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Turning everything into a damage sponge slows the game down far too much IMO. I gave it a couple of hours to see the changes and think I'm going to opt for the Quality Hack with Luck Mode instead for my replay (fewer overall changes to the game besides MC stats).

I can't quite compare it to the regular game as it's been a long time since my last playthrough, but at first, HardType delivers exactly what it promises, a much more difficult and tighter experience where some rooms can unexpectedly become death traps. Around halfway through the first castle, however, the difficult subsides and becomes much more in line with the vanilla game... except for certain bosses, and for the worst. HP inflation here is really bad and it just happens that the ones with the most HP seem to be the dullest ones, dragging out their fights and magnifying how much of a bore they are. Beelzebub needed more HP, said nobody ever.

Things pick up again at the reverse castle, where I don't think I'd have made it without my trusty Flamberge. One long trek filled with danger to the Reverse Entrance later and I had already leveled the playing field with two Rune Swords, which soon, revealed yet another shortcoming of this hack. There were way too many specific ways to catch up with the game that the author couldn't foresee, taking out only the most obvious ones like shield spells and the Crissaegrim (which despite being in the game as of the more recent patches it's as worthless as dirt). The biggest one for me being the Mojo Mail, which turns a maxed out Sword Familiar into a war machine, managing to somehow skip two of Death's attacks almost instantly.

The hack could have greatly benefitted from more in-depth alterations such as refining boss AI (if only because most bosses can be easily stunlocked, including Galamoth), getting rid of certain cheap tactics like grinding out familiars at the Reverse Chapel, removing the Mist's invulnerability and maybe even trashing my dear Rune Sword. But in the end, I'd say it still did a fine job with what it promised to do and certainly made the game a bit more fun.

SOTN it's one of those games I have almost all memorized, I been playing it since my early childhood, but I always found it a bit easy because this game has a lot of cheap tricks and game breaking stuff.

This mod adds a lot of HP and damage to all monsters in the game, and our Alucard here is a lot more fragile. I got to know this game way better now because of this, since we actually need time to defeat the enemies and bosses, see new mechanics I never got to see, got a lot of fun. I liked the challenge, but some stuff are a bit too broken like the Minotaur and Werewolf boss fight, their damage are just too high. Galamoth is super hard here btw, you can't use the lightning beret! I really recommend this mod if you are looking for a challenge and new ways to play SOTN. They mostly do well what they promised here.

NOTE: After applying the hack STARWIN's EDC/ECC recalculator must be applied for the game to run correctly: PS1 2352 image EDC/ECC recalculator

REVIEW:

Kudos to Landon for this hack. It definitely makes SotN harder. It does so by increasing the HP and damage of all enemies in the game. That's great, however, therein also lies the problem. Boss difficulty is inconsistent. Most of the first castle bosses are still pretty much shoe-ins. While bosses like Minotaurus + Werewolf and Orlox are especially brutal with a relatively extensive move-set. In that respect, it can be seen as encouragement to break the standard playthrough order slightly. The problem is just that the AI for most of the bosses stinks. But I think that goes beyond the scope of this hack so can't really be helped. The second castle offers it's own set of difficulty spikes. But I found that ok. The Nova skeletons should probably have had their HP increased a lot more. Most of the second castle bosses are fairly challenging in some way.

Despite any shortcomings, the game is much improved with this hack applied. I love how it makes you pay more attention to your heart levels and at times has you use items, potions and powers that were previously unnecessary. Learning and using soul steal is more important during boss battles.

I had no issue with certain items being removed. There are many redundant and overpowered items in SotN so whatever. Shield + shield rod combo is available in new game +. Also, this hack is compatible with the Quality hack.

Overall I like it a lot. I guess it's as good as it gets.

