There's a moment near the very end of this game that I think really epitomizes Simon's Quest for me. You're going up to Dracula's Castle again.... and it's quiet. Nobody's home, just the eerie ruins of a place you once passed through long ago. There's no real twist to it either, it's just played straight. You walk in, unceremoniously kill Dracula, and that's it. It leaves this sort of hollow feeling, a deep reminiscence of the Castlevania that once was.

Simon's Quest is the most interesting kind of sequel to me, one that seeks to completely invert and upend the status quo of the original game. If the original Castlevania was about a methodical seige to defeat evil and save the day, then Simon's Quest is a showcase of the genuine aftermath shadowing such a task. Even after defeating Dracula, Simon doesn't have much of anything to return to. The world that he supposedly "saved" is completely dead looking, and he's left with a curse that's constantly eating away at his body. It's a premise that lies in stark contrast to the elating feeling that came with beating the first game, almost as if we've been kicked down and mocked despite our greatest efforts and supposed victories.

Simon's Quest is a game I'd consider to be genuinely brilliant and forward thinking, but not everyone seems to agree with me. Perhaps there couldn't be more fitting fate for it. A game reviled and dismissed by most, just as its hero is left with nothing but bitterness and decay.

Lol, lmao, even.

Look, I'm usually not a contrarian. I rarely have spicy takes. But I do try to be honest with my opinions, and my opinion on this game is that well, it kinda rules!

This kinda ties into my THUG 2 Remix review recently where I talked about a game's flaws enhancing the experience. Well, that idea pretty much defines this game. Everything people shit on this game for I pretty much love. The obtuseness and the horrible translation are so charming I love it.

And the things people do like this game for... are so fucking good. The atmosphere is incredible, with some of the best music on the entire platform.

I think I just really respect this game for it's ambition and find it to be a supremely charming experience. I get why someone wouldn't like this! But I loved it. :)

PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid' March Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Collection Extravaganza Part 2:

Definitely a weird one to judge. With a guide (sorry, I did want to get these done in a reasonable manner) it’s obviously not too bad but I can’t imagine why this is the direction you’d go in after Castlevania 1. It’s also maybe the easiest of the bunch, with very few legitimate challenges outside of tedium and understanding what villagers are telling lies and where you should be heading and… this is castlevania 2?
On the one hand I ask this because I really didn’t have much of an idea of what this game was like- but also I didn’t have much of a problem with it. It’s not good, but nowhere near one of the worst things I’ve played. In some ways I think its charming- but nowhere is it near all that 'impactful' in a sense, everything is just a bit too monotonous in structure and aesthetic.

Jojo Part 1 Phantom Blood for GAMERS!

I love and hate this game. Castlevania 2 has a brilliant concept going for a metroidvania style. A big open world with smaller mansion levels. It all seems great and in theory it is but this games cryptic and lazy design often hinders that. the open world and its secrets are super hard to figure out and are poorly conveyed to the player. The hints hardly help and you need a guide to get through this game. I like all the different areas and think the game looks really nice but it can make exploring annoying as the entire game feels like one long stretch left and right.
I think a overworld map like zelda 2 would have helped.

When this game comes down to the action and platformering it’s either too easy or too tedious. The mansions not only have practically nothing interesting but they also have annoying jumps and stupid blocks you fall right through. Enemy’s are either too easy to kill or are annoying and take forever to kill.

This game is full of good ideas but problems stack up and just kinda ruin it all. Sucks too because a remake could greatly benefit this game. Make a good metroidvania map and have good mansion levels. combing the linear and open ended castlevania styles. Even with my many issues I still sort of admire what this game does well and how it could of been good.

Music is great too so that’s a plus. First time we got Bloody Tears... too bad it’s really short and gets a little old in this game.

“This game sucks”

Strong 2.5/5

Simon's quest is one of the most engrossing game i've ever played.... This game invented to grinding, night-morning loop, open word, npc interaction, and partially metroidvania....and also has a multiple endings,
i'd say that Simon's Quest is too disparate from any castlevania games.
if you enjoy Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, you should try The "Transilvania Adventure of Simon Quest 2021" and "Castlevania 2 Revamped"
Also soundtracks are pretty aswell(especially bloody tears).

but i'm curious how people could beat this game without using save state... sometimes you need to do so specific things to progress in the game...

