The Castlevania Series Review Part 2. Reviews of Castlevania Adventure, Castlevania 2 Belmont's Revenge, Castlevania Legends, and Castlevania Chronicles.
In Castlevania Adventure, Dracula has created a super powerful gravity ray which gives the illusion of severe lag. You play as Christopher Belmont who wants to destroy Dracula to speed back up all life on the planet.
In Castlevania Adventure, there's no subweapons this time around. The whip still can still gain two levels up, the second level increasing to the morning star while the third level shoots out a spirit ball. The spirit ball is as weak as the most basic whip, but it crosses the screen until it hits something or exits. Level design is okay the first two stages, not great, but the third stage is where it gets pretty bad, probably the quitting point for most people and doesn't get much better on the last stage. On the third stage there is a section where spikes come from the floor and follow you, then come from the wall, and it doesn't allow you to go too fast, but if you don't go through the stage perfectly, you are pretty much guaranteed to be killed by the spikes that are following you. If you happen to get past the third stage, you'll go through an extremely difficult fourth stage ending with four or five of the first boss you have to go through until you get to Dracula.
Gameplay - 4
Design - 2
Presentation 1
Balance 4
Overall - 2.75
Dracula escapes in the form of a bat from the rubble of Castlevania, but atleast that super powerful gravity ray is destroyed. In Castlevania 2 Belmont's Revenge, Christopher goes through four castles and defeat the guardians in order to raise Castlevania and defeat Dracula.
Castlevania 2 Belmont's Revenge received a major graphics overhaul and has none of the framerate or flickering issues that the first game had. This time it's even more like a traditional Castlevania as Christopher now has access to the axe and holy water subweapons, there's atleast one piece of wall meat in each stage, and Christopher also keeps the spirit ball upgrade in the last game.
Good level design and enemy AI, it'got good difficulty. Soleiyu will probably repeatedly kill you until you figure out the trick against him. You're guaranteed to get hit once, but a tip for those who can't beat him is stay on the side that he's on, above him on the platform, whenever he goes to the other side attack him then follow him only after he throws the daggers and repeat. If he goes to jump ontop of the platform by using the platform against the wall, attack him and drop below the platform and go in a circle if you have to.
Dracula is the last boss and is a bs battle. Not only are you able to stand on specific platforms, but you're required to hit Dracula in the head in order to damage him, while every few seconds Dracula will shoot energy balls out from him in all directions in a circling pattern then teleport to one of the other platforms. Every time I play the game, I get to Dracula and quit because you'll sit there repeatedly dying over and over until you memorize the pattern the one place you can stand when he's about to teleport, hit him once, stand in one place on the entire screen, repeat. Since he teleports the place changes each time, Takes around 10-20 hits for you to kill him while Christopher can only survive for, so the battle really drags on.
Gameplay - 6
Design - 6
Presentation - 6
Balance - 4
Overall - 5.5
If you're a Castlevania fan you probably don't like Castlevania Legend just based on the storyline. You play as Sonia Belmont who somehow is now the first Belmont to destroy Dracula, even though it's stated within Castlevania 3 that Trevor was the first Belmont to kill him. Alucard's SotN version is in the game and some events after you finish the game a lot of people dislike more than the whole first Belmont to destroy Dracula thing. Castlevania Legend is officially non canon, though, so she doesn't exist in the actual story.
Sonia Belmont actually moves fluidly. Like Simon on Super Castlevania 4 she can slowly walk while crouched, like Christopher she receives the spirit ball when her whip is maxed in power, she has a power called burning vigor which makes her invincible and more powerful, and each boss that she defeats she also gains a spell.
The game is very easy though. So easy it's boring. The only stages that are difficult are the ones where damage is unavoidable because of really poor level design. As long as you save your burning power until the boss you're almost guaranteed to win. I've heard a lot of complaints about trap candles which are spread throughout the game, maybe one or two per stage, but they're white when all the other candles are dark brown, so common sense is don't attack the white ones. I just finished it earlier and I didn't get stuck in one trap room.
Gameplay - 5
Design - 3
Presentation 4
Balance - 3
Overall - 3.75
Castlevania Chronicles is another remake of Castlevania, this one originally released for the Sharp X86000. First thing I want to say is the game looks beautiful and has certainly aged well. Now that that's out of the way, when saying something back on part 1 about Castlevania 3 being the last game I'd recommend to someone who's never played the series, I actually didn't remember how hard Castlevania Chronicles was. I've previously beaten this game on original mode but now I'm not as good as I once was I guess. Regardless how good I was at the game, this game is very difficult after you pass the third stage. What the game considers "stage 12" is the massive difficulty spike and the game only keeps getting more difficult. That's only stage four though and it gets harder each stage you progress through except for the tower of dolls stage where it's slightly easier but still very difficult.
Arrange mode has a different sprite for Simon, remixed music, CG video for all the cutscenes, plus has three different difficulties. Hard mode is the original games difficulty, where Simon will survive four hits only a few stages in, normal Simon will survive six hits, and no idea about easy, but I'll guess eight hits when enemies take off max damage.
In Castlevania Chronicles, Simon can somewhat move mid air like on Super Castlevania 4 and can attack down, or downward diagonal when jumping. The classic weapons, cross, dagger, holy water, and axe are in the game along with one more, the green herb which Capcom stole and used for Resident Evil. The green herb is the new overpowered sub weapon as you use 10 hearts to restore half your max health. Get as many hearts as possible and make sure you don't grab another weapon, the difficulty drops substantially.
The difficulty makes the game far less enjoyable than it could have been. I know there are people out there that can probably one life the game, but the majority of people aren't going to want to dedicate that amount of time. I'm a Castlevania fan and I don't want to dedicate the amount of time it would take to get reasonably good at this game. I finished the game having to continue only three times, but I picked up a green herb in stage six and played through the rest of the game while not giving up that item.
Gameplay - 9
Design - 5
Presentation - 3
Balance - 3
Overall - 5
