Over the past few days, I played through the other 7 games on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection as well as another Castlevania game I got on the Wii U Virtual Console. Rather than review them separately, one at a time in the order that I beat them, like I usually do, I thought it would be more fun and interesting to try something different. I'm going to write this singular massive post reviewing each in the order that they came out and in the context that they came out. I already was comparing the games to one another as I played them, so comparing them actively via writing to the past Castlevanias at the time sounded like an even more fun idea~. As a quick note before I properly begin, I will clarify that because Belmont's Revenge and Rondo of Blood already have proper reviews on the site, I'm not going to totally re-review them here. Additionally, Kid Dracula is a bit too different to really be worth comparing to other Castlevania games, so that'll get its own review at a later date. Lastly, all of these games are the Japanese versions unless specified otherwise.
Castlevania (Famicom) The game that started it all: Simon Belmont's quest to go to Castlevania and destroy Dracula. This is where so many foundational aspects of the classic games get their start, but it also definitely shows its age and has many marks of being a first attempt. This is a game I attempted to beat quite a lot as a kid, but I never could. Even this time I used save states quite a fair bit (more than almost any other of the games I'll write about here). I generally tried to use them only either before a very hard boss, or once I'd completed a section without getting hit (that was proof enough to me that it wasn't worth my time replaying it over and over). Simon Belmont has six stages of Castlevania to get through before Dracula, each of them with an increasingly difficult boss awaiting him at the end. He has his trusty whip which he can collect upgrades for (that reset when you lose a life) that make it longer and more damaging, and he can also pick up one subweapon at a time that can be used by holding up and pressing the attack button. It's a relatively simple formula, but it works pretty damn well. Other staples of the classic games get their start here too, such as your infamously very rigid jumps (no play control here) and the big knockback when you get hit. Simon has a very deliberate way to how he controls. From the jumping to the walking to the whipping, everything has a reliable animation that you need to really get used to if you're going to survive with it. Mistakes are not very often tolerated, and this is a game that really rewards knowing exactly what you're getting into so you can approach it in a way that you'll actually have a chance of surviving. On that note, I would say that the first Castlevania's biggest problem is that it falls into a design trap of "too hard to be fun" very often for me. The knockback is very unforgiving and frequently lands you down pits, constantly spawning medusa heads and bats are a constant danger to falling into pits as well, bosses are often very mobile and powerful while you are absolutely not, difficult gauntlets proceed nearly every boss, and so on. What I think makes this somewhat worse is how GOOD the holy water is. Most if not all of the bosses and enemies in the game can be absolutely destroyed if you manage to get holy water and a subweapon multiplier (to let you throw more than one at once) before you get to them, because holy water stun-locks not just normal enemies but bosses too as long as the fire burns them. This means that most bosses are either super difficult and punishing, or you know how to beat them and they're pushovers. I didn't realize it until I'd already beaten it, but the Japanese version of the game actually has an easy mode that makes you deal more damage, take no knockback, take less damage, and generally make the game far more forgiving, and that's something I wish I'd realized before I'd started the whole adventure XP One excellent trend that this game starts that continues through the whole series is nailing the presentation. It's a fairly early NES/FDS game (1986, but the Famicom version on the Anniversary Collection is the cart version of the FDS game released in 1993), but the music is excellent and the game looks really pretty. There's still sprite flicker and slowdown from time to time, but it's often not frequent enough to really impact gameplay all that much. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is definitely one of the games in the series that I say most benefits from save states. The difficulty on particularly the Death and Dracula fights is just so brutal that even aside from how difficult their stages can be to get through, those save states will really come in as life savers for your patience. It may be an excellent action game for '86, but I don't think it's all that fun to play vanilla these days if completing the game is your end goal. ----- Castlevania (MSX) Released very shortly after the original Famicom Disk System release of the original Castlevania, "Vampire Killer", as it's also known, is an adaptation of the Famicom game made for the MSX home computer system. It's never been released outside of Japan, and this game also is the only one in this post not on the Anniversary Collection. This is one that I bought on the Japanese Wii U Virtual Console to play on Twitch, and I ended up beating it in a little over 2 hours in one sitting. While this will be uncannily familiar in many respects to anyone who has played the NES game, the MSX version of Castlevania is a completely different game in just about every respect. Some of that is down to the differences in the programming realities of building a game for the Famicom vs building one or the MSX, but there is a broader design philosophy that makes the bridge between the two far far wider. While still a stage-based linear game, MSX Castlevania is much more of an adventure game than its predecessor. In many ways, it's a kind of missing link between the first two Famicom game, and playing this explains a lot of why Castlevania II was just apparently an adventure game for no reason when the first entry was a straight-up action platformer. Some elements of this game are just like its Famicom counterpart. Your whip upgrades when you collect power ups and that power resets on death, there are six stages with generally the same bosses at the end of each, and you collect hearts as you go through the castle. However, there is a LOT here that is utterly alien to the original Castlevania experience. You have hearts to collect, sure, but they don't power your subweapons (not like the other games, at least). In fact, this game doesn't even have subweapons at all. You use these hearts at merchants in the castle to buy things like health refills, new weapons, maps of the areas you're in, or even a shield to block incoming projectiles. There are more weapons, yes, but they replace your old one. If you get the knives (which are REALLY good), they replace your whip, but you can throw those things infinitely and they take no ammo to fire. The only subweapons that are here are the holy water and stop watch, which are both very very finicky to use, and seemed to require jumping in the air and then holding up and then pressing B to actually use. I could never get them to work reliably. Additionally, each of the six stages are separated into three areas, and in each area you need to find a silver key to open up the gate at the end to access the next area. There are also normal keys to collect to open chests that hide everything from passive items to maps to just bundles of hearts you can use to buy stuff. The keys you need to progress are often hidden very well, and some are eventually even outright fakes or red herrings that are only there to try and get you to kill yourself trying to get them. That brings me to my ultimate gripe with this game. While the first Castlevania is difficult to the point of not being very fun, I wouldn't call it outright unfair more often than not. Its level design is unforgiving, absolutely, but it's never meanspirited. MSX Castlevania, on the other hand, is a VERY vindictive and unfair game. It is riddled with traps to kill you like the aforementioned false door keys, and that's not to mention the slimes that are hidden in ever so many candle sticks, the enemies that are so close to the edge of the screen that you cannot enter that screen without getting hit, or how if you miss the return on boomerang weapons like the axe or cross that weapon is just GONE and you have nothing but your weak default whip again. Even your map has limited uses for some inexplicable reason. And this is all on top of how this game has no continues, no passwords, and no extra lives. You have THREE whole lives to get through the entirety of a very labyrinthine Castlevania and kill Dracula with, and should you lose those lives, it's back to the start of the entire game for you. Thankfully, Simon is pretty beefy and he can take a lot of punishment, but even with save states it was pretty difficult at times to not die before getting to the bosses. The bosses, paradoxically enough, are super duper easy, but this mostly revolves around how this is an MSX game and not a Famicom game. Like most MSX games, the screen doesn't scroll with you as you move. Like in Zelda 1, when Simon gets to the edge of the screen, the next screen forms ahead of him as he transitions to it. It doesn't move along with you as you move like the Famicom version of Castlevania does. Another interesting thing is that, while Simon himself has a knockback SO huge that it actually knocks you farther than you can physically jump forwards, enemies themselves don't freeze upon being hit and have no invincibility frames at all. Simon can also whip his whip REALLY fast, so if you just get close to a boss, you can let it hit you, tank the hit and just lay into them while your invincibility frames keep you protected. While this is otherwise a very difficult game, the bosses are easily one of the least difficult aspects of it. This also has one of the easiest Dracula fights by far (at least if you buy the very cheap knife weapon being sold right near his boss door), although it does drag on and gets a little boring after a while. All that said, the most unfortunate thing about this being an MSX game is that the slowdown affects the gameplay