How do you prefer your gothic horror: as a weakling struggling to survive against the darkness...

>the light should be less "powerful beacon" and more "certainly better than cursing the darkness"
I don't follow.

#FUCKKONAMI

instead of the party being paragons of goodness and light contrasting a great deal with the setting. they are a little bit more morally grey they don't always win and they don't always do the thing that's best for everyone...

>KK

They're ostensibly good guys, but give them a little nudge, and they become part of the problem.

more that, no matter how good they are, the world is still dark and dangerous and any goodness they bring is fleeting at best.

like in 40K, emperor aside, no person or group of people can make life better in more than a single star system or two. and even then, not for very long.

thus, the party is better than "cursing the darkness"(totally ineffectual at making things significantly better over all) but still isn't "a shining beacon"(totally capable of making everything all good for all time)

So they never solve the problem? They never kill the lord of darkness and restore peace for at least a few decades? That sucks.

>gothic horror
I prefer it in the trash

Got any particular reason?

Too lazy to go get it yourself and want a home delivery?

Gambling makes retarded ammounts of money in Japan, as much as I hate them for it, Konami made a solid business desicion by discontinuing their video games and going pachinko.

Either
>Hero is a glass cannon, can blow up vampires by the dozen but is always a grazing shot away from death. i.e: Solomon Kane.
>Hero is relentless. Gets multiple minor defeats in pursuit of the villain but returns to win the day in a climatic 1v1. i.e: Vampire Hunter D.

Some Castlevanias feel like the first (Classic Belmontvanias) some feel like the later (Metroidvanias).

I thought the Belmonts and their ilk were fucking superheroes.

In general the games feel like you have 999str but 5hp. In flavor it's also implied that the Belmont clan has an unparallel power to vanquish evil, but are still mortal men.

To say nothing of the holy implements they use. Literally, anyone who wields the Vampire Killer and doesn't have Belmont blood in them is actively shortening their lifespan, in part because they can't fully control it. This is what happened to John Morris, the co-protagonist from Bloodlines on the Sega Genesis.

And the crux of the plot behind Order of Ecclesia is, "The Belmonts are missing, and the Vampire Killer is off-limits. We humans need an alternative means of stopping the evil and the darkness ourselves. Let's make a bunch of thinktanks and figure something out."

And the only thing they could come up with was: Let's kill ourselves nuking Dracula with his own powers.

To be fair, that was a bit of a bluff by her trainer since he was corrupted by Dracula's influence.

That said, Shanoa was able to pull off half the shit she was because all the villagers she was rescuing have Belmont blood in them, and her extended exposure to them effectively made her a Belmont by proxy.

Shanoa was able to pull half the shit she was because the power of CUTE

never where people can see it or find out.

no name is ever known that goes with their deeds

It's not a dark threat without creepy girls.

I remember the belmont thing, but wasn't that whole rescue subplot just so Shaona's friend didn't succeed with his plan and avoid the bad ending? I could swear everything else was all her, but its been years.

Oh hey they made the combat cross from Lord of Shadows the official iteration of the Vampire Killer whip now

>The church studies Dracula and how to beat him since they have his soul in a vessel doomed to break eventually.
>They develop a way to use Dracula's power to dominate monsters by absorbing part of their spirits.
>They plan to use Dracula's power to destroy Dracula, teach that shit to their two best mages: Shanoa and Albus.
>The church leader Barlowe becomes corrupted and plans instead to use Dracula's power to free Dracula by making Shanoa use the suicidal Dominus spell made from Dracula's spirit against the vessel containing him.
>Albus messes with the ritual and prevents Shanoa from dying, steals Dominus and kicks off, but Barlowe convinces the now amnesiac Shanoa that Albus betrayed them and puts her on his trail.
>Albus kidnaps a bunch of Belmont descendants from their village and drops them on his trail so Shanoa will save them in his pursuit and absorb part of their Belmont powers in doing so. It's implied this lets her safely contain Dominus but it'll still kill her to use it.
>Eventually Shanoa beats albus and Absorbs Dominus back from him, in the process gaining his memories of what happened and discovering the truth.
>Shanoa beats Barlowe, he then kamikazes the Vessel containing Dracula's soul and frees him.
>Shanoa enters Castlevania and ultimatedly defeats Dracula with the Dominus spell but Survives because she absorbed Albus' spirit when she defeated and took Dominus from him.
>Albus' sentient spirit sacrifices himself to shield her from Dominus' backlash and it's implied Shanoa returns to the village to live a relatively normal life from then on.

It's not the church-church, but it's an order called Ecclesia that's one of the church-sponsored think tanks.

I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.

>The church leader Barlowe becomes corrupted and plans instead to use Dracula's power to free Dracula by making Shanoa use the suicidal Dominus spell made from Dracula's spirit against the vessel containing him.
It's important to note that Barlowe never tells Shanoa that using Dominus will kill her.

Who counts as a "lord of darkness" in stories like this? Castlevania has Dracula as the biggest of them all, but I'm sure there's other ways you could spin it.

Beacon of light.

I only saw a few episodes of the Devil May Cry anime. Was it good?

It was dragged down by a little girl character and some poor writing, but otherwise it was good.

>How do you prefer your gothic horror? Actual gothic horror, or gothic-styled superheroes?

Depends on how desolate you want the game to feel and how much power the characters have to change the fate of themselves and those around them.

As a weakling struggling to be a beacon of light that can extinguish the darkness

Shanoa was a poor character with no emotions. Yes it was a plot point and she does get them back at the end when Albus (pronounced Arubus) dies, but all here interactions with the villiagers were flavorless.

That said OoE was a lot of fun. I liked the huge variety of environments and glyphs. Most casylevania games dumped the player in a castle and gave up with any sense of adventure or pretext.

So yeah, none of what OP is talking about is extant in the works of Poe, Shelley, Stoker, etc, and don't abide by the accepted conventions of the literary genre of gothic horror

So OP is probably an ignorant cunt raised on vidya who just thinks gothic horror means "spooky bampires and ruffly dresses".

He should delete this thread.

>English major gets mad at a misappropriated term
Color me shocked. But go ahead and explain what the thread is getting wrong.

Gothic horror is rooted in the 18th-19th century American and European cultural milleau, and deals with themes such as loss, cultural decadence, death, the supernatural, class, and the evolving state of science at the time. Also of importance is the language used, which is a style best exemplified by Edgar Allen Poe.

OP is describing vague themes best associated with adventure fiction.

OP thinks gothic horror means spoopy bampires and Bloodborne.

Forgot to add: OP is a dum fagit.

Also
>on Veeky Forums
>has little respect nor heed for the sources from which all these gay-ass little flights of fancy we engage in and call tabletop games are drawn

Kys or gb2/v/, your choice.

No one said those themes weren't addressed. The question was more about how much agency players would have in a setting of that sort.