I can't stop thinking about the contrast between the start of this game and it's ending; you leave the first town and are met with one of the most gorgeous forward-moving themes of video game music ever in Bloody Tears, and you end the game through a slow, uninterrupted walk through Dracula's castle to meet what truly is a pathetic boss fight. Whereas the ending of the first game is incredibly hype for being able to surmount the challenge that it poses, here you're almost given the win outright, and that's it. The fanfare is gone, and you're left to witness the three possible futures that all don't seem very different from each other.

Fuck walking up stairs while enemies are above (which is all the time) since it guarantees you'll get hit
Fuck the fact that this game is unplayable without a guide
Fuck the bosses that are complete pushovers compared to anything from Castlevania 1
Fuck knockback
Fuck the day and night cycle, if it's night you better sit your ass down and wait since you can't go buy items, sure it incentivizes grinding but
Fuck the grinding, why it is in a classicvania game and
Fuck This Game (good music tho)

They dared to change, just like Simon dared to rid himself of Dracula's affliction in the face of ridicule by his fellow townsfolk.

At the approach of midnight, I began my journey home, my boots trudging through the mud as I pumped my fists to the Dance of Monsters. The chill of the wind rustles through the trees as I keep myself at the ready, for any moment the skeleton or wolfman could walk out from the brush begging for death's sweet release by the hand of my mighty whip passed down to me by my ancestors. Upon entry to town the sunrise brings about temporary peace, wherein I decide to visit the local grocery and throw my bottled water at it's floor to reveal the garlic salesman hiding underneath the floorboards from minions of the Count who has decreed that garlic was illegal.

Perhaps I'm obsessed with the idea of pretending to be Simon, perhaps he really is just the world's biggest badass being able to beat Dracula by himself and then again later while he's dying of a curse placed on him by the same guy. You think I wouldn't want to role play as him?

A color palette of putrid dilapidation, reminiscent of Hammer horror films, a land that continues to be ravaged by monsters chaotically stalking about despite the Count's destruction. Simon himself now as pale as a ghost due to the curse that has been sapping away at him for the past seven years, a depressing tone for what should've been a peaceful reconstruction after our past victory. The last town in the game Ghulash is completely monochrome in color with only one person residing in it, showcasing the devastation that has expanded from Dracula's castle. The townsfolk talk in riddles and lies, done in either genuine good faith or as an act of sabotage to keep Simon from completing his quest for fear of Dracula's early return. The ringing of tears flowing from a ballroom mask echo across the land, a most legendary composition.

They say if you wish to follow up perfection, then you better hit strong, differently, or both.

As I have once said before, a game that becomes more enjoyable the more you replay is but a sign of perfection. For the original Castlevania it became more enjoyable as I grew quicker at conquering it from sheer skill, and for Simon's Quest it became more enjoyable as I grew more wary of it's tricks. Instead of a test of strength, it is a test of shrewdness and clever understanding. Whereas the original opted to try and beat you into the grave, Simon's Quest looks to baffle you with illusions and misdirection. Typos appaering, translations such as the Fist of the North Star reference getting turned into a weird shout out to the Galactic Empire's infamous space station, and signs of a rushed development seem to only help it, perhaps it is perfectly imperfect. A perfect sibling to what was a perfect game.

Maybe I am obsessed, maybe Dracula exists and he put a curse on me to forever defend Simon's Quest from the never ending ridicule that comes it's way thanks to videos that were made for humor back in the times of the ancients. Simon's last adventure now cursed to being used as the butt of a joke, and constantly used as a punching bag by armchair game designers. Those who hate are numerous, and me and my fellow Simon supporters are small in number, but we are steadfast and strong in our beliefs. We stand together in the face of hostility and look onward at the army in front of us, I unsheathe my whip, brandishing it in hand and turn to my allies with but two quiet words, "For Simon", I rush into the ensuing battle leading the charge into our forever war.

Our battle is never over, but despite our curse we forever fight to the bitter end just as a Belmont would.