far more than in the NES games, meaning there were a lot of times where the game simply didn't recognize an input because it was stuttering so badly and I ended up getting hit or dying as a result. As far as the presentation is concerned, it's still pretty decent. The music hardware of the MSX isn't exactly up to the standard the Famicom could produce, but they're still quite good renditions of the tracks from the Famicom game. The graphics are also good recreations of that, although I wouldn't say it's quite as pretty as the Famicom game. There are some quite odd aspects to the presentation though. Particularly, that not only is the epilogue to this Japan-exclusive game all in English, is also doesn't even call you Simon Belmont O_o Verdict: Not Recommended. I can say very safely that this is the worst Castlevania game I've ever played and almost certainly the worst in the series. It honestly wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for the lack of continues or extra lives, but even then it'd just be a below average adventure game. Even with save states, this game is really only ever worth playing if you're just THAT curious about how it fits into the overall evolution of the series, and even then, I'd advise just watching a playthrough on YouTube before spending any money on it (let alone 800 yen like I did XP). ----- Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES) While the Castlevania Anniversary Collection DID add all the Japanese versions of the games on it in a post-launch patch (the Japanese versions for the English release, and vice versa), the one exception to that is Castlevania II. I even bought the Japanese version of the game on the Japanese Switch eShop, and even THAT version just has the American NES game instead of the Famicom Disk System version of Castlevania II. Given that this is even more of an adventure game than the MSX game is, and therefore has a lot of text, it's easily the worst game you could possibly do that with if the intention is for Japanese players to be able to understand what they're playing XP. The only explanation I can think of to why they did this is that Konami just didn't want to bother getting Famicom Disk System games to work on their Famicom emulator, so they just slapped the NES version on there since, unlike Castlevania 1, no cart version of Castlevania II exists in Japanese. Weird version nonsense aside, despite this game's dire reputation, I was actually very pleasantly surprised by what it had to offer. In a weird turn (particularly for Westerners without access to the MSX game), Castlevania II is much more a successor to the MSX game than the Famicom game. Releasing the year after the first two games, Castlevania II is an action-adventure game through and through. Just like the MSX game, you have hearts not really to use subweapons, but to buy things from merchants. In an even more odd twist, those hearts also function as experience points that you will level up with to gain a larger max health bar. Unlike the MSX game, however, there's not a set of levels to go through, but a side-scrolling overworld connecting a series of towns and mansions to explore. This is the first time we start getting much any story in a Castlevania game as well. After Simon killed Dracula in the first game, he unwittingly was cursed by the vampire despite his victory. He now must go through five mansions around Transylvania to collect the remnants of Dracula and then bring those remains to Castle Dracula to destroy them to free himself from the curse once and for all. It's not much, but it's something, especially for a series that would eventually become much more narrative focused. Simon goes from town to town hunting for items, and these items take all variety of forms. Like the MSX game, you can buy subweapons, and some of those subweapons consume hearts but some do not. There are also items you'll need to progress through dangerous areas, as well as passive items to unlock secrets. Even Dracula's remains function as passives when selected, like Dracula's Rib being the return of the invaluable projectile-blocking shield from the MSX game. Most interestingly to me is how your whip can be upgraded to simply do more damage forever. The temporary upgrades of the past are gone, and now you can even get a really awesome flame whip if you REALLY wanna heck fools up. You're gonna need those better whips too, because this game works on a day/night cycle, and enemies get twice as tough at night time. This game has three endings, and you need to beat it within a certain amount of time (which is a pretty damn tight time frame, all things considered) if you want Simon to live through his quest. And that time limit comes down to the ultimate flaw with this game: signposting. Like so many other adventure games of the 8-bit era (even the Zeldas of the time aren't free from this design hurdle), the massive amount of time spent with the game will be wandering around utterly lost as you try and stumble into the next totally unexplained thing you need to do to progress. The combat and platforming in Simon's Quest aren't particularly hard, but what IS tough is just knowing where to go or how to progress in the first place. The times I did