A friend of mine recently made a Youtube video about Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, and that convinced me to play it for myself. Konami's Castlevania Anniversary Collection was on sale on Switch so that's what I bought to play it on. I got the Japanese version of the collection, which is functionally the same as the English one (just as the English one got a free patch that added the Japanese versions, the Japanese one got the English versions the same way), although oddly a Japanese version of Castlevania II (NES) is totally absent. Either way, I beat it in one sitting in the span of like 4 or 5 hours on my Switch.
The story of the game is fairly simple, as most Castlevania games are. 15 years after Christopher Belmont defeated Dracula, his teenage son Soreiyu (which is amusingly enough very phonetically close to "slay you" X3) is inflicted with a lingering curse from the defeated count that compels him to start resurrecting him. Christopher goes on a mission through 4 castles and then finally Dracula's castle to break the curse over his son and defeat Dracula again. It sets up Dracula, why he's back, and how we gotta kill him again: everything a Castlevania game needs. This is the first and only Castlevania game with a Mega Man-style level select right off the bat. There are four castles to go through before Dracula's castle, and those four can be played in any order. Dracula's castle is two stages bringing the total up to six, and given that these stages are fairly long (using a continue in most levels doesn't even bring you back to the start, just to a half-ish way point), it's a pretty meaty entry in the series for a handheld game. I think the level design is overall really solid. This has the GB Castlevania staple of climbable ropes instead of stairs, and those can be awkward to climb sometimes, but other than that, this has great levels that never feel overly mean or unfair. The game as a whole, from the bosses to the level design, is overall far easier than its console contemporaries, and that was a change I really welcomed. Mechanically, it's Castlevania at its 8-bit finest and familiar-est. Aside from the aforementioned awkward rope climbing, everything you'd hope from a Castlevania is here but with a few small changes. Unlike the first Castlevania Adventure, you have sub-weapons here, but only two. This also brings us to the most substantial change between the English and Japanese versions: The American version got the Axe, and the Japanese version got the cross boomerang. Then they both also have holy water to balance it out. Another difference from the NES games is that your whip can fire fireballs when it's powered up to max, and while not EVERY hit weakens your whip like in the first GB game, it seems only some enemies hits do that. The presentation is very nice, with this being quite a pretty GB game. On that note, it's also no surprise that this game, and not the first, got a color remake on GBC later on in PAL territories. The music is also very good, really capturing the quality of the NES games despite having a different composer. Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you're like me and most of the 8-bit Castlevania games are a bit too hard for you to deal with, this is definitely a game worth checking out if you wanna see a retro Castlevania to the end for once (this is the first one I've beaten XD). This is an excellent entry in the Castlevania series, and does a fantastic job of bringing the console experience to a portable setting.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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