Perhaps it is appropriate that Simon’s Quest is a game that is eternally losing. As one of those sequels to a hugely popular, foundational NES game that against common wisdom broke out in an exciting new direction rather than building upon the strongly laid groundwork of its predecessor, it’s been arguably doomed from the start. While reception upon release was largely positive, it fit into the landscape of its day a lot better than it does a retrospective one, and when it became one of the earliest internet punching bags its fate was truly sealed. Even consdering the sort of mild critical evaluation these sorts of games tend to get today, Castlevania II’s seems more muted, probably due to its low excitement factor, low level of challenge but high level of Annoying Tedious Bullshit, and most infamously its pretty-bad-even-by-the-standards-of-the-time localization that makes an already-cryptic game that much more obtuse to muddle through. I thought this game was solid the first time I played it despite these things, but now that I’m replaying it in the context of its status as a sequel to Castlevania, I think those maligned elements are essential to the powerful ludic experience Simon’s Quest offers that’s by far the most potent of the NES trilogy.

Simon Belmont’s got a problem. In the wake of his duel with Dracula in Castlevania (the game, and also, I guess, the location) things should be good, but instead they seem fucked up! The country is still overrun with monsters who become even more aggressive at night, there are weird cultists everywhere, and Simon himself has been afflicted with some sort of Castlevania III Dracula’s Curse, which is slowly killing him! His, and Transylvania’s, only recourse is for Simon to gather the bits and bobs of Dracula’s corpse that remain - claimed by his followers - resummon the vampire, and settle this thing once and for all, again, in another duel, I guess. I am not super clear on why Dracula isn’t dead or why just killing him again will supposedly work out this time I guess Simon just kinda sucks at his job. He’s a vampire hunter not a demonic progenitor of all evil hunter!

Even accounting for like, Gameboy games and Arcade games and ports and shit, Simon’s Quest is the most different that one of these will be probably until Symphony of the night? It’s an open world structure, essentially, with complete freedom of movement in left or right directions from your starting town, gated only by your skill with your whip and your ability to traverse the environment, which expands with your arsenal of skills, magic, and equipment. There are RPG elements that dictate your health pool, hearts act as a currency and subweapons are permanent zelda-like equippables that you select from the pause menu rather than semi-random powerups. Infamously there is a day/night cycle, and night time is significantly more dangerous, doubling enemy power and closing off your access to everyone in all towns, which includes shops and the churches which are the only means of healing in the game. The goal is to discover and explore five haunted mansions, claiming a piece of Dracula at the end of each, gruesome shit like his rib bone or his eyeball, so that you can reenter Castlevania and fuck him up.

What makes Simon’s Quest feel special is the relentless tone the game strikes via all of its combined elements. There is so much less color to the world now than there was in Castlevania. That’s funny, isn’t it? You were fighting for humanity at the gates of hell itself in that game, and surrounded by lush color at all times. Bright oranges, deep greens and blues and reds. Even the stones underground stood strongly contrasted to their waterways, the prison tower vibrated with supernatural malice. In the hills of cursed Transylvania things are brown and gray and earthy but not in a life-supporting way. They are dull, they look faded. The most vibrant color you see in the game is the toxic purple of the corrupted, poisonous marshes that sometimes there is no choice but for Simon to trudge through, one more self-inflicted pain to suffer in his quest not to triumph but to find any ending at all. The ending drives home that Simon's quest is leading him to finality rather than victory and with that in mind every step of the game leads morosely to that thematic endpoint.

Because the land is not the only thing that is cursed – Simon himself suffers now, and the game works to make you feel it. The would-be triumphant hero is mistrusted and feared by the townspeople. Sometimes they lie to him outright and that’s occasionally true even in the original text. People tell him to leave town, he’s scaring people. The single person living alone in the dilapidated castle town outside the ruins of Castlevania beckons him to stay there forever. He is like her, and he belongs there. She can tell. YOU can tell. Despite the fact that his sprite is the same size and nearly the same shape as it was in the first game, Simon is significantly smaller on the screen. There’s no letterboxing anymore, no points or weapon indicators or lives displayed anywhere; the entire screen is dedicated to the world, and it swallows Simon. He is diminished.

