Annotated Appendix: East Meets West

Whoo, things are moving along pretty fast, now. But, I suppose that you might not think so. That's fine.

As this episode of the series again reminds us, the Inverted Castle isn't exactly a second full half. If anything, the IC is maybe a little more than a third of the content of the game; there aren't many new enemies, there are very few new relics, and no ability walls to keep us away from wherever we want to go. Though this episode is a little long with some dense stretches of silence (sorry), tackling three sections of the IC in each video has now become the standard for just this reason. If I did them one-by-one like the first castle, you would be be bored to death.

Along with the format change of the episode, the construction evolution really came into play here, too. By that, I mean I just get through the locations at a steady pace and no longer have to stop and stand around so the voice over can finish. It can sometimes make me edit in creative ways (which is really a good thing, I suppose), but now I can write a script, record it, and then just plug things in where they fit, which is nice. It also sort of helps that I haven't really needed to multi-window much in this and the last episode, either. The references the game makes are still interesting, but not so complex that they callback to multiple games in the series anymore. Sure, this could all change when we get closer to the Galamoth fight, but as far as editing goes, this was an easy one to put together.

From a navigational perspective, though, it was really hard. I promise to scan my noted map and share it at some point so this all makes a bit more sense, but two of the three locations in this episode interlock, and that doesn't exactly make things easy to map without some bit of backtracking and a lot of forethought. The next episode, thank God, is made up of three discrete locations, but this one was something I really puzzled over for a long time.

Apropos of nothing: Against all common sense, Konami is releasing a port of the Castlevania arcade game Haunted Castle on the PS4 today. I'd like to think that they know these videos are coming and just want to cross promote them, but that would be stupid because nobody's making any scratch off of this whole venture. Haunted Castle, though, is an unquestionable piece of shit. If you want to give Konami money for it that's your business, but I advise against it.

Again, thanks for watching. See you in a few weeks