. 

Here's the graph with all the relics on it:

Now we can see that some of those "wrong" paths are actually kinda useful because you can find relics in them.

Like if you use the Jewel of Open to explore the area underneath the castle (the rightmost Jewel of Open lock) at least you can get the Mermaid Statue, and then the Holy Symbol.

And if you open the switch early, you can't go on without the Echo of Bat - but you can get a familiar card. 

We also see that the bat power-up allows us to get a whole bunch of relics.

Finally, lemme show you how they look on a map of the castle. 

Here's everything you can see at the beginning of the game. A bunch of dead ends (mostly things you can't jump or fly up to yet), a few relics, and the Jewel of Open.

After you get the Jewel of Open, you can explore a lot more. You need the Mermaid Statue (bottom left) to get the Holy Symbol (bottom right). Your main job is to get the Leap Stone.

Now we have the Leap Stone, we can explore more. Like the area down below, where we can get a relic (Demon Familiar) but get stuck without the Echo of Bat. We just need the Form of Mist.

Which hardly changes the game at all. Just lets us go get the Soul of Bat.

That does a lot, though. You can finish the game if you really want. Or go get lots of relics, the Gold Ring, and the Echo of Bat.

I've consolidated a bunch of steps into this one. So you use the Echo to get the Spike Breaker armour (very bottom), then use that to get the Silver Ring (top left). Use the Gold and Silver rings to get the Holy Glasses (middle), which give you access to Shaft (top).

And then finally, here's the inverted castle. You can get all five pieces of Vlad and a couple optional Relics in whatever order you like, before going on to fight Dracula.

Hope that all makes sense! Any questions, lemme know.