As other people are pointing out, the hack starts off strong and difficult but halfway through it's like the difficulty level just drops off. It would be great if it maintained the same challenge as the beginning, all the way throughout. Someone else was saying there are glitches with medusa heads. I didn't have that problem but it's worth looking into. Still I would recommend this. It's a shame there aren't more people working on difficulty hacks of this game. Everyone knows this is one of the greatest games of all time but its one problem is it's too easy.

So, this hack is really really fun at the start of the game because it forces you to change the usual "attack and tank everything" strategy from the original game, so it's a breath of fresh air for someone who's been playing the game for 20 years. I have to say though, as fun as it is at the beginning, after the Chapel area, the difficulty drops to the levels of the original game for some areas and bosses, but for others it goes up a ton. It feels like there is no difficulty curve or consistency at all.

Leaving that aside, there are also some huge problems with the hack, and those are the glitches. I wouldn't mind if they were small things that didn't affect the gameplay, but these actually crash the game entirely. For example, every Golden Medusa Head will freeze the game the moment it touches you; for whatever reason they petrify the entire game instead of just Alucard! There is also another major glitch in the Olrox fight, and while it doesn't crash the game, it does soft-lock you. The attack that forms some sort of toxic pillars sends you flying to the side while poisoning you a million times, so you can't move at all, the Poison status gets infinitely inflicted on Alucard and it even squishes you inside the wall! Similarly, Salem Witches have this game-freezing effect with their poisoning attacks. Also, sometimes my emulator (mednafen) gives an error about unrecoverable areas of the game, but nothing happens after the message appears.

All in all, it's a good hack that gives you an excuse to play SotN for the 50th time, but the difficulty is all over the place. The glitches are very annoying and literally game breaking. I had to abuse savestates in a few areas like the Clock Towers because neither Alucard nor my attacking familiars can touch the Golden Medusa Heads without freezing the game.

Also, thank you for restoring the shield spells!

I've just finished it and the game feels so much better now, it has some serious difficulty spikes here and there (like the (spoiler) minotaur/werewolf boss fight) the shield spells CAN be done, but you have to BUY the balmung sword from the librarian (it costs 500,000....) and I think you can only get it on a second playthrough, but its really fun!

I didn't even know some attack patterns of the late bosses of the game since in the original you kill them before they use those attacks.

It was just amazing!!

Pretty much every "rebalance" patch/hack which I've seen for games I've found went too far in some way, often making the game more difficult to the point of no longer being fun. So I did not have high expectations for this increased difficulty patch. But, given how easy SOTN is, I tried it.

Things start fantastically. The enemies are tougher, but it feels balanced. Suddenly you realise the different weapons, sub-weapons, items, and even the environment all offer valuable tactics. It's very satisfying to come up with new techniques to pass tough areas. For example the laser diamond sub-weapon in tight corridors is actually essential now, as are fast but weak weapons. and using your shield. In the original game everything was so easy you ignore damage and basically stick to whatever weapon had the biggest number. Originally I could complete the game without ever using any of the items, whereas now all your resources serve a purpose.

Unfortunately like other patches this one goes too far, and the hack author seems to have become over zealous with his changes.

The shield rod, which allows use of shield spells, has been made two handed, meaning you can no longer use shield spells. This is a travesty of a decision.

The original game was so easy you'd never need to use the shield spells, making them a brief novelty. Their existence was crying out for a patch which toughened the game up, and gave you a reason to use them.

It's a mystery why the author chose to remove them. The path to reach the shield rod is long and difficult, even in the original game. There's a lot of enemies which stun lock you in a tight corridor, so gaining the item deserves some kind of reward. Now though the weapon is useless - it's primary purpose was the shield spells.

The author also removed several cool weapons entirely, rather than rebalancing them.

On various forums users asked if he could re-implement all of these things, but he declined without giving a reason. It's one thing to make a game more challenging, but to remove content is a terrible decision. Especially since the shield spells were some of the coolest spells in the game!

You can get the Mablung sword, which also allows shield spell casting, but the patch author has changed this so it can only be gotten post-game after the last boss. By this point the spells are redundant. You've completed the game and defeated all the toughest enemies.

