Castlevania (NES) Review

Took me probably around 14 hrs, about 13 hrs of which were on the second half of the game. I got past the first boss in Hard Mode before deciding it wasn't worth my trouble to try to beat it on that mode.

When one of your most formidable opponents is stairs, there's something wrong. I had to laugh when I fell off the edge at the start of the staircase leading to the end boss thinking that he would automatically start climbing, since there is absolutely nothing else to do on that screen. There were many times when I had finished climbing the stairs and needed to avoid something so I inched back the way I came, only to fall through the stairs I had been on not 2 seconds earlier (many times onto an enemy below or off the bottom of the screen for an instant death). Hit detection is a bit off, which really came into play against the Medusa Heads. It seemed to me that you can't land on a moving platform as it's moving away from you as I believe every time I tried, I ended up going right through the platform for an instant death. Maybe it was the GCN D-Pad (I didn't really try playing it with the left analog stick), but the controls were iffy to where it was easy to barely stray from directly left/right and end up wasting a secondary weapon use. It would have been nice to have an inventory, so you could hold more than one secondary weapon. It also would have been nice to have a dedicated button for the secondary weapon, but that probably would require making use of the Select button on the NES controller for something.

Thankfully, the GBA version added a Save Feature, which saves it at the beginning of the trio of stages you are on, or at the end boss stage (so at Stages 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 18). I can't say I wouldn't have beaten it if I had to restart from the beginning every time I took a break and shut off the system, but it made beating it much more doable. The ending (which basically is a simplified version of the ending to the anime film Vampire Hunter D (which was released the year prior to Castlevania)) is somewhat of a letdown, and it doesn't even have a credit roll (maybe you have to beat Hard Mode to get the credits?).

I enjoyed the music, which made replaying Stages 13-15 to the point where I could make it to the "Hall of Death" without getting hit just about every time not nearly as much of a chore as it could have been. All in all, it wasn't a fun experience.

Dates played: Nov. 21, 2021
Playtime: 3h 10m
Date reviewed: Nov. 21, 2021
Date posted: Feb. 22, 2023
Rating: 4/10

I beat it this time on my NES CE, again utilizing save states.

I disliked this game when I beat the GBA release about 5 yrs ago, and my opinion didn't change. I gave that version a 4/10, so I'm sticking with that rating.