Onto stage 2. Like stage 1, it is divided into three zones: a wood, a swamp, and a river. We got a glimpse of it at the end of the last post. The level of challenge increases, but only minimally. It likely will not be until stage 3's last segment that players will notice a spike in what is demanded of them. For now, we're still given enough of a margin for error that we can more ably admire the game's atmospherics. Bright foliage set against a furrowed, sagging sky combine to craft a mental scent -- the smell of the air before a storm, or just after it. There's a good chunk of curious, perhaps even inscrutable, level design decisions on display here; but this remains one of my favorite stages in the game for how richly it conveys an atmosphere of fragrant decomposition.
Further connections to CV3 appear in the form of the spiders that descend via silky threads, pause to shoot a smaller spider your way, and reverse (descending again after they've gone offscreen). Only a couple appear along this trail in definite spots, and once they've been taken care of that's the end. With Simon's octo-directional whipping, they're no problem at all. Purple hands of the undead dig out of the soil in random spots and latch onto Simon's legs, holding him in place. Mashing on the d-pad or the jump button enough times will shake them loose. In truth, they're merely a nuisance, since the only other adjacent enemies you'll run into are the spiders and a couple of invisible wraiths that use leaves to assume a humanoid form and hop out of the background, patrolling a plot of land (like a few other enemies in the game, the only threat they pose is the suddenness of their emergence).
Shown above, the dip in the landscape that was previewed in Study No. 2.5, and further evidence of the SCV4's unique aesthetic vision. Gnarled, gold-brown blocks of dirt and rock are set against the hard gray horizontal ribbons of a great natural wall, its open wounds stitched by purple roots; and behind, another wall that has its tightly packed surface encrusted by orange geologic masses. Small animals called needle lizards occupy four spaces here. Although their offensive tactic -- curling into a ball and rolling in one direction at a high speed -- doesn't really necessitate a tutorial of sorts, the geography here allows players to whip the critters without needing to be on the same plane as them. Thorough people will find that a leap of faith yields a cross subweapon.
We emerge from brief submersion to see that the terrestrial backdrop has developed into four separately scrolling layers to match the skyscape's visual depth. I've included this shot for the detail on the upper left, easy to miss since it blends in with the sky and doesn't stay onscreen for long. We can see what looks like a structure (a castle? If so, it's not Dracula's) perched atop a ledge -- a ledge that would seem to be far off because of the pointed sprouts of coniferous trees below. Why is this strange? Because these details are part of the foreground, meaning that they scroll by at a rate equal to that of Simon's movement. It's a bit hard to interpret this as something other than a mistake on the developers' part -- and yet, who knows for certain? Are those coniferous trees really trees? Is that structure really a castle?
A brief path with one needle lizard, two invisible wraiths, and shambling zombies birthed from the soil leads to stage 2's second segment. Falling into the muddy waters of block 2-2 isn't fatal -- as in CV3, players who do fall in will just need to be sure that they're not drawn down all the way by consistently jumping. Une plants (their sprite was reused as recently as Order of Ecclesia!), bats, crows, skeletons, frogs, and needle lizards inhabit these parts, positioned fairly independently. The crows, whose dark colors match the also-dark backgrounds and whose behavior isn't as hard-set as it was on the NES (they might swoop at Simon right after alighting from their perches, or they might pause for an instant) could cause trouble for the first-timers. So could the couple of frogs, due to their unpredictable leaping and small bodies; they're very weak, though, and can be taken care of by one whip dangle. Players can try to bypass the first frog via a route of upper platforms, but will need to mind a skeleton and crow.
Block 2-2 sports a handful of mobile floating platforms. These first appeared in the fourth room of Castlevania's second stage. They've never had an existentially intelligible reason for being (among architecture that, while practically unintelligible, has often been complemented by purely visual, structurally explanatory details (check out the screenshot above for an immediate example)), but I think there has to be some wiggle-room for whits of nonsense. If I were to be critical, I might say that it'd make more sense for floating platforms to be in Dracula's castle, a setting that pairs better with abnormal physical laws than the outdoors.
