Level

Alucard gaining a level in Symphony of the Night.

Level, or the action of Leveling Up, is a statistic found in most metroidvania-style Castlevania games. It is a measurement of the character's battle experience and relative ability. Levels are generally obtained via gaining Experience points, which are in turn obtained through killing monsters. Leveling up makes its effects come into play immediately, including an increase in the character's vital statistics like Strength, Constitution, Luck, Intelligence, Hit Points and Mind Points.

Overview

The concept of leveling-up a character in the Castlevania series originally began with Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, where collecting a determined number of Hearts would make the player character to increase their maximum HP. However, after Simon's Quest, most following games returned to the same style implemented in the original Castlevania, focusing more on featuring levels that acted as courses filled with enemies and hazards the player had to overcome, always with the same stats, attacks and attainable weaponry.

It wasn't until 1997, with the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, when games from the series started to focus more on implementing role-playing elements to their gameplay over the more traditional adventure platformer style from previous titles; a style that became the new staple for most following titles and which colloquially came to be known as "metroidvania".

In a typical metroidvania styled game, each enemy is usually worth a certain number of experience points (although in some games, like Harmony of Dissonance, the point value varies depending on the relation between the player's level and the enemy's), with the player requiring a certain number of collected points to advance to the next level. Every level slightly raises the various stats of the player, making them that much stronger, better at magic, luckier, etc. Usually, the "Level-Up!" phrase appears above the head of the player to signify a successful level-up, followed by a brief pause in combat.

The main playable characters are not the only ones capable of raising their level. Various Familiars and Innocent Devils also earn experience points, and thus, also level up and become more powerful as this statistic increases.

All of the role-playing styled games after Symphony of the Night use this method to advance players so that they can become stronger while progressing through the game. However, many players tend to find areas where they can gain many levels quickly by beating enemies. This strategy, commonly called "level grinding", combined with the practice in these games to add weapons to boost the player's strength, tend to give the games the appearance of being much easier than they are, especially when compared to the previous platformer games that do not include an RPG leveling mechanic.

Note that few Castlevania games with this feature of leveling up also come with the bonus of instantly replenishing the character's bonus HP upon gaining a level (like in Symphony of the Night, where Alucard's bonus health is gained on level up) which is slightly beneficial in the middle of a battle. Games like Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow are more challenging in this regard, as Soma Cruz's health is not refilled on level up.

• For example, if the player has 450 / 500 HP before level up, and the new level would grant 20 max HP, in the case of Alucard he becomes 470 / 520, but Soma becomes 450 / 520 instead.

Game specific information

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

First game in the series to implement a leveling up system, although leveling up in this game exclusively serves to increase the player's maximum HP bar (since the game didn't yet feature other well known later stats like Strength, Defense, Intelligence, etc.).

Every time a Heart is collected, it increases the player's Experience (EXP) stat a determined value depending on the type of Heart collected (this can be consulted in the PAUSE menu). There are three variants of Hearts:

• Small Heart: Gives 1 Experience Point.
• Half Heart: Gives 3 Experience Points.
• Large Heart: Gives 5 Experience Points.

When the EXP counter reaches a certain number (depending on the player's current level), the player will level up, replenishing their HP pool and (for odd number levels only) increasing it at the same time. Each following level will require more Hearts to collect than the last.

However, due to a programming bug, at some levels, the EXP counter will stop increasing when collecting Hearts and get stuck on the same value. A workaround to fix this issue is to keep collecting Hearts, which eventually, when they reach a determined amount, the counter will finally get unstuck and start increasing again until the next level is reached.

Note: This is the only known game in the series where leveling up will completely refill the player character's HP.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

While also determining the strength of Alucard, his level also modifies how much Experience he receives from defeating enemies. If both their levels are equal, then he gets the same amount of points listed in the monster's bestiary. Otherwise, if the monster's level is higher than Alucard's, the experience is multiplied by 1.25^(Level Difference). If it's lower than his, then it is multiplied by .66^(Level Difference). Enemies at a much lower level than Alucard will only give out one point of experience due to the experience scaling, which makes level grinding on low level enemies a poor idea as the amount of enemies required to be defeated, and thus the time required to level up, is incredibly high.

The Experience needed to level up is calculated as 25*Level^2+Level*25-50.

This game is also unique that Alucard gains random stat increments upon gaining a new level.

Also, Familiars in this game have a level system. Each familiar needs 100 EXP to gain a new level, up to 99. Their EXP scaling is different from Alucard in that the gained value will quickly diminish at their higher levels, but since each enemy gives at least 1 EXP, quickly killing enemies en masse is a fast method to reach Level 99.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

A detail unique to this game is that if player earns a lot of experience, enough to gain two or more levels at the same time (which can easily happen in Magician Mode if player dodges every minor enemy and simply goes for Cerberus), the "Level Up" phrase will play as many times as actual levels gained. All other games only play the phrase once for multiple levels.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Like Symphony of the Night, enemies also have a level value. For each level Juste Belmont is above the enemy, gained experience is reduced by 10%, down to a minimum of 1 point. Even the Pike Master, the non-boss enemy that has the highest level, is only at level 43, such that gaining levels over 53 becomes very slow.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

Besides Hector himself, his Innocent Devils also have their own level system.

Many enemies have variants of different levels, that may appear in different locations. In Crazy Mode, most enemies have increased levels to make them stronger, though the EXP payout keeps the same.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

In this game, there are 3 variants of the Hard Mode, which caps the player's level to Levels 1, 25, or 50.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

When unlocked, the Hard Mode of this game caps the maximum level to 50. Establishing a Wi-Fi Direct Connection between Order of Ecclesia and Judgment increases the Level Cap of this game to Level 255. Alternatively, beating Hard Mode capped on Level 1 will also increase the level cap to 255 for the Normal and (Hard capped Level 255) Modes of both Shanoa and Albus, as well as the New Game Plus.

The Fidelis glyphs also have their own level system. Each can only have three levels in total, where 32,767 XP is Level 2 and 65,535 XP is Level 3. They gain 3 XP when the familiar hits an enemy, and 2,000 XP when Shanoa absorbs another copy of their own glyph. However, new levels are not immediately active and Shanoa has to deactivate once and summon again.

See also

• Experience