Castlevania: Harmony of Despair - Honoring the Dead (Game) - Design Documentary 

Hey, just a quick update, as of writing this comment, the fine people at the Castlevania: Harmony of Despair Unity discord have managed to get the Unity version of the game up and running! You can check it out here: discord.gg/s5h3rUu Also, just to be clear, I'm in no way affiliated with the Unity port, I'm just spreading the word.

I'd love a Steam release of this game and would play the heck out of it for years to come.

Sober is ascending into White hood!!! youre about to be SoberDwarf the white!! i love you man keep it up im addicted to this channel im a junky for soberdwarf

I still play on Xbox one if anyone wants to play hit me up SAF shinigami x, me and other 3 friends play this Castlevania hod daily for 1 hour straight or 2

That was a good joke. 😂

Acceleration glitch, Invisibility Cloak, Omni canceling, backdash-crouch canceling, Yorick soul, Somaways/Aluways with Berserker Mails, emote spamming, edge boosting, noobs eating the clock, dragging Grim Reaper to The Count's room in Ch 10. Boot up this game couple months ago on XBLA and I wasn't surprised to find it dead, but I'm definitely sad its dead cause it was such a fun game

Why didn't I watch your channel sooner????!!!!!

This video is so bitter sweet. Is well done, an amazing job, But I was pump to Hear "The community managed to make server for the RPCS3 emulator. or something. I Bought this game on PS3 and never play it to its full potencial, and this got me pump. I Dont have my Ps3 anymore, this remind me so much with my experience with Marvel vs capcom Origins. The game lasted 6 months till it finally people stopped playing. finging a game took hours, and now is almost imposible unless Maximiliam dood makes a stream. The worst part of Scott pilgrim vs the world is that the game DIED like a couple of months after the final DLC and the online implementation.

A beard you can trust!!!! HAAAAAAAA

“Where does Dracula keep his blackmail?” In his closet, with the other skeletons.

I loved this game when it came out. Had a group of me and 3 friends that would grind all the time. Julius main 4 lyfe.

;-; I never got to enjoy HoD even when its servers were still bustling just because of my crappy connection at the time.

Hey man castlevania HD is coming back now it's backwards compat on xbox one now. :)

Great video :D i actually bought HoD in around 2012 but never got to into it but around 2017 i started playing it more and using online (thats how i actually beat drac for the first time thanks online peeps ;D) i love playing it and still play it to this day and i actually got one of my friends into and we play from time to time its super fun online and even if i max out every character i’ll never stop playing this amazing game

I'm actually playing Castlevania: Harmony of Despair right now farming Philosopher's stones on chapter 9 as I watch this.

It’s a shame they didn’t keep this game alive. It had a huge following and could have easily kept going. They quit making new chapters and it died.

great video! the (couch) 4 players coop ps3 version is superb 👌🏻

Oh, and the PS3 version has local multiplayer, so your problems are solved.

Guardian of Light is a really good game.

Interestingly enough... I was just talking to my girlfriend the other night on a car ride home about my concern for video game preservation. She hardly plays video games herself. (Though, that is starting to change ever since I got her a 3DS and a copy of Ocarina) I talked about my fears for digital and my fears for physical. Needless to say, I talked her ear off and she hardly understood my rambling.

So many great hours playing this game.

Good game, had quite a bit of fun playing it online a few years back. Hey don't knock Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, that was a fun game, haha.

Thank you for introducing me to the discord.

I absolutely loved this game!!! I devoted over a thousand hours into it and wish the online community could last forever!

This ain’t dead anymore in 2021. Bought a Series S just to play it backwards compatible and there are plenty of people playing it, just join the discord.

The game is great, there is still people online. It seriously needs many patchs and updates, if a miracle occurs and Konami cares about this, they should add more maps, characters, downgrade Soma, the Valmanways and "Yatsucard" (seriously they break the game and make it boring, even more boring when people use them in that way online), and fix many glitches. I mean the game isn't dead at all, I still play it even with random 6 people at times on the PS3. So, this game just needs a miracle.