use save states were largely just to save time should I make a wrong turn or take a bad jump, and not usually for larger difficulty reasons. Simon's Quest in particular suffers from a pretty rough English translation that makes the information you ARE given that much more difficult to use in the first place. A guide is absolutely essential if you're going to make it through this game in any reasonable amount of time, let alone get anything other than the worst ending. Personally, I didn't use a guide for my first attempt, ended up totally hecked after accidentally skipping the first three mansions, and then started using a guide. I took a wrong turn near the end of the game and the time it took to recover from that still put me over the 8 day limit you need to beat in order to get the best ending, so all I got was the 2nd best ending XP The presentation and base mechanics of the game are both good improvements to the first game. You'll sometimes get framerate slowdown, but it's not too brutal or game affecting thankfully. This game polishes up Simon's movement a fair bit too. He moves just a bit faster, jumps a bit quicker, and whips a bit faster. It makes the whole thing feel a bit better to play than the first game, although the kind of action and platforming you're doing isn't exactly the same most of the time. This game also has some of the best music in the classic series, with the main theme, Bloody Tears, being one of the most iconic songs of the entire franchise. Verdict: Recommended. My recommendation here is largely on the condition that you'll use a guide. If you don't use a guide, then it's honestly largely on you for how frustrated you get being lost, because this game is a doozy of a game for how lost it makes you XP. As a relatively early Famicom adventure game, however, this is a really solid one. The difficulty almost never feels unreasonable, and it's a pretty good time to spend an evening trekking through if you know what you're doing. I was very pleasantly surprised by my time with Simon's Quest, and I'm looking forward to someday playing through the Japanese version so I can compare just how misleading the hints and information are in the original Japanese compared to the cryptic English text. ----- Castlevania: The Adventure (GB) 1989 brought us Castlevania's first foray into the portable space with Castlevania: The Adventure. Developed by a different team than the NES games, this is the story of Christopher Belmont's first quest to take down big ol' Dracula. This game has something of a bad reputation among those who have played it, and in my time with it I grew to find that its reputation is absolutely deserved. The Japanese version is almost identical to the International releases, so there really isn't anything to comment there (Switch port or no Switch port), so this game's faults are entirely its own, no matter the region you're playing them in. The story as its presented is pretty basic Castlevania fare of "Oh look there's Dracula, let's go kick his face in." Not a whole lot here other than an excuse to go out vampire-huntin', and who really needs more of an excuse than "he's here to destroy the world yet again"? The presentation as a whole is pretty sub-par, though. The music is fine and the graphics are alright, but the game runs VERY slowly when there's more than a few enemies on screen, and that's something that affects your ability to play the game significantly at times. Much like the MSX game, there were many times where Christopher just wouldn't do a quick turn or a whip I needed him to do simply because the game was slowing down so badly. That slowdown just compounds onto the game's already fairly mediocre design. This is a Castlevania game that is once again an action game (no adventure game aspects to find here), but it's a far more simple action game than even the first Famicom game. You have your upgradable whip, but other than that, you don't got nothin'. This game has no subweapons of any kind, and not even a fireball to whip out when you have your whip at max power. Then add in that your whip gets downgraded EVERY time you get hit, and you have the realization that you're gonna need to memorize these levels quite well if you want to have anything other than your base whip. The level design isn't MSX Castlevania-levels of vindictive, but a lot of it is just really uninspired. Like Belmont's Revenge (the second GameBoy game) would later do as well, this game eschews stairs for ropes to climb, but that's really the only "special" thing about it, if you can even call it that. The downgraded whip and a fair amount of really precise jumping sections really make this entry an unforgiving time in a way that has a lot of trouble finding a fun-factor, even with save states (and I only used save states in this one right before Dracula since stage 4 was so difficult I didn't wanna have to go through the whole thing again XP). The way the game slows down and speeds up can those jumping puzzles and dealing with enemies, particularly tougher ones, feel far more frustrating than it should be, and it makes the whole game feel like a slog. It's far from the toughest Castlevania game, with even the bosses not being terribly difficult (save for