There is not NO challenge to be had here but there is nothing resembling the kinds of screens one might find in Castlevanias 1 or 3. It begins to feel like work, like part of the malaise. There are only two bosses in the game prior to Dracula himself and you only HAVE to fight Camilla! You could just walk right by Death if you really felt like it, but he’s an easy kill considering he rewards the game’s best subweapon. Every mansion otherwise has a unique layout and occasionally a unique and usually frustrating (but sometimes cool, finding fake floors with your holy water is sick fuck you) mechanic to them but they are always long and anti-climactic. When you arrive at Castlevania itself for the final confrontation it’s not the game-long, opulent nightmare from Simon’s first visit. It’s a ruin. It’s a gray husk. You don’t climb the iconic towers to the throne room but descend, going a long, long way down the bones of the castle, meeting no resistance. As much as the Curse continues to ravage Transylvania, it is unchecked and unimpressive in the same way Simon is withering and in the same way that Dracula ultimately is, no more threatening than any other boss in the game. The final kicker is that even despite all of this, it is borderline impossible to get the one ending of three where Simon survives the curse. You can’t do it without finishing the game within seven in-game days, that’s like forty-five minutes, basically speedrun times. And so almost every playthrough of this game ends the way it’s supposed to end, the only way that really fits with the vision of the world that’s presented to you across the more realistic 3 to 5 hours you’re going to spend with it: Simon dead, succumbed to the curse even in victory, maybe remembered for his service to his countrymen, maybe not, ambiguously relieved of duty and ambiguously at rest.

Even if it’s not as much a rip-roaring good time in the arcade sense, Simon’s Quest obviously has the same amount of thought and care put into the things it chooses to emphasize as its predecessor does. It’s a more challenging game, not in difficulty but in engagement, asking for more patience and more active synthesis on the player’s part between elements of play and aesthetic and narrative and tone (something that gaming reviewers famously and formally refused to do until like 2012 MAYBE lol). Once I did meet it on that level I found an experience that was enormously rewarding. I already liked this game quite a bit but now it’s one of my very favorites of its era.

PREVIOUSLY: CASTLEVANIA

NEXT TIME: CASTLEVANIA THE ADVENTURE

Dracula, my friend, we sure are in quite the predicament; not only I’ve already defeated you three times each in different games, but it seems that you are quite the persistent rapscallion, and I need you to put you back together just to beat you yet again. Certainly an odd yet pretty fucking funny dance to have… but let’s make it memorable, shall we?

The first Castlevania is pretty straightforward in every sense of the word, a simple tale of a Vampire Killer that goes to Dracula’s lair to defeat him and free the land of Transylvania of its influence, and as many turns and ups and downs as that seemingly never-ending castle had, it still was a linear platformer. If that game attempted to realize a legend or a short myth made NES game, then this follow up tries to do the same for a full-fledged odyssey or saga, but even putting it that way makes it seem lesser than it really is, because in an era in which a surprising amount of sequels were already trying to differentiate themselves from their past outings, Simon’s Quest entirety identity and fundamental design, from the most visible of level lay-outs to the most hidden of secrets, revolves entirely around making Simon’s sad quest for what should have been his highest accomplishment a reality, no matter the cost.

I’ve never felt so conflicted about a game this much since… ever, now that I think about it; I struggle to point out parts of it that I truly enjoyed without also noticing stuff that irks me, I cannot mention definitive flaws without acknowledging that those manage to find some ways to work I adore, it’s a work I value, but also one I can’t really say for sure I enjoyed experiencing, and I cannot promise that I would have come out of this with my sanity intact if I didn’t use certain guides. Castlevania II is a game so unfathomably different to its original, so incomprehensibly ambitious, that I do not know if this is the result of an excellently creative mind or a completely mad one… perhaps both at the same time…

I think the subtitle of Simon’s Quest is the single most simple yet fitting string of words you could ever use to describe this, a true quest across the land of Transylvania with it’s riddles, monsters, secrets, weak to holy water walls and a mysterious ferryman that only brings you to were you need to go if you show him a heart and kneel, with it’s the single most metal thing I’ve ever seen in a NES game now that I think about it but I digress. The entirety of Transylvania is within a grey cartridge and the y and x axis, and it feels real, it shouldn’t, but it does: plagued by sessions changing between screens to make enemies respawn so you can farm hearts, the most of obscure and random of artificial steps you need to take so the game has mercy on your poor soul and lets you proceed, 2 feet deep lakes that immediately kill you unless you have a stone in hand so that the screen can move a bit down; all of this can be found in Simon’s Quest, and it’s as frustrating and mind numbingly complicated as it sounds, it’s not fun, but it somehow feels real.

