Otro clon de castlevania en 8bits, sin embargo sabe diferenciarse atraves de sus mecanicas jugables, con el uso de magias, y un excelente diseño de niveles. La dificultad es alta , incluso mas que de la saga en la que se inspira, sin embargo dicha dificultad resulta motivacional para llegar al final de cada niveles, los cuales se desarrollan en diferentes pantallas, (las cuales reiniciaras al perder una vida), y para concluir, un enfrentamiento con un boss dispuesto a vaciar tu barra de vida y a terminar con tu paciencia.

Kuso gamer! You've save-stated so much in the Mesen scene; oh, what's becoming of me…~ Like 'ol R-Type, you can feel Irem's getting really mean. Why is this game such a fiend? It's not unbeatable, theoretically—just a very frustrating feat to accomplish without save states. I wouldn't have beaten this in under a month otherwise, and part of me wonders if the final 1/3 was ever fully tested, start to finish, under normal play conditions. Something of a circular debate looms around Holy Diver today, where some about how hardcore it is while others lament its impenetrable difficulty. Slot me into the camp that laments all the potential squandered in this title, a casualty of the developer's focus on similarly brutal (but more fair) arcade releases.

Completed for the Backloggd Discord server’s Game of the Week club, Feb. 21 - 27, 2023

Let's start with how this game ostensibly recreates Dio's famous album in action game form. I wish it had, but we're stuck with a lightly dressed-up imitation of better-known games, from Castlevania to Mega Man and beyond. Recontextualizing this non-committal attempt to iterate on other, better Famicom staples via a heavy metal coat of paint isn't the worst idea. Too bad this just doesn't evoke anything specifically like the musical influences it takes from. Where are the tigers?! The rainbows in the dark? Or anything beyond what the opening crawl exposits? I love the idea of saving the King Crimson family name just as much as anyone should, but here they've just slapped these references atop an otherwise workmanlike dark fantasy side-scroller. Compare this with the studio's old arcade dev chief, Tetsuo Nakano, asserting how you shouldn't "just set out to imitate someone else, for instance, you’ll always be behind the times".

I'll be fair and also criticize SEGA's Jewel Master for appropriating progressive rock and metal inspirations around the same time. There's a key difference, however: the Mega Drive game actually has a fitting prog soundtrack. Rarely do I start digging into a non-rhythm game via its music, but that's what separates something like Jewel Master from countless other throwaway action-platformers of the era. Holy Diver (the game, not the timeless work of Ronnie James Dio & co.) has a solid musical score from Irem soundsmith Masahiko Ishida, but I wouldn't call it one of his best. There's a few driving baroque gallops to enjoy here, a departure from his more avant-garde arcade work; shame the final stage and boss tracks are so irritating. Dissonance can work well for a game like this, just not when it accentuates the feeling that you, the player, aren't meant to have made it this far.

Nothing in this bastardization of the term "holy diver" feels player-friendly. It's one thing to be "hardcore" and another to just grind you down without any purpose beyond disincentivizing game rentals. The game loop starts out barbed and eventually becomes relentlessly lethal, going from tricky but learnable enemy patterns to minibosses every other screen with plenty of backup. Sure, I could viably learn and route the first half before this club week's end, but certainly not the latter portion. Irem's console developers decided to center most of the fatal encounters around rapid enemy spawns, which combine with pathetically short I-frames when hit to keep you on the backfoot. Now let's couple this with inexplicable, inconsistent input delays for essentials like crouching and jumping! It seems like they knew the game engine and physics have these issues, thus compensating via conspicuously fluid air control. (Diagonal attack aiming would have been nice…) From the very beginning, your reliable mobility and attack options aren't adequate for handling even the most basic foes with comfort. So here I am, stuck fighting basic right-to-left mooks I'd down quick in any other game like this, just with an unsatisfying handicap.

I've got not real investment in the story or in my conventional character advancement progression, either. What few new spells and items you get are necessary, but less than satisfying to use for the most part. You're often so deprived of magic points that using the more advanced offensive spells (Breaker and Thunder) gives diminishing returns. (Shoutouts to the former in stage 5, though, as its boss only seems possible with it.) On the other hand, Blizzard and Overdrive are practically required no matter your resources, whether for freezing lava & weaker enemies or to traverse later levels and survive their trap fights. Your basic pea-shooter attack loses its utility around mid-game except for saving mana, so the game revolves around mastering and carefully timing your spells. In my experience, this meant so many more retries than felt right for the scale of combat/puzzle complexity on offer. None of the lava sections are interesting by themselves, and the sheer repetition & re-skinning of enemy types left me wanting for any new interactions with my action verbs.

My time playing through to the end saw maybe hundreds of save states and reloads, enough to make me feel like Dio in the recording studio. I'm giving this software way too much credit with such a metaphor, but that's maybe the most relevant connection between it and those musical touchstones. Not that Holy Diver has any monopoly on the state-or-suffer experience among other kusoge or ball-busting challenges from this period. I'm just trying to process how a game can be this fascinatingly bad at delivering its purported narrative. Infinite continues mean little to me when that entails starting Kaizo-like levels over and over again, with not much gratification for learning the exact timing and enemy management between rooms. Our hero comes across less like a powerful, destined knight defeating evil, more like a renn-faire weekend warrior bumbling into the actual hell fathomed in medieval times. The best part of this game involves nothing about him—rather, I actually had a lot of fun using his dragon form to play a janky, all too short but empowering side-scrolling shooter.

