If you're someone who knows the layout of the PlayStation 1 title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night like the back of your hand and is looking for a new challenge, then you may be interested to learn about Alternate Scarlet Symphony.
This is a brand new mod from the developer nukesheart, which is a fresh reimagining of Konami's demon-slaying adventure that remodels Dracula's castle to feature new paths and secret passages, while also rebalancing several aspects such as spells and stats, introducing even more weapons to master and collect, enabling shield combos on any weapon (not just the Shield Rod), and revising the throwing system to impact MP-only.
The mod was released earlier this year, back in February, but recently came to our attentions thanks to the YouTuber VideoGameEsoterica, who happened to cover the version 1.3.0 update, which launched just over a week ago.
This new update opens up even more areas of the map, incorporates tons of buffs and rebalances to spells, weapons, and food, as well as some general polishing. It also incorporate two more accessories that can be bought from the the Library — easy mode and hard mode — that you can equip to further tailor the difficulty of the mod.
According to the developer nukesheart, the Inverted Castle (an area of the game unlocked after defeating Dracula's minion Shaft) is currently not included, but if the mod gets more attention, there's the possibility that they will go back and add it inside a future patch.
If you want to check it out, you can download it now from the ROMHack Plaza.