Arriving at a town bathed in pale moonlight, a town with name and a place, you fight wraiths and dark spirits after the relief of the first sun rays of the dawn, which dissipate the evil for fleeting moments, letting the city breath in peace for the remaining of the day; the townsfolk mutter slowly, yet it feels too fast, to complicated to begin to understand it, others have very few to say, others sell, trade, and in some city even lie to you or spat out completely meaningless words, but after resting in the church (if you are lucky enough to encounter one), you leave once again, to the forests, depths and cemeteries of Transylvania, traversing terra ignota until you energy doesn’t let you act carelessly; perhaps you’ll get to another town, maybe you found the locations of one of the mansions, or maybe the night surrounds you once again, your enemies stronger and fiercer than before, and the only thing you can do is push forward. This, this right here, moments like these are were Simon’s quest has true meaning: the process of finding treasures and items that make you feel as if you were evolving, understanding the tricks and nonsense of Dracula’s curse in your favor, falling from invisible blocks time and time again but learning from it and getting stronger, beat the many mansions and getting Dracula’s remains thanks to the stakes and your own wit that has gotten you this far, and seeing the people of this land scream to you to get out of their town and how you made everything worse as you approach the remains of what was once the count’s Castle. In those moments where the game taps into the fullest potential of this open adventure, asking you to learn from it or fail, that is when Castlevania II achieves utter excellence… but by that you’d have to ignore pretty much everything else.

Beyond the occasional but very impactful slow-downs or the extremely samey aspect between pretty much every area, mansion and town besides the color palette, which are things that can be justified by how this is a entire open interconnected word running on a NinToaster (I had to throw out an AVGN reference at some point), Simon’s Quest fails in ways that put into jeopardy the very nature it tries to pursue. The design of the landscapes and dungeons themselves lack any of the intrigue and interesting architecture that the original had, and interesting enemy behavior has been thrown out the window in favor of different variables in the ways some approach you; bosses especially seem to have lost all the will to live despite never staying dead, and you know something’s up when that damage you more if you touch them than by their actual attacks, Dracula himself seems like the exception of all of this and the actual most challenging part of the adventure… until you start wailing on him… and you keep stunning him… and he just doesn’t move…. and the battle ends and you win… yeah… Simon’s Quest doesn’t really create challenge through interesting and complicated sections or enemy placement, but rather through endurance, how much patience you have to tackle the same enemies over and over again, how much you can you put up with ledge-jump after ledge-jump, with the only thing changing until the very end and in some very specific rooms being the damage you need to deal to defeat the enemies. The tricks of this land start to grow old and tired after a certain point, and those that don’t are to cryptic to discover them in the first place; I maintain that Transylvania feels real, yes, but does so while going through great lengths to sacrifice every possible aspect that could make it more engaging or fascinating to play beyond the base level, Simon’s Quest exists mostly to itself, but also for its torment, for Simon’s, for ours.

Simon’s Quest aimed for the stars and didn’t land among them, but it also didn’t quite miss, it’s out there, somewhere, occupying a weird space which can be both loved or hated, and in some cases both at the same time. I couldn’t end this review in good conscience without pointing out the many outstanding write-ups that many amazing people have done over here; Vee’s and poyfuh’s are outstanding analysis that value Simon’s Quest in a new light, while others like Kempocat’s view the reasons why the game fails while also recognizing its victories, and these are only a few examples, I’m beyond sure that this page is full of incredible analysis that bring new light to this game, each in a different way. I do no think there’ll ever be a point of consensus surrounding Simon’s Quest, nor I think I want it to, the passage of time has allowed the game to have more and more voices defending it, while others only see it as a mess speaking in moon runes (and rightfully so), and then there’s people kind of stuck in the middle, which I’m part of and I’m sure there are more like me that feel about this one similar to me, and maybe, by managing to create so many perspectives surrounding it, having so many possible interpretations and ways to see a game in which the characters only have one text-box of space to rely weird-ass info, maybe in a way, Castlevania II succeeds, and no matter what else could I say, both negative and even positive, I could never take that victory from it, and I’m so glad it has it…

… tho the endings being decided by how long you take to beat the game is weird as hell, like, ‘’Simon died because of his wounds after the battle’’, what are you talking about? I stun-locked the bastard with the golden knife for the entirety of the fight, the motherfucker didn’t even touch me!! What are you even on abou-

Um jogo que tentou adaptar a série, adicionando um aspecto mais RPG pra coisa. Ele é repleto de ideias interessantes, assim como de ideias horríveis...