So little about Holy Diver's sekaikan connects together, another symptom of rushed development. Take for instance any play on the titular song's lyrical depth vs. what one could charitably discern from the game. I'm not saving the people of the land from vice, temptations, or lack of faith; the only inhabitants in this world are monsters already. There's no higher justification of the protagonist's self-sacrificial fight against the Black Slayer, only a royalist desire to vanquish evil for his family's sake. Where even the hardest 'Vania faire in '89 gave you a fighting chance via wall-meat and other playground secrets, there's strikingly few optional risky rewards to find, just an unending torrent of trouble. Above all, this game can't decide if it's a prototype rushed to market, a failure of Nintendo's product testing system, or a loving fuck-you to Famicom gamers asking Irem for a taste of their arcade titles' famous difficulty walls. Also imagine if you were one of those highly-skilled players encountering the first half's bosses, all of whom are much easier than the levels before them for no good reason. Outdated stage design resembling Dragon Buster + inconsistent challenge and telegraphing to players = a weird 'ol time.

You know what this reminds me of? Psycho World for MSX2 and Master System, also released the same year. Hertz' sci-fantasy take on this combo of action-adventuring tropes pioneered by Konami, Capcom, etc. has an actual difficulty curve. It's got better visuals, a more pleasant soundtrack, and similar but far better mechanics + implementation in every way. The idea of tying your combat options into world progression exists in both games, but I'd much rather learn the ins and outs of the latter. Holy Diver constantly feels like a C-team effort finishing the work started by Irem's B-team, hence the gulf in quality between its nice visuals and shoddy backbone. Hell, the huge amount of slowdown throughout suggests unmet ambitions, and a commensurate lack of testing to account for enemy projectiles hiding in plain sight during the lag. I died so much just because I literally couldn't see bullets heading where I was—normally I love it when that happens in a classic arcade shooter! But we're nowhere near the harsh but fair likes of R-Type or Image Fight…just this ramshackle attempt to ride off other games' laurels.

What's baffling to me is how Irem/Tamtex's other '89 Famicom exclusive of note, a delightful riff on Rally-X called Gekitotsu Yonku Battle, feels more complete and supportive of its players but gets less attention overseas. This likely boils down to the haha-funny-lol rock references and familiar aesthetic of Holy Diver, but the difference in notability vs. quality really gets on my nerves. More aptly, it's that contrast between the hares and tortoises of the cult game sphere which stands out. Why play a solid, plainly iterative, score-focused arcade-y romp when this shambling but somehow appealing mess of an adventure beckons you? Playing through Holy Diver with 1989 skills, knowledge, and help from a talented friend or two (plus not knowing anything better to play) would have sweetened the deal. Today, though, I'm just glad this wasn't the best Irem had to offer for its Famicom audience. Metal Storm proved a year later how they could transfer their arcade greatness to the home with nary a compromise, too.

In summary, play Holy Diver if you're hankering for the '80s heavy metal garage band mixtape that sorely needed rehearsals and an original song or two. You might have to scrub or rewind a lot to reach the good moments, and there's plenty of studio-grade material from that milieu hitting the same vibes but with less pain. Just know that you'll either love this game's recalcitrance and irreverent attitude towards its cultural imprints, or you'll sigh and move on from this jalopy. I think it's worth a try for reasons beyond the kusoge reputation, mainly as an example of what Irem's console teams would avoid going forward. But I also had hopes that it'd hook me and having more staying power, even as a nigh unplayable crawl through chaos. The best I'll say is it often has pretty backgrounds & music, just nothing exemplary enough to transcend the game around them. Between my velvet cries, there's a truth that's hard as steel. You might even say ambition never dies; crimes against players are real~~~~~~

I reviewed this not too long ago but tbh, I was not happy with it (then again when am I not nowadays) mostly because I felt like idk I was trying too hard? I think one thing I regretted the most was not looking at other reviews after beating it. I think what I want to do with this review (that I'll be surprised if anyone reads) is just wonder, wonder what I don't like about it.

I like to think I can enjoy hard games. I am kind of picky about some of them, I'm sure some shrug off me not praising games like Ninja Gaiden or Metal Storm but that's just how I am. But one game that is hard that I really like is Akumajo Dracula or Castlevania as it's called here. I like it because while it may have stiff controls and a hard difficulty, it always felt like I could do what the game asked and it all felt deliberate. Really the only issue I had with it was the 5th stage dragging on too long. Otherwise it's a pretty fun game even to this day.

Holy Diver is clearly trying to be like that game and it wasn't the only one. I for one kind of feel bad for at least not giving it that respect. You ever played a game called 8 eyes? That is a game that I'd argue doesn't do a good job of being a good game. Idk I just find it frustrating and I hated the main weapon from the 30 minutes I played of it. If there is a thing I'll give Holy Diver is that it's not a bad clone of a good game. But I do think it misses what makes Castlevania good.