It's 5h30 am in 2020 and I just turned off my Ps3 and said goodbye to my party from all around the globe. Play this game boy , it's god damn good!

Fellow Final Fantasy XI player! Represent Midgardsormr! Well Quetz now :P Started on Shiva on 2003 moved to Midgard in 2005!

Don't worry, you have my validation. I know how Harmony of Dissonance players feel from experience with both Battalion Wars 2 and Kid Icarus Uprising. Battalion Wars 2 has already lost its official online back in 2014. There are only a few players who are trying to get the game's online back and running, and unfortunately, the involved community is generally toxic even before members of the Advance Wars subreddshit invaded to harass me with malicious intent. It sucks, considering the game has Co-Op, even if there are problems on randoms when you have to rely on teammates not being brain-dead to even clear a Co-Op map. Multiplayer balance IS off, but there are maps where it's not unmanageable, Cold War on Assault coming to mind. As for Kid Icarus Uprising, Nintendo may not have pulled the plug on the servers...yet....but online is practically a ghost town, and I've actually had experiences with hackers like this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1tdndnTEcNo.htmlm29s It doesn't help that the game already has blatant power creep that completely imbalances the game well before the AFKers and hackers are a thing. What I'm wishing didn't get buried by problems like that is the game's Power system. How the Power system works is that the player can fit given Tetris-style shapes into a 6x6 grid and each involved shape provides a given Power with a limited number of charges. A Power named "Super Armor" makes use of this to provide a happy medium between unconditional flinching and the standard of having martial arts: the Power is able to prevent flinching, but only for a limited amount of time per charge. This also happens to be a showcase of what really happens with The Big Guy: that they still have finite energy, but it's still quite a bit that can see good use. Also, watch the matches that start here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FEGo1hIizyY.htmlh5m12s What I do is make use of the shapes of the opponent's Powers to figure out how to bust their setup. You see how I can keep people from just using range against me via technical gameplay. And that by the way brings up another good thing about the Power system that I figured out recently: that the Mighty Glacier/Melee Tornado staple Powers that are better for the given matchups have a demand of the brand of gameplay the opposing character is meant to involve, with the Armor Powers representing martial arts and the Tag Powers involving technical gameplay. I know I wouldn't want the working gameplay of these two games to be lost to the sands of time.

I disagree on the offline component. To me, it's awesome. The timer, while meant for multiplayer, is reminiscent of CV1 having a timer mechanic. I skipped the parts where you showed the SoTN and Origins maps because I haven't played in then yet. Sad that gamers want an online experience rather than that of single player and/or local multiplayer. It's said that the Xbox 360 version still has a lot of players online. Mobile gaming is not a bad thing. It just has a bad reputation because of greed and Angry Birds. Emulators exist on android. I happen to love Castlevania 64.

I am so annoyed that they brought Lords of Shadow to Steam, but not Harmony of Despair. My only hope of this game coming to PC is Xenia adding support for it, with the online intact through private servers. I have no faith this game will ever come to PC and UniHD does not do it for me due to how rude the developer was to his fans, even willing to showcase the last three chapters in action, fully finished, and decide to not release them to the public. It has a lot of QOL changes, but the jankier physics, poor load times and fear of losing save data all play a major role in the game not being as enjoyable as the original. If it at least had the same physics and load times as the original, I could forgive it due to the new chapters it added in being surprisingly solid. Harmony of Despair, like many games, were destined to remain console exclusive. It is a very sad world to be a fan of obscure games. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Protect Me Knight, Harmony of Despair, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, Guardian Heroes HD. Video games I would love to have on Steam and continue to have a lingering faith they will be there someday. The most recent platform that has these games is the Xbox One. And it makes me very grateful because it did indeed breath more life into the servers of these games. Great video. Excellent points were made and I am certain Harmony of Despair will live on. Castlevania is a popular franchise, even if this particular entry is obscure. Had it not been Castlevania, I would have no faith that this game would still be remembered. The gameplay is indeed very unique and I would at least be grateful if more games continued it. But more than anything, Harmony of Despair needs to come to Steam.