No geral ele acaba perdido entre os primeiros Castlevanias justamente por esse estilo diferenciado que não se resume apenas a seguir em frente matando monstros, mas sim conversar com várias pessoas, recolhendo rumores que podem ou não ser verdade e explorar o mapa, fazendo e refazendo caminhos, para ir atrás desses rumores e prosseguir no jogo. Claro que essa mudança radical de gameplay acaba sendo bem incômoda para quem esperava algo similar ao seu antecessor.

Mas dizer que, no geral, eu gostei da base esquisita que montaram pra ele. Mas confesso que joguei usando um Walkthrough, pq ficar andando pra lá e pra cá, testando cada rumor, tendo que procurar cada passagem secreta/parede falsa ou bloco falso no cenário escondendo um NPC ou um livro de informação é simplesmente de foder!

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is a really interesting game, no doubt.

Unlike the original, Simon's Quest decides to be an action-adventure, where you travel through many areas across Transylvania, in a non-linear fashion, to fight monsters, talk to townspeople, and uncover Mansions where the five pieces of Dracula reside.
All of this while there's an in-game timer, that while doesn't have a limit, makes the game have a day and night cycle, where certain elements change whether it's day or night.

This structure has been bashed by many people for being convoluted, cryptic and feeling like you easily get lost.

While I don't oppose those people's comments, the matter of the fact is... I had fun with this one.

It's not as good as the original, yes, but I really like the vibe of this game.
Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think there's ever been a Castlevania game where you go through towns, forest and mansions in a free-form fashion like this.
Even the Search Action/Metroidvania games that we would see in the future, like Symphony of the Night, always made you run around a giant castle, but never (or barely) outside.

While a lot of the NPCs in the towns say useless things, some of them do give you clues to what you should be getting to proceed. Additionally, there's also some textbooks you can find in cryptic places of the world that give you more hints at progression.
And the towns can also have churches, that help you heal yourself back up, which were a godsend (pun not intended).

The day and night system can make it so you can't talk to any of the townsfolk or go inside any buildings, which does suck, but at least I get the opportunity to grind for hearts from the Zombies that constantly appear in them.

Hearts in this game, while they're still ammunition for some of the sub-weapons that you get in your journey, they're also currency to buy many of the items you need to progress.
You also have lives in this game, and if you lose them all, that's a Game Over, which doesn't push you far, but makes you lose all your hearts, which makes it so you have to grind again.

BUT... if you're able to not get many Game Overs, if at all, besides the beginning of the game, you should rarely need to grind, which is nice!

The music in this game is really nice to the ears! It might be a bit limiting, but the tracks were so good, that it didn't get repetitive for me. Bloody Tears was introduced in this game, and it's awesome, one of my favourite Castlevania tracks, bar none.

The graphics themselves aren't that much better than the first game, but I do like the detail that the backgrounds have, especially as you go along, and they start changing seasons, from Spring all the way to Winter.

This game has its problems, yes, but even in spite of them, I had fun going through Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, and I wish they made a game like this again, just with stuff like a map and better dialogue, and stuff.

So, just like with many NES sequels at the time, for some reason, Konami thought that, for the next Castlevania game, they needed to make it completely different from the original. However, unlike Mario or Zelda, who managed to get away with this (somewhat), this series doesn't get that lucky.

Yeah, it may not be an unpopular opinion, but this game isn't really that good at all, and it has a TON of problems. Sure, I don't think it's a terrible game, and it isn't as bad as others make it out to be, but it certainly has not held up all that well.

The story is pretty dumb, but you can accept it quickly when not thinking about it, the graphics are pretty good still, the music is yet again a banger, the control is just about the same as the original, so nothing to say there, and the replay value is actually pretty good, with the different endings you can get.