Disturbingly, several forum users actually requested he cut more content from the game in future patches, such as the backwards dash, and various sub-weapons. So I dunno, some people obviously like having "less game" to play around with. For me though, I just wanted to play SOTN with all the content, albeit more challenging.

Another flaw of this patch is that while it changes all the enemies HP, EXP, and elemental weaknesses, these changes are not reflected in the bestiary. Which is somewhat crippling and makes the bestiary redundant. The whole point of it is to learn techniques to defeat some enemies, and also to find out which enemies drop the best items, and which are good for farming EXP. Since the bestiary data does not match the changes to the game itself, you can't do this anymore.

This is a terrible shame, because the patch is almost - but not quite! - excellent. It shows that SOTN needs to be tougher to make the most of the resources given to the player. But I honestly cannot recommend this patch when it makes the game more difficult, and then removes the very resources which necessitated a higher difficulty in the first place. Removing game content should never be the goal of a rebalance patch.

I sincerely hope that others are encouraged to make their own rebalance patches, or that this one gets tweaked, perhaps giving players the option to patch with or without the spells. As it stands this is the only rebalance available, sadly.

I'm experiencing this game in a new exciting way now I can finally enjoy and have some challenge in the bosses and enemies without having to handicap myself.

Playing this you will discover a lot of strategies and details of the game like the weakness system that was underused before and the spells will be of great help.

The only complaint I have is that I think I found a bug, I'm playing with the only lvl 1 path and everything has being good and balanced so far but the early version of the mist power (Colosseum one) doesn't stay for long enough to pass the grates.

I'm still pretty bad, but the game actually feels challenging now. Sure I died playing the original the first time I played it, but not after reaching level 10 or so, and certainly never felt under threat in the 2nd half of the game.

I'm about level 15, and attempting to sequence break and suffering instant death against many, many enemies. Oh, hello almost off-screen musketeer, watch me fly back a screen with less than half health.

I am finding that keeping a distance and spamming spells is effective at getting around a few tricky enemies at the start. Time stop seems a bit cheap too, but overall I find I just have to play better.

I believe the Death skip is possible without luck mode activated, but I wanted the full effect of the hack, and started with nothing.

Thanks to LandonRay for the hack. It now makes Symphony a game which rewards cleaner, crisper inputs along the line of Super Metroid, or Metroid: Zero Mission. It probably did already, but now the stakes are higher.

Cheers

I played the hard-type hack about half a year ago. I did a no HP max up run of the game and it was absolutely BRUTAL.

Using this hack you will:

• Use weapons you never used
• play more carefully or die
• see boss attacks you haven't seen in years
• need to find ways to deal more damage by using the mechanics
• have the definitive way to play sotn as of now.

cons:

• the mod removes some special moves and weapons which I think is unacceptable. I think the author has put a few weapons and moves back in already of which I am glad.
• You will cry

This hack fixes the major flaw in Castlevania, Symphony of the Night. The original game is too easy because of the lack of balance between Alucard and their enemies. Alucard is resourceful and overpowered and common enemies have poor defense and hit points. They generally die easily in one or two hits.

In this hack they aren't pushovers. They can easily kill you if you do many mistakes. Later in the hack, you must use all Alucard's skills to survive and to kill bosses. It is a great and positive difference compared with the original game.

As a hint, in the later parts of the hack you can use the mist form to bypass troublesome rooms with strong enemies and to access the save points.

First off, the first boss isn't rebalanced, probably cause the battle is timed and stat bonuses are given for finishing him off quick enough. After that you'll notice enemies have double HP. You may find yourself avoiding normal enemy battles as they are quite a bit tougher now. This could wind up a ineffective tactic tho as the bosses have been given double HP too and battles go on for much longer. Enemies often deal out more damage than you do too so it isn't a even fight. I actually died a couple times on the bosses which usually doesn't happen. I recommend this hack very much if you find yourself breezing through the original game.