Hack Name:  Castlevania - Alternate Scarlet Symphony
Platform: 
Genre: 
Released by: 
Language: 
Status:  Complete
Patch Version:  1.3.1
Last updated:  July 18, 2025
Type of Hack:  Gameplay, Levels
Downloads:  1709
Rating: 

Castlevania – Alternate Scarlet Symphony

 

1.3.1 update:

  • alright, you guys win: reduced enemies HP by 25-50% ..yay!
  • Easy Mode item now also gives +150 ATK. Equip TWO of them and you have +300 ATK. Can be dropped by Bats or purchased at Library for 100$

1.3.0 update:

  • opened up some areas of the map so you’ll have MORE routes to take after you get Soul of Wolf
  • some more hints in the relic on how to progress in the game
  • new accessories that can be purchased in the Library: EASY MODE and HARD MODE. Equip EASY MODE to half all damage taken, and HARD MODE to receive 2x damage taken
  • polished some areas, make it easier for Mist form to slip into some spaces, also to prevent softlocking on some areas
  • lots of weapons buffed and rebalanced
  • spells are buffed in damaged but increase MP cost, Gravity Boots no longer needs MP to use.
  • New Relic (kinda) – Sky Walker – Jump Infinitely
  • buffed foods HP heals
  • if this Hack got lots of downloads and stream/playthrough videos, I’ll consider DOING THE INVERTED CASTLE
1.2.0 update:
  • small changes on level design to make it a bit more easier to find new places you can go
  • nerfed Axe Armor a bit
  • changed how Alucart Armor worked. Most people didn’t realized it’s weak to HIT and CUT (even though it’s there in the description) and still use it and wonder why enemies hit so hard.
  • Richter can now only be damaged by Dark weapons. So getting Mormegil is now a progression for the game.

1.0.1 update:

  • Infinite Wingsmash duration
  • Richter Boss is now kinda hard

Features:

  • Castle layout changes! Being a creature of Chaos, Dracula’s Castle still undergoes changes and Alucard, who slept a year later before going inside, founds out that the castle is different again. Experience new paths, new secret passages, and a different way to explore your beloved castle!
  • Some new weapons! No more same old sword with just different stats. Some weapons have different elemental attribute that will help you kill tough enemies! Example – Armors are weak to Lightning. Don’t forget to read or buy some HINTS at the Librarian!
  • Throw items now only cost MP! Got a boomerang? TNT? Use them all you want!
  • Shield combo works on any weapon! Not just Shield Rod. Enjoy the freedom of having multiple combat options at your disposal! Use Shield spell combos anytime, anywhere!
  • Rebalanced stats and spells and stuff Based on my old Big Number rebalanced patch (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/8594/) this game features a difficulty curve where all enemies can still pose a challenge at any time. Make sure to try and find their weaknesses so you can take them out easily!
  • And more that I forgot I added!
Hashes: 
Filename: Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin
CRC-32: 5be47b2
SHA-1: f967119e006695a59a6442237f9fc7c7811cf7bf
Staff/Credits: 
mazen
lakifume
NickyzPojav
paul_met
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Reviews
Comments
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Number of Comments: 14

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Reviews:
If youve played every hack of SOTN and desperately need something more… I guess this is certainly more

Written by: jjb1214 - July 18, 2025

It is clear a lot of work went into this but it seems to miss entirely what made SOTN fun in the first place.

PRO
This is a new way to play SOTN. If you are still playing SOTN daily and have been for the past 20 years; then certainly this is new content to experience.

CONS
Pretty much everything. Pathing is a nightmare for the beginning; filled with constantly awkward jumps and awkward movement. The 'platforming' is a huge step back and feels tedious and unfun to engage with for the most part.

Leveling feels pointless and unrewarding; essentially ripping the RPG 'feel' and mechanic completely out of the base game.

Enemy damage and status effects are incredibly high while you have access to practically nothing useful for quite a while.

The heart system has been overhauled but not really for the better. It is nice that you have access to all sub-weapons and can seamlessly choose what you want; but the only real way to have a heart supply is to have an item equipped and take damage repeatedly. Collecting hearts is absolutely a waste and pointless due to the low amount you still obtain (1-5); while sub-weapons all cost 10-50-500. This means the only viable way of obtaining hearts quickly is to sit outside of a save room and take damage; go back and heal; repeat.

CONCLUSION
There's probably some fun to be had here; but the insane balance and terrible platforming make it a chore to play--rather than something fun to play. This hack essentially guts most of the 'fun' aspects of SOTN and replaces it with artificial difficulty that isnt very fun to engage with.

I'd recommend this only for HARDCORE fans that want to play SOTN but have already played every other SOTN hack under the sun. Otherwise youre in for a terrible time.

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It’s got spirit, but not much else.