Man you deserve more views. Keep up the good work!

Fantastic video. It's a damn shame about the state of game preservation, and it'll be a depressing day when this game in particular is taken offline. Regardless, you have motivated me to give it a try again sometime soon. I haven't played it in years.

Just woke up, and what do I see? A new Sober video waitin' for me.

Hey! Guardian of light is actually pretty good!

My favorite game is castlevania had and it breaks my heart it’s fanbase is now almost dead

I owned this on the Xbox back in the day... I loved it but could rarely get a co-op game... What it really needed was a split screen couch co-op mode that way you would have preserved a decent amount of what made this game great... So frustrating the co-op was online only :(

Scott pilgrim was ported to modern consoles and Alan Wake just got a remaster

Hey hey, thems fighting words with Lament of Innocence right there. ;P

I never played this game, but it sounds like an interesting Castlevania multiplayer game. I need to catch up on a ton of Castlevania games since I never got into them growing up for some reason and only played the first one in recent years. So much time missed out on a great series.

There's a bunch of video game companies out there that want people who grew up in the eighties in the nineties to forget those games so they can focus on buying the brand new games. Also video game companies do not think in the long term. My friends keep calling me an idiot because I refuse to buy always online games like Elder Scrolls Online I told them what if that game service gets shut down will I be able to play it then that means the disc I bought would be worthless. I don't want to get attached to a game that's online only or is heavenly dependent on an online component

It should get a port to steam switch Xbox One and PS4 or somewhere along the ladder

HD is still online to this day

I always leave knowing more than when I arrived!

Hoping this comes to Xbox BC soon!

Since Harmony of Despair has local co-op too, there is another way to play with someone else online. It's complicated to set up and not cheap but with a PC with a capture card, a ConsoleTuner Titan One (a device that allows to use other controllers on a PS3 including inputs from a PC), game streaming software (I use Parsec but there are others), and a good internet connection, it is possible to stream the capture from the PS3 to a friend and play local co-op games remotely.

Loved this. Wonderful tribute. Also I NEED the source on that Vampire Killer cover at the end!

Hey man if you have an Xbox One, I just finally got the game, kinda want to see how the Multiplayer holds up to when it originally was released.

The joke took a novelette of setup but was worth the wait!

Wow, this must've been in production for quite some time. @34:00 it shows Jun 24, 2017 as "5 months ago," with only 3.5k subscribers. But wait! Your hair was long then! What sorcery is this?!

The wait for that joke... ...worth it.

I guess you did accurately show the experience with monster hunter. The part with the grinding I mean. (I just got a full Khezu set after god knows how many hours in GU.)

God this game was so fucking good.

You actually made me shed a tear. I recently brought this game on ps3 since it had local multiplayer and i'm loving it so far.

biggest problem is matchmaking. you have to wiat in lobby for ppl to join. i understand ppl cant just drop in mid game, but the fact they cant even join lobby and wait to join game next match ruined chances for ppl to find games unless ppl just stay waiting in lobby forever and ppl keep spamminh search for match over and over

nice job now have at you and a new sub

Awesome that you brought up Scott Pilgrim. I saved my hard drive for it, and subsequently bought it on switch so I could play with my nephew... though my parents don't approve. Games are fucking ART, man. If you or no one else here knows, check out "A Life Well Wasted" from like a decade ago. It even goes back to pinball. Cool shit.

Judgement was pretty good.

@SoberDwarf Dude... you wanna link up and talk definitive FFXI? I played damn near 10 years from close to launch. Wanna do it?