The main problems with the game all stems from the gameplay. It is a creative way to differentiate from the original game, and as proven by future titles, it does work, but it is executed very poorly in this entry, with elements such as the day and night cycle being very annoying and inconvenient, the level design being pretty terrible, grammar errors everywhere you look, a confusing menu and item system, losing all your hearts upon getting a game over, and some of the most PATHETIC boss fights in video game history. Seriously, the bosses range from being pathetically easy with the right item, to where you can just straight up ignore them by walking past them.

The biggest problem with the game, however, is the matter of progression. It is definitely a guide game, 100%, because some of the things you are required to do to progress through the game, and even collect everything to 100% the game, you would NEVER be able to figure out on your own. Some instances of this would be with all of the invisible gaps in platforms that plague the entire game, having to kneel by a body of water with a crystal equipped to... make the screen go down a bit, needing to buy and throw a stake at the orb at the end of each level, and possibly the most infamous part, going to a dead end, equipping a crystal, and kneeling down for a couple seconds, resulting in a tornado coming and taking you to the next area... seriously, how would ANYONE figure that out on their own?

Overall, I appreciate the attempt at changing up the gameplay, and there are some good elements about it, but it is plagued with WAY too many problems for me to say that it is good by any means. Thankfully, future games will take what this game started and fix it.

Game #21

Leveling system, a permanent inventory of items, weapon upgrades, a non-linear structure, a KILLER soundtrack, even multiple endings depending on your playtime à la Resident Evil ranks...

Is this game actually a masterpiece?

... No, but playing it with a guide makes it easy to see how they tried to do a LOT of cool stuff here. Keyword being "tried", as the shoddy translation and lack of an in-game map fail to elevate its non-linear aspirations.

Without a guide? Anal fissure!

Damn, if the patched rom I'm playing is this much of a pain in the ass, I can only imagine what the real game must be like. Maybe instead of being contrarian and saying something like "actually Castlevania II is good because of its groundbreaking-for-the-time experiments in non-linearity," we could say "Castlevania II isn't worth playing because the only thing it has going for it is its attempts at innovation, which it does exceedingly poorly."

Also, wouldn't it have made more sense to have titled this "Dracula's Curse" than the third one, since this game is explicitly about a curse put upon Simon by Dracula? And then the third could have maybe been called "Trevor's Quest," calling attention to a new Belmont? On the other hand, Trevor is not the best name, let alone for a whole title.

Some of my favourite games are in one way or another unpolished, unrefined, imperfect in so many ways that when i think about them isolated from the experience of my playthrough, i often wonder why i consider them so high.

Then the chills come.

And this happens to me a lot, actually. Anytime I think about Yakuza 6 I can spend half an hour criticising all of the short comings, and bullshit about the combat or some of the systems, it doesn't matter, really. The core is pure, and in that core there's a story that resonated with me in ways I was only hoping it would; there is an open world that contains the kind of shit that I fall in love with in such a way I can only think about it for days and days.

Castlevania II is bullshit; obscure, obtuse to an extent that most would consider a total failure, I might consider it a failure tomorrow, i don't care, this game has connected with me as Dark Souls did in 2014. This is an ambitious aproximation to the formula that with all of its problems and the utmost certainty that it can't be completed without a guide, I cannot take anything away from the moments i have gone through and how its ambition, as often as problematic, is also inspiring and in some ways revolutionary. Coming from a linear, action game with a difficult curve that turns the later half of the game into an insufferable hell, Castlevania II implements levels and the possibility of healing in churches, it creates an actual curve that even with bosses broken by items and a difficulty that goes inverted, let's you familiarize with its enviroments.

If Castlevania was a test of skill and especially patience, Simon's Quest is more akin to the type of tiny puzzly world that wants you to wrestle with it's own rules, it's a pure adventure game, one with fenomenal ideas that turn the world into a somehow believeable and consistent environment. The interconnection between the cities, that serves as main hubs, let's the player little nuggets of brilliance in both rythm management and world design; it's about the consistency, how the few rules that the game bases upon itself are repeated, and even with assistance to decode some of these, there are beautiful moments to be found in understanding and relating clues to events, events to objects, and then finding out the next step in the journey. This is a game that both rewards exploration inside levels as much as requires attention and puzzle solving in the open world; and even if some of this puzzles are too obtuse, the verbs of the game are few, and it manages this communication to the player through clever design in a lot of places.