Written by: engale - July 17, 2025

I can see the vision that the dev was going for, for sure. Let's start with what this hack does well:

PROS

  • New layouts are interesting, if a little confusing in ways that are mostly just due to a bit of poor environmental guidance or just strange choices as a whole. 
  • Rebalancing of the enemies to be based around weaknesses and resistances is interesting, but it comes with its drawbacks.
  • Exploration as a whole is very much locked behind interesting exploitation of Mist and Wolf collision changes, which is a nice way to go about keeping certain areas off-limits.

 

Unfortunately, that's about all of the good things I can say about this hack.

CONS

  • The rebalances are very overtuned, to the point where nearly every encounter is tedious rather than deliberate. Every single enemy has at minimum an additional 2 or 3 hits required to kill them compared to the vanilla game with no added depth to combat. Some combat depth is actually removed since the developer got rid of the ability to cancel your initial attack in the air and start up another attack immediately upon hitting the ground.
  • Since enemies have weaknesses and resistances, this means that weapons have new elements. Unfortunately, this means that you will need to go into the menu and equip a new weapon, attack once to check if the enemy is weak to it, and rinse and repeat until you find the correct weapon that the enemy is weak to. This makes a for an extremely tedious experience upon encountering a new enemy and also never cuts down on said tedium because you will need to be swapping weapons after almost every enemy since the weaknesses are so varied. Additionally, since the HP values are heavily inflated just using a weapon that is neutral to the enemy is a genuine waste of time; you are spending upwards of 5 or 6 seconds on a single enemy that is going to respawn.
  • Certain encounters in this hack almost encourage spamming "cheesy" solutions to them, which seems against what the developer's philosophy of including things that make it seem like they want combat to be more deliberate. I found myself abusing the stopwatch a lot, and I needed to (on many occasions) farm hearts by throwing myself against an enemy near a save point before going back and healing myself until I had full hearts before going into an encounter and spending a long time just wailing on the boss.

 

All in all, if this hack were executed better by a developer with more skill, it would be great. It honestly suffers the most from tedious combat the most. I personally went through the entire hack deathless using the HARD item, and since the additional HP did nothing but make fighting take longer, rather than more difficult, I didn't have much trouble at all. Many parts of this hack seem sloppy or rushed, there are random tiles missing, random deadends, strange clipping, and other strange design choices sprinkled throughout the whole hack. The whole thing took me around 3 hours to complete, half of which was just extended heart farming or time spent in menus trying to figure out enemy resistances. 

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A new layout to explore

Written by: Shuan - February 3, 2025

Introduction
This mod overhauls the balance of the game, but the prominent feature are the many edited stage layouts that allow for a new experience regarding the exploration of the castle.
The new layouts come with new ways to access areas and to use skills to navigate through zones faster by using Power of Wolf (e.g. Underground Caverns), without having to rely on Wing Smash (which can only be gained later in the game).

Exploration
The new layouts heavily rely on narrow corridors or entrances that require Alucard to use skills like Soul of Wolf and Form of Mist.
Progression is also changed, which means that the order with which areas are explored will be different compared to the original game.
There are also shortcuts that allow Alucard to get to some rooms in more than one way, allowing some flexibility in how to progress through the game, even if the overall experience did feel a bit more linear compared to the original game.

Presentation
The mod uses the Quality Hack, by paul_met, to remove the black borders at the bottom and top of the screen (and other minor changes).
The layout of the stages is also edited by using map tiles to draw new walls, corridors and other things, but sometimes the rooms look a bit awkward due how the tiles are used. (The stages may not look smooth and a bit jank)
On top of that, sometimes the backgrounds do not load properly when entering some areas in a certain way (e.g. the moon in Clock Tower, the water in Underground Caverns using wolf shortcuts)
Items have new descriptions that inform the player of the elemental attribute of the weapon, but there are typos here and there.
For some reason, some headgear pieces can be in the armor list and viceversa, which is not intended behavior.

The in-game map is not updated with the new layout changes, so checking it will be misleading most of the time.

Game balance
All stats are inflated, which means that everything in the mod will have 3 to 4-digit stats.
This makes spells less strong, so bosses don't explode instantly after a single Tetra Spirit, but it can make some other enemies very, very tanky, which could make some fights boring, even if taking advantage of elemental weaknesses (e.g. Richter fight).
Some bosses don't flinch anymore when attacked, which makes for a greater experience (e.g. Karasuman fight)
Some boss rooms have new layouts which are supposed to change the flow of the fight, although most of the time, it really doesn't matter. (e.g. Doppleganger10 can still be stunlocked, same for Richter and Succubus can be taken care of with Tetra Spirit spam)
However, Alucard does take a considerable amount of damage from every enemy in the game, which makes things more spicy.
There are some new weapons with some nice special effects, which make for some interesting combinations to experiment with.
Shield spells can be used at any time, however most of them require a lot of MP and damage is nerfed to the ground (e.g. Medusa and Iron Shield). The stat buffs are minimal considered stat inflation.
Overall, balancing is decent, besides the idea of locking subweapon usage behind a cloak.

Playtime
around 3 hours
The inverted castle segment is not available, so only the first castle can be played in this mod (unless Richter skip glitch is being used).

Rating

7.5/10

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