Dracula who's pretty tough but very learnable after a few tries), but that just never gets around the fact that this game just isn't terribly fun to play. Verdict: Not Recommended. If you ABSOLUTELY MUST have more Castlevania in your life, I can certainly recommend this game more than I can the MSX game, but I still think your time is better spent playing or replaying one of the other classic Castlevanias instead. It's more frustrating than fun, and on the whole pretty unmemorable outside of those most frustrating sections. I didn't despise the few hours I spent with this, but I certainly feel no need to ever repeat them again, and "I didn't totally hate it" is a pretty difficult watermark to recommend a game at in any regard XP ----- Castlevania III (Famicom) In a fairly hard pivot for the main Castlevania team back from Castlevania II, Castlevania III not only changes the era and the protagonist but also the genre back to being an action platformer. Being an action platformer is also where the series would stay for quite some time, as the same goes for the rest of the games in this post as well. Castlevania III also is a quite famously different game between its NES and Famicom versions, so for this game, probably more than any other on this list, it's important to keep in mind that I'm talking about the easier Famicom game rather than the much harder NES game. It took me about 3 or 4 hours to get through the game with marginal save state usage (mostly just before very hard bosses, especially before the second to last level's boss). This game follows Simon Belmont's ancestor Trevor (or as he's known in the Japanese version, Ralph) Belmont in his quest to travel through Transylvania to Dracula's castle to defeat him. Similar to Castlevania II, this is another game where the adventure doesn't start at Dracula's doorstep, but instead follows our hero from the Transylvanian hinterlands all the way to and through Dracula's domain. Trevor himself plays a lot like Simon does in Castlevania II. He has no inventory like that game (back to good old temporary whip upgrades and classic heart-ammo subweapons), but he still moves and whips a bit faster than Castlevania 1 Simon did. While this game may not be an adventure game like its predecessor, what it does have is a series of branching paths. The most important feature of these branching paths is not just to give you more ways than one to play the game, but also to lead you down optional roads to this game's other most important innovation on the previous games: extra playable characters. Along his journey through Transylvania, Trevor can meet three people turned into monsters by Dracula as stage bosses. Upon beating them, they will offer to join Trevor, but he can only have one companion at a time. These companions can be switched to at any time with the select button, and they each have their own unique attacks as well as often having their own unique subweapon set as well. First you have Grant the acrobat, then there's Sypha the witch, and finally you have Dracula's own son Alucard who is half-vampire and half-human. Alucard has a projectile attack and can turn into a bat, but he's generally considered the worst of the companions since his transformation is limited by your number of hearts, and flying isn't actually that useful. Sypha's normal attack isn't that great, but she has a slew of subweapons that turn most bosses to tissue paper if used properly. Finally you have Grant, who can not only jump higher and even change direction mid-jump (something no other character in the game can do and is a rare ability in the series as a whole), but he can also throw infinite knives. A very big change from the Japanese to the English releases of the games is that Grant was given a very short-range, weak melee knife in the English versions. This is in contrast to his normal weapon in the Japanese version which is an infinite supply of the knife subweapon which he can even throw if he's climbing walls or ceilings. This makes him an even more useful ally than he is in the English version, as he's not just nimble but dangerous too, and that's just one aspect of how the Japanese version is easier. Damage calculation itself differs between the two games, but on the whole you take less damage in this game. Many bosses and even normal enemies have significantly less health and more simple/abusable attack patterns. Heck, Grant is so good and Dracula is so much easier, I got to him with Grant without even full health and I managed to (albeit narrowly) beat him on my first try (which I was very proud of regardless :b). That's still not to say this game is easy, not by a long shot, but having played a fair bit of the American version as a kid, I can say that this version's lowered difficulty allows it to be a lot more fun than its English counterpart for me. The presentation is once again absolutely excellent. The Famicom and NES's technical differences allowed Konami to use their own hardware in the cartridge for this game, meaning that the Japanese version of the game not just has gameplay differences but it also has several extra audio channels, meaning the music is on the whole often better (although some of the English tracks can certainly be