I just finished 2 of the worst days in my life. Well, ok, nothing seriously or even critically terrible happen, but I was treated like shit at work. So, lets simplify that into, 2 of the worst work days in my life… well in the past 3.5 years anyways, I got transferred from my last job because of bullshit like this.

It is days like the past two that make me say to people “Yes, I will be getting out of the military after 7 years in.”
”But why? You are almost halfway to retirement then. If you stay in you could retire at age 39!”
”Yes, but I hate being in the military. I want to go back to school and do a job I enjoy.”

No one gets me. They look at me as if horns grow from my eyes. My life has never been about money, as long as I have enough to eat and get electricity.

Gaahhh, tonight I shall drink sake and watch some pretensions film. Go me.

For the past 1 and some odd years I have been playing Symphony of the night on and off. I picked up a Greatest Hits version for like $15 new at Sam’s Club. Hell it could have been longer ago. Late 2003 was when it was.

Let’s go back a little further than that.

Back when I was a Junior in High School SotN came out for the PS1. I was working at Blockbuster at the time. I heard tons of great comments about the game, and I remembered really enjoying the first 2 Castlevania games. So I rented the game for free and “beat it” in about 6 or 7 hours.

Too damn easy. Fun, but not Castlevania. Almost though.

I did buy a GBA for the new Castlevania anyways. It was more what I was looking for, but still not quite right. I figured out what was “not quite” with that game a few years later, but that is a tale for a different time. The reason I bring it up at all is because during a conversation about it I found out about the upside-down castle.

This spurred me to track down a copy of it, but ebay at the time (and people selling it used) had super inflated prices. Somewhere in a stock house at Sony⿿s disc pressing factory tons of the GH version of the game must have been missed. All of a sudden the $50 used game went from rare to easily obtainable. Lucky me to come across it.

Slowly over time I picked apart the game an hour or so at a time⿦ for the past 2 years. I never looked at a FAQ or a exposed map and finally, on Tuesday night, I finished the upside down castle with 193.6%.

There was a point for a while that I felt stupid for not figuring out what to do to beat Dracula not Richter. I knew what I had to be wearing to see him, but could not find it. How I missed the Succubus area is beyond me, but I passed it up dozens of times wandering the castle.

The upside-down castle itself was hard. It was good to get kicked in the nuts a few times. It reminded me that Castlevania can be hard. I died more times in the second half of SotN than in Harmony of Dissonance (over 4 run throughs, once in hard and with Maxim) and Aria of Sorrow (2 run throughs, the second was Julius in hard mode) combined.

Overall, the game is good. Damn good. Not quite Rondo of Blood good, but close. Now I need to get an exposed map and find all the things I missed (I was told that over 196% gets a different end). It is weird. I don⿿t feel relieved or anything that a game I have been playing this long is finally done. It is also weird that it took so damn long to finish.