Oh hell yeah, bizarre to comment in this perspective but this was one of the videos I loved podcasting, excited to watch :) Just such a great topic. I'm still sitting on a huge collection of no-intro out of spite for Nintendo's push against roms in 2018, no regrets there other than wishing I'd gone deeper and had external drives to really back up more than I could at the time. Oh god now I remember the immediate feeling of longing this video filled me with when I first heard it. Chromehounds, you didn't get half of what you deserved. While I would never say it was perfect, it's a game that's stuck in the consciousness of myself and a close friend for its unique slow-methodical-tactics driven take on a mech game. What with it's ongoing online war with winners and losers and an evolving battlefield, and sega just flipped the switch while From software moved on to rehashing Armored Core for the umpteenth time and shifting focus to souls-like endeavors. Can't say From messed up there, though I couldn't care less about armored core in comparison to Chromehounds :( Chromehounds can only access the tutorial "story mode" now and because 95% of the parts were online only- you can't even make those online hounds to use in the single player :( I'm still utterly impressed by the concept behind Harmony of Despair, I wish I had gotten the chance to play it with friends. I just can't get over the characters playing like their previous entries, that's so cool and I missed out lol I know it's the fact that you brought up monster hunter at the start which is why it's on my mind but dang, really checks a lot of the appeal boxes of monhun now don't it? Different playstyles accounted for, cooperative, 'hunts' that take 15 min solo take half that cooperatively or much less if you're all acquainted and rushing. It's the monster hunter coop experience in castlevania. Or more accurately, it's coop and I just have monhun on the brain. What a great call to action/motivation and damn straight your work needs shared because it's a joy every time. This slow re-watch through your work has been a joy and I'll repeat what I say most comments I leave, and I mean it. Appreciate your work, Sober. Have a good one :) And it's a fucking riot to hear this end-joke again lol

Everybody! If you want more SoberDwarf you have to make it him feel it in his wallet! Become a Patron on Patreon and contribute to this genius!! @SoberDwarf I think a lot of us would buy your merch! I would love to have some SoberDwarf pins, shirts, beanies, stickers, keychains, etc.

Scott Pilgrim VS The World The Game is BACK SON!!!!!!!!!!

I still play the 360 version backwards compatible from time to time and when i do i always try to see if anyone is playing online but never get matched up with anybody.

Lovely video. Preserving the games I have was something I didn't even really consider until recently, so I'm glad there's a video here for it.

the lara croft games are actually pretty good afaik they aren't tomb raider games but they're good games

Hey, friend. If you're still around. We have a lfg and chatroom group for castlevania HD. It's for all platforms, and the pc port.

Did mortal Kombat steal the Freddy Krueger coffin fatality from Camilla's special in Castlevania judgement?

Great review! Do you happen to have an invite to the Castlevania HD discord you mentioned? I've been playing it but I feel like I am missing out on the fun by doing it all alone

I have Scott Pilgrim on PS3 emulator with all DLC. It's possible to play that way. Just a bit annoying to set up.

funny to see evolve as an example of a dead game today; apparently over the past few weeks its been experiencing a bit of a resurgence

The answer is Machine learning, bots would become so good through copying humans they will be players

I began playing this game when it was already "dead" (July/2018) on the gamefaq server you mentioned. Even though there were few players, I usually find a lobby when i was trying to play co-op. It still has some life left, enough for people to have fun. Btw, ever since i accidentaly found you on the CVHD server, i've started to watch your videos, and im happy to find a new youtuber with good content.

i got a good ammount of videos of me playing this some years ago. good times

I barely put time into the demo of this game due to being unfamiliar with the Castlevania series, but mostly because I could not stand the camera making your characters and the action so small on the screen. But I really liked this video since it was nice to see how something that didnt interest me could still mean a lot to many other people.