Our move to block 2-2 has brought us to a higher elevation. Simon uses a vertically floating platform to reach a couple of bridges. It's cool to see that Konami differentiated the two, rather than copy-pasting one. Simon's weight causes the planks to sag under him on the second bridge, and jumping up and landing makes the ropy rails wiggle. Three well-obscured crows are perched along this passage. I should take this opportunity to say that stage 2's music, "Forest of Evil Spirits," couldn't be better. An insistent, hunched groove played on a bass guitar guides things along at a steady pace, helped by the sharp, woody percussion. Above, an eclectic mixture of instruments trade places for the lead role -- an organ, a woodwind, faded strings, a harpsichord, and a horn. The track's chugging drive is a perfect match for the hurried clouds and the upcoming river's flow.
I should also take this opportunity to say that the knife subweapon (screen one, above) somewhat reprises the role it had in CV3 as a pest. It's too bad that Konami decided to run with this after apparently realizing that the subweapon was, by far, the least desirable of the bunch in the first game. It took until Rondo of Blood for the knife to assume legitimate place among the subweapons, thanks to the inclusion of the item crash mechanic (although its direct descendent, Bloodlines, just nixed the knife entirely). Getting the knife in SCV4 doesn't matter nearly as much as it did in CV3 because of the array of options afforded by the whip's alterations and the lower challenge level, but it's still a downer when you accidentally grab it. Some might argue that this makes whipping candles more of a thought-intensive, and thus interesting, action (since you need to have Simon out of the way of a relinquished object, should it be a knife), but the demonization of a mechanical feature doesn't strike me as admirable design. While it may very well be more interesting, distrusting every candle among hundreds surrounds the dynamic with the pallid hue of paranoia.
Medusa is the mid-boss, and only boss, of the stage, as indicated by the bat icon on the map. CV3 had a similar moment wherein players fought Medusa and, upon winning, realized that the ghost ship stage wasn't over -- that there was more of it to traverse and that a greater threat was at the end of this trial. SCV4 only mimics the first half of that follow-up, because its final lap leads to stage 3. It's sort of a curious design decision, considering that it only happens once. Every other stage, mini-boss or no, has a boss at its very end. Medusa is the simplest of any lifebar'd enemy to defeat. Go in with whip whistling and subweapons hurling and she'll drop in a few seconds flat. Should your circumstances prevent speediness, all you need to know is that 1) her magic spells (that can never hit you if you're crouching) temporarily turn you to stone, and 2) she chucks out baby snakes that can be exterminated with the faintest whip wiggle. Odd that Nintendo of America allowed Medusa's chest to be exposed, considering some of the other tweaks made to the North American version.
Rather than heating things up, block 2-3 is a sort of reprieve. The main feature here is the river's alternating current. If it's going right, you need to make sure that you don't indulge in the speed and slam into an enemy or bed of spikes; and if it's going left you need to fight for forward movement while recognizing that the direction could change the next second. This was a feature that appeared twice in CV3, except that the shifts in current were dictated by where waterfalls landed from upper levels -- and that, as a consequence of Trevor's abilities and the selected enemies, it was a lot harder. In SCV4, you're up against lenient smatterings of creatures such as passive, flying gremlins and slow bats. In a way, the minimal level of challenge here makes the river's whims feel more ambient, as if it's a natural consequence rather than strict level design made to test players' mettle -- and, for me, it supports the theme of morose restraint, of dark quietude, that we've been noting thus far. The storm clouds in blocks 2-1 and 2-2 weren't heavy just with the literalness of water. Fantastic rock formations, especially those smooth, depressed-top tiers in the second screenshot above.
Below, I've included "behind the scenes" looks at the two background layers of block 2-3 (thanks go to Badbatman3 for ripping them). I feel it'd be a mistake to glide by this inventiveness, hard to see even while playing the game. Are those pillars in the lower frame botanical or geologic?
We'll be looking at stage 3, one of the game's most impressive sequences, next.
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