Xbox 360 Castlevania Symphony of the Night 200.6% Complete baby, YEAH!

So I did it! I finally completed Castlevania SOTN to 200.6% on my 360, without doing any of the Sword Familiar cheating, and unlocked the 35 Achievement points for doing so! The last pesky areas were in the Colosseum, which funnily enough Amy found on the map I printed... they weren't even the difficult to find areas either!

So that left me with 2 achievements on the game left to complete; kill Dracula without getting hit for 10 points, and the slightly more challenging, Complete both Castles with Richter for 45 points... so on we marched!

Amy needed to do some research on the PC, so I used the time wisely and proceeded to start the game as Richter (enter your name as "Richter" if you didn't know) and play through. Richter is a bit of a git to play with as he doesn't level up, has no way of gaining health on the move (other than the "secret areas" where you can find the powerup items that restore your health, as do the drops after defeating a boss) and most hits to Richter knock off 1/3rd of his energy.

Playing as Richter therefore becomes a constant battle to get to the next save spot before something gets a lucky blow in, which is fine in the Castle but in the inverted Castle it becomes an absolute nightmare at times. There were lots of "shit"s "fuck"s and even a "MOTHERFUCKER" at times!

My advice for this achievement is a mixture of the Holy Water or the Daggers as your secondary weapon of choice. Most of the bosses between the start and the Inverted Clock Tower are easiest killed with the Daggers and hitting Y at the right moment for a 20-30 hit combo, but for some of the tougher areas of the Inverted Castle (the Church Stairway for one, should you choose this path!) are a constant Holy Rain attack area!

Despite the many, many times I died in some areas, I managed to get to the Inverted Clock Tower in less than 45 minutes playtime. I then proceeded to kick Shafts ass (what an unfortunate name for a boss character) and completed that achievement!

Last but not least, I had to kill Dracula in Bloodlines without getting hit. After getting hit when Dracula metamorphosises into demon form several annoying times, I changed tactics and collected the Holy Water on the end candlestick and just punished his bitch ass with Holy Rain and hid in the corner. Cheap? No doubt... but 200 out of 200 achievement points for one of my favorite games of all time look good on the olde Xbox Dashboard! :D

This is the first game I have all the achievement points for too.. Konami had the good graces not to put some insane and impossible challenges in there, you know.. like Complete the game in a Record Speedrun style time!

800 Xbox points thoroughly well spent, 10 hours+ of well enjoyed retro fun and Castlevania Symphony of the Night has been totally worth the wait! This game is brilliant and a timeless classic that I truly recommend to anyone.. whether you get an original PSX version, the arguably better Saturn version (with Maria as a playable character and a couple of extra sections to the game), a PSP "PS1 emulated" version or whatever, anyone with a love for gaming should play this game.

199.4% through Castlevania Symphony of the Night! Damn you Konami!!!!

This weekend, and since its release a week last Wednesday, I have mostly been playing Castlevania SOTN on my Xbox 360. Some of you may know of its 200.6% completion target, and is actually one of the achievements. Being the Castlevania geek that I am, I have to prove my might and get this achievement unlocked (its actually on my CV that I have done this on its original PSX release so it would hardly be right if I didn't get it on my 360!).

But I'm currently stuck at a whopping 199.4% and that pesky 1.2% eludes me! Then I only have to complete it with Richter and boom, first game to get all the playpoints for!

Pimp My Blog, Support Play Asia and Cheap Xbox360 games!

If, like me, you run Firefox web browser and have a great piece of software called ABP (or AdBlocker Pro as its otherwise know) this post and my blog additions will not affect you too much. Together they make the internet a great advert free place, and the only exposure I get to adverts online now is when stupid MSN Messenger gets my email in its own choice of browser (i.e. IE7) rather than my "default Internet Browser" (this pisses me off).

Anyway, I hope you're not too offended by the addition of one of my favorite websites, Play Asia, and their new additions to my blog. Maybe one day this blog will drive enough traffic to make the 1 to 10,000 ratio or whatever it is to generate some money online, but maybe not! I support Play-Asia and buy all my cheap region free Xbox 360 games from them now that Lik-Sang is gone (and there goes the only healthy competition on the international games import market, thanks Sony).

The great thing is that apart from some localisation on the front cover, everything from the manual to the game menus is in FULL ENGLISH. Thats right, NTSC-J games for the Hong Kong region are around half the price and exactly the same as the PAL English counterparts. I'd even argue they were better because they don't have any of those filthy multi-language menus supporting German, Spanish and French. Plus you get them months before their Pal release, for instance, Gears of War I had weeks before I came home and people were still like "what... you have Gears of War... its not even out yet?!?". To add insult to injury I told them it cost me 40000 won (ie £20) and that it was in full English and they go mental!

So stop paying unhealthy UK prices for games and get over to Play-Asia now; they have a big list of games that will definitely work on UK machines so you won't ever get stung again.

Fortunately I own an NTSC-J Xbox360 so I don't ever have to worry about cheaper English language Asian games (ie games released for Hong Kong) but you'll find a lot of games are region free. Avoid anything by EA though... they suck balls by locking all their games to specific regions so they can bleed you of more money in the UK through regionalised advertising sponsorship.... bastards!!!