Played when I was a kid with a buddy named Blake, good ass time. Went back on the 360 and started playing it again. Jesus it’s so good

This gave me a whole new perspective on *vania's

yeah,REO and MG3 online were really good games. but for me i decided to move on.

Good video. :)

That joke was MORE than worth the 40 minute wait. Also C:HD was such a blast!

We gotta get people together for The Ship or Bloody Good Time

Tbh if Harmony of Despair came out for Steam even today I bet it'd become quite popular for a period. Even if Konami charged the original prices for all the DLCs. Shame they're unlikely to ever do this.

27:00 when the simons quest piano hit 😥

character selection freezes in rpcs3 and my emulation of SoN is really bad, dont know why, i have 12 gb ram

Wow, Scott Pilgrim is gone! What a fun, cool looking game, one of the very first in the retro side scroller revival. Great work, thank you for this very thoughtful examination.

This is fucking depressing

This is one of my favorite games and I still turn it on but I can never find anyone to play with

SoberDwarf, you are a master at expressing nostalgia and melancholy through your voice, great video.

You so right, bro. The game was like a real Castlevania anime. Everyone became vampire hunters, and did the stereotypical split to have your own battles until the big game becomes available.

I got into Castlevania after the August Smash Bros direct and have played almost every 2D game in the series since then. I just wish I had discovered this awesome series earlier so I could have played this game while it was active cause you sold me on it. Who knows, maybe we'll get a port to Steam or something. Great video, subbed.

Oh boy I love jokes!

RIP Friday the 13th and RIP flash games that werent downloaded or relied on the server... T.T

Its not dead on xbox one

EDIT: OH shit, is dat some Well of Souls?! Nice! Hah, I just randomly thought about this game earlier today and was wondering if it was even still possible to play. Decided to look it up on RU-vid, and here we are! I already like your stuff, man, keep it up. Castlevania HD was the first and so far only game I ever wrote a FAQ on GameFAQ for (the Charlotte character guide). Every few years I'd remember that I never updated it to include the DLC and there were a few inconsistencies/typos/misinformation I meant to fix. I'd randomly consider going back to "finish" the guide on occasion but then I'd remember that no one really played it much anymore until I recently started figuring it wasn't even possible to play. Still, good times!

Castlevania is Twilight for boys.

God this game was... interesting. It's both a throwback to Classic Castlevania Castleraiding, and quite honestly it was fairly fun, but Goddammit! This game was indeed a Co-op Online game! Playable Solo, but this sucker was downright Hard! And Just hard Skillwise, I mean Hard as in I have to REPLAY EVERY LEVEL MORE THAN 10 TIMES JUST TO GET GEAR!!! This game isn't even close to the Gameplay that Syphmony or many of the GB games had as each character is Hamstringed by the EQUIPMENT that you need in order to fucking BEEF up your Character's stats! Which is why you need another Player/character! For Navigation, Puzzles, Treasure Hunting, and To BEAT the Goddamn Timer! This sucker with it's 6 stages eventually got more stages, more Characters through DLC, but fucking hell...the Game just wasn't reasonable! Not to mention we NEVER got a Boss Rush Mode for this! It would've been really fun to go up against Alot of Bosses! What also sucked the fun out of the game was Konami Patching the Shit out of Charlotte's Healing Skill and the Skull Ring Cheat that allowed players to beat most of this game with ease....but with the patch, it screwed the game up and made it hard for everyone to play! This game acts like it wants to b your friend, but hammpers YOU so much if you don't have a dedicated team.

Bro you need to make videos more consistent. Need more 👀👌

Great video as always brother. I've watched all of your videos and just noticed the camel toe on the troll at the intro. One hairy easter egg you put in there!

As much as I agree with this 1 year old, 5k view video, you can’t be this melodramatic. It weakens your point so much. For example, games like PT can come out any any time. Just because you can’t play them now doesn’t mean you won’t “ever” be able to. But I do actually appreciate the history on *dead games* don’t get the wrong bro