There was one thing I always found in these reviews was that it's hard like brutally hard. There are people who even argue it's even harder than Battletoads. Obviously I agree but what confuses me is why is it never put into the spotlight as a negative. Hear me out, I think this game fails at understanding it's difficulty. If you need to spend hours maybe even days just to figure out levels. It's not a fun level. I'd argue even something like Ghosts n Goblins doesn't get this bad about difficulty. I think there is sometimes a line you can cross that just goes too far.

I think playing it you can get a good visualizer for what the team wanted you to do. It wants you to use your Mana carefully at the right times and not just use your standard attack. It reminds me a lot of sub weapons in Castlevania. Where I think the game falls flat though is enemy placement. Enemies can just be a pain and they love to put respawning enemies in areas. I think what hurts them the most is they got annoying patterns and really just not much time to react and dodge. Some enemies are also just too spongey in health and you have no holy water to help crunch their numbers down. It all just confuses me, I can't really think to myself "yeah I can see why people love this so much."

The bosses are what befuddle me the most. How can you have some of the most frustrating platforming I've seen in the genre on Famicom but have bosses that feel so not challenging. Like was it intentional? I almost feel like it wasn't but I feel like it's not surprising either. A lot of hard games don't have the hardest bosses to exist. But for some reason it just bothers me here. Maybe I'm just forcing my mind to nitpick stuff and I'm not realizing it.

I think it is a good looking game at least and it seems to be inspired by some things I have zero knowledge on. I really do like the environments and sprite art here. It's a shame that the good qualities come at a cost of some awful sprite flicker. Now that's something I never saw reviews complain about. It's really bad here and it made me not wanna try on the last two bosses only because why should I when I can't even see their projectiles. Regardless of my hate, the game looks nice, the music got some nice tunes and I liked the part where my emulator didn't like the Rom so it glitches out at times.

I think writing this hasn't really answer my question of just why do I think the things I do. Why do I have to be negative? It all just feels forced at times. Of course a person like me using save states over and over to finish a game isn't going to fully interpret the level design to a tee. It's a game I should probably give more of a chance but it gets so brutal that I really just...can't. I can't do it. Why even praise better controls when the level design is so much worse? Its got good ideas and it's not as bad as some other games with Irem's name on it but I don't like it. I never want to return to it because I feel like it doesn't respect my time. Why should I respect it?

During the initial year of when I discovered emulation I browsed a bunch of sites for completely legal downloads that no doubt put a few bits of spyware on my family's PC, which sat nicely along with all the bloat from grabbing those Stone Temple Pilot songs that were misattributed to Nirvana off of Limewire.

I recall running across this one while browsing the NES section of LousyWAREZ [made up] and being completely mindblasted by seeing a song by Dio just sitting there. "This ain't real", said the dim-witted naive teenager. Lo and behold, it was a Castlevania of sorts, featuring who I figured was Ronnie James Belmont clad in armor and a cape, walking while pumpin' his fists in the air like a complete badass. There was one thing though that guaranteed it would stick with me regardless of it's quality, and that was just how much it didn't give a shit about your livelihood [or your kids].

Castlevania if it started with the Axe Armor hallway and it's difficulty kept ratcheting well past fighting Death without cheese tactics. Screen flashing that would make Transformers Convoy no Nazo proud, and would get an entire family of Porygons to howl like a pack of dire wolves in approval. Enemies that don't play by the rules, and are placed more haphazardly than your average five year old with Super Mario Maker. Stages that feel like they take a lifetime to traverse despite these GameFAQs maps showing otherwise, all thanks to the "I think I overdid it chief" style of difficulty that the lads over at Irem attempted in order to appease the gamerbase that thought Ghosts n' Goblins was too damn easy. Well, I hope they were happy over there, because I'm sure I know the reason why it wasn't released to the west originally. If we hated Super Mario Bros 2. Japan, I'm pretty sure Holy Diver would've destroyed at least ten states after riots sprang out across the country if it managed to get over here. An outcome comparable to ten Philadelphia losses at the Super Bowl via a last minute holding call.

Holy Diver is what I feel like most people play when they slag on NES era games, because I've played a lot of the more maligned hard-hitting titles on it such as Ninja Gaiden, Battletoads, Silver Surfer, etc and all of those feel outright easy compared to this. I'll go to my grave stating that Ninja Gaiden is one of the all-time greats for the system despite it's flaws, and Silver Surfer is almost a good game albeit tarnished with fatal weaknesses regarding the tankiness of it's enemies/bullets. Holy Diver is just cruel, downright unplayable without save states or the patience and luck and timing of Buddha. It isn't satisfying at all to overcome, and instead feels like a waste of time.

It's a shame, I love everything else about it. Welp, into the same pits as Jersey Devil it goes. Was happy to tank my approval rating on BL by nominating this for Game Club, but y'all need to remember that you voted for this. Ya can't just pin this one on me.

You did this.