argued to be superior). The environments are very pretty, the animations are nice for enemies and player characters alike, and the game on the whole really flexes what devs were able to do with the Famicom by 1989. Verdict: Highly Recommended. While not my favorite game of the classic action platforming Castlevanias, this is still easily my favorite of the 8-bit games (followed by Belmont's Revenge on the GB). It's got stellar music and a fairer difficulty curve that makes it a compelling challenge even without save states, and the oodles of content provided by the branching paths and extra characters give it plenty of replay value as well. If you're a fan of action games and don't mind a bit of a challenge, this is definitely one you can't afford to pass up. ----- Super Castlevania IV (SFC) Despite the title, this is actually more of a remake of the original Castlevania than anything (which is why the title is the same as the original in Japanese). Coming out in the first year of the Super Famicom and SNES, it still manages to be a really impressive entry for both the series and the console. This is the only entry on this list that I've beaten before, so while it has been years since I did so, this was ultimately a re-experience of this game rather than my first completion, so it didn't take me that long or that many save states to do it (save states were once again more of an infrequently used convenience thing rather than used out of necessity). While in spirit this is certainly a remake of the original Famicom game, the content of it is anything but. Along with the addition of a "trek through Transylvania" lead up to Dracula's castle, even Dracula's castle is completely different from the NES original. The only real relation to the original is that it's once again Simon Belmont's quest to kill Dracula, and from there on out proceeds to be an entirely different Castlevania game. That said, it's still a very good and very impressive Castlevania game. Once again we have linear stages, temporary whip upgrades, subweapons (you know the drill by now), but there are a few very interesting mechanical changes to how you play this Castlevania. Most important to mention is how your whip works: You can whip in EIGHT whole directions! You can even hold the whip button down to let it go limp and then you can flick it in any direction with the D-pad for a weak bit of damage. Additionally, the subweapon button has been bound to the R button instead of up + attack, so you can finally stop worrying about accidentally trying to use your subweapon while trying to climb some stairs and attacking XD. Even Simon himself has a real fluidity to it, and a level of maneuverability and play control rarely seen among the classic Castlevania games. You can even jump onto staircases! It provides a sense of control that I find really engaging, and that's a bit part of why this is my favorite game on the Anniversary Collection. Level design is varied and interesting, and there are even new platforming mechanics to take advantage of your new whip abilities by means of grapple points Simon can swing from. The game as a whole has a very fair level of challenge to it. I would say it's probably one of the most fair-feeling out of any of the games on the Anniversary Collection. Part of this is definitely down to just how versatile Simon's move set is, but part of it is also definitely down to how tight the level design is and how well balanced the bosses feel. This game has a bunch of bosses that all feel good to fight, and the difficulty curve of the game is also well done so you don't really have huge walls of difficulty in the middle of the game. The presentation is once again excellent, with a rocking soundtrack of remixes of old tunes along with new tracks, and the graphics are excellent as well. I can't help but feel that, had this come out a year or two later and Konami had had more experience with the SFC sound chip, the music would be even better, but what's here is still really impressive for such a relatively early SFC game. Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is right up there with Rondo of Blood for me as an impeccable classic Castlevania game. I know there are many who prefer the Mega Drive game, and I know that there are many who also find this game a bit too different to feel comfortable with it compared to the other Castlevanias, but those elements of difference are part of what makes this such a brilliant entry in the series. Despite the fact that I'd easily call Rondo of Blood the better overall game, this game is just so good for pick up and play action that I'd frankly recommend this first over that one. ----- Castlevania: Bloodlines (MD) Coming out at the tail end of '93, we have our last classic Castlevania game on the Anniversary Collection as well as really the last proper classic-style Castlevania game made before Symphony of the Night revamped what the whole series was about (at least if you consider Dracula X on the SNES as a port of Rondo and not its own game, which is debatable). I don't like it quite as much as Castlevania IV or Rondo of Blood, but it's still an excellent entry in the series. This was one that took me only a few hours to get through the six