NES Game Review #6 – Castlevania
Having started one awful trilogy with The Simpsons, why not begin quite the opposite. Konami’s Castlevania trilogy is classic gaming personified! Truly great action platforming adventures controlling various incarnations of the Belmont family as they defeat various incarnations of Dracula and the evil hordes of Hell.
Slick controls, great level design, fantastic music and some terrifyingly challenging boss fights make this one of the best action platformers the 8-bit world has to offer. Armed with a whip, and an array of sub weapons you traverse many levels to finally reach an epic showdown with Dracula. While this game is near perfect, it does suffer with a few annoying setbacks, most notably the stairs! If you’re not careful to press down or up by the stairs and instead hold the direction you were going, you’ll simply walk off the edge of the platform and usually to your death. This gets old quick! It’s also maddening that you have no control of yourself once you have committed to a jump. If you mistime it or an enemy hits you mid-air, forget it, most of the time you’ll end up down a hole or in some spikes. That’s another thing, spikes are instant death! Not uncommon in games but here even if the spikes are on a chain lifting up and a pixel touches them… death!
Still issues aside while there’s a serious challenge, there’s an equal reward! Infinite continues mean only you’re own patience holds you back. Some boss fights will challenge even the hardest gamers, simply getting to Death is a feat in itself, beating him takes a lot of practice (holt water spam aside). The key to game is keeping calm, using sub weapons and having patience. However you’ll really be put to the test when you eventually meet Dracula. The final fight is no joke. Thankfully Konami allow you to restart from Dracula indefinitely (why this was changed for Castlevania 3 I don’t understand!)
To finish, Castlevania is an absolute classic on the system and a true test of a gamers skills not just patience like so many of the lesser offerings on the system. What a pleasure to finish this again!