stages of, with serious save state use only used in the last stage. This is a bit of an odd Castlevania in how the story is both simple but also quite different from the simplicity of its predecessors. Sure, it's still basically "Oh look, let's go beat up Dracula again, he's a baddie", but this time you aren't even a Belmont (not by name, anyhow). This game takes place in 1917, and the vampire killer whip has passed to a distant relative of the Belmont clan known as John Morris (hilariously called "Johnny Morris" in Japanese). You can play as either him or as Eric Lecarde (who looks quite feminine in the Japanese version) who is out to avenge his vampirized girlfriend, as they trek across Europe to several famous spots to hunt down Dracula's allies before he can be taken on himself. While the story itself isn't really that interesting other than it calling into question how you can go from Romania to Germany to Britain during the height of World War 1, or the really funny way that one level is a German munitions factory (which also has a castle because of course it does) that is populated by skeletons wearing military helmets, it DOES give you the ability to play as one of the two characters. While Morris has his whip, Lecarde has a spear. The two characters aren't nearly as different as Richter and Maria are in Rondo of Blood, but they play meaningfully different enough that a playthrough with each is definitely still worthwhile. I played through as Johnny, and he can whip in front of himself, but also diagonally upwards to swing on ceilings and even down (although your jump is so low that the downwards whip isn't all that useful). Lecarde's spear, on the other hand, can stab directly upwards and has a slightly longer range than Morris does, and he can also do a high jump. Morris' grapple whip and Lecarde's high jump give them access to slightly different paths through the levels, making even the levels themselves slightly different depending on whom you're playing as. Instead of going through Transylvania, you're treking all around Europe to all sorts of different locales. Even Dracula himself isn't even in continental Europe at all, but in a castle in England. The different countries make for some very interesting level designs (like the swaying in the Tower of Pisa), and despite this game having fewer levels than the other 16-bit Castlevanias, they're quite long compared to those levels and each level feels very different to the others. My main complaint about the game is how stingy it can be with whip/spear upgrades. There are many bosses, particularly in Dracula's castle, for whom range is paramount to how easy a time you'll have with them. If you die once, you won't be given two whip upgrades to fight the boss again, you'll only be given one, and that aspect to the boss design really left a sour taste in my mouth. It's certainly far from how tilted the difficulty can feel in Castlevania 1 depending on the loadout you brought, but it's analogous enough to that frustration that it keeps me from holding this game in quite a high a regard as the other 16-bit Castlevania games. The presentation is also no exception to the series general rule of excellence. The music and graphics that really show the kind of speed and color you could get from the Mega Drive come 1993, and it's probably one of the prettiest looking of the older Castlevanias in general as a result. Most of the differences between the Japanese and Western releases are cosmetic (such as making Lecarde look more masculine, Morris' first name), but one important difference is that the Japanese normal mode is the English easy mode, so even though I played through the game on "normal", what I played through compared to the rest of the world was easy mode. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Though this may be my least favorite of the 16-bit Castlevanias, it is by no means not a great game. It still sets a high water mark just as most of the other games do, and is very well worth playing. ----- Upon buying the Anniversary Collection, I really didn't imagine myself playing through anything more than just Belmont's Revenge and maybe toying with the other games only a little. I'm really glad that I caught the Castlevania bug and ended up giving the others a chance, because it was a weekend I really enjoyed my time with. Especially if you can get it on a 40% off sale like I did, I highly recommend the Anniversary Collection to any fan of retro action games. The save state function lets you make all the games as hard or as easy as you'd like them to be, and that's honestly the best way to play old action games like this: at whatever difficulty and pace is right for you ^w^ And because it would be criminal to write such a long (and ostensibly comparative) piece about so many similar games and NOT rank how I feel about the games, here is my ranking of the classic (pre-SotN) Castlevania games that I've played: Rondo of Blood > Castlevania IV > Castlevania III (JPN) > Belmont's Revenge > Bloodlines > Castlevania II > Castlevania I > Adventure > MSX
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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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