What does a barrier mean, the use of objects not just for attacking but for exploring, how the game tutorializes you in safe places to let you interpret what this initial clue based design mean. But again, it's all about the chills, it's a frustrating and failed game in many ways, one that made me gasp when i kneeled next to a river, that excited me throwing holy water, videogames are fucking great if I can say this without deleting it one second later.

And this is a fine videogame.

I really did try with this one, I played through the entire game again and everything, but in the end I just do not find this an experience that I enjoyed or really found particularly engaging. This time the big thing I noticed was that both the best and worst aspects of the game stood out and affected me far more, but a lot of those more interesting elements ultimately just made me wish that the game as a whole was something I vibed with more. I appreciate weird left turns that happen before certain bits and pieces of a series' identity have been fully established, when they still exist in a strange, uncertain middle ground where expectations cannot yet be set in stone and there's a degree of malleability in what goes on. In a perfect world, this sort of freer approach to creation even within more well-established series would be more common, (though admittedly, Castlevania is pretty good with this), but I'll take what I can get and find appreciation in these types of games for existing even if I personally don't enjoy some of those individual titles.

In the case of Simon's Quest, I love the different type of hostility that the game utilises, where the biggest obstacle in Simon's path stems from the villagers' hatred towards him and their desire to hinder his goals, rather than the big scary monsters. Almost all the difficulty from this game stems from information on how to proceed being difficult to pin down, obscured by the vagueness and misinformation of what all those around you provide (something that was present even before the rough translation), with having to parse what is important information and what is meant to entirely throw you off, being led astray as often as being guided in the right direction. The main issue with this for me stems from the fact that the path forward is often so obtuse that it cheapens the experience when it feels as if there would be no way of figuring things out without extremely specific information provided, with trial and error only realistically being able to take you so far.

It also feels like the game is made in such a way to trip you up in ways that almost exclusively waste your time, such as the orb traders automatically swapping orbs upon talking to them, or losing your entire supply of hearts if you run out of lives, not really adding an interesting challenge and more creating new ways to waste your time. The mazelike layouts of the mansions have a similar negative effect on me, so much time just being spent walking around, dreary mansions trying to work out where to go and hoping that you find the stake merchant before finding the end. The limited danger you feel in most situations is both a blessing and a curse, but during these mansion sections, I'm far more inclined to say that the latter applies.

That said, the atmosphere felt by having all of these adversaries being nothing more than remnants of what was once a powerful evil attempting to claw their way back from death is very striking in certain regards, especially from the bosses, none of which are even vaguely threatening, but as such, they ultimately end up being the most potent example of how the journey Simon takes on this time is more of a preventative measure as opposed to an active threat that's ravaging the land. This is also what makes the final dungeon's emptiness the crowning moment in the game as a whole, because to me, that feeling of emptiness is where the game thrives. Conceptually I love this game, I really do, but even after writing out what I strongly praise about the game, I just find the experience to be a bit miserable.

Look, I can't hate this game. I just can't.

Yes, there are things that I absolutely cannot defend like the intangible floor blocks that you can only discern by throwing holy water at them or watching for skeleton enemies turning around without hitting a wall. Sure, the lack of decent boss fights suck and the horrendous localization makes the game impenetrable for people without a guide or many hours of free time on their hands.

That localization though? Absolutely amazing. A goddamned ocean of quotes that most AAA games even these days struggle to match.

"Sure, I'll take you to a good place. Heh!! Heh!! Heh!!"
"Take my daughter, please!"
"You've upset the people. Now get out of town!"

But am I here just to defend the hilariously shoddy Konami localization? Absolutely not, this game is still fun to play despite how obtuse it can be and if anything I RESPECT the fact that they tried something new instead of just making the same game but slightly better.

Is it the worst of the NES Castlevanias? Yes, undoubtedly. Is it a bad game? Fuck no, I'll fight you right now. I'll defend this damn game until the day I die, and once that happens I'll come back just to haunt everyone who still thinks it's bad.

I'm sure my experience with Simon's Quest was far more pleasant than most people's because I played it using Bisqwit's exceptional Re-translation + Map romhack, but I honestly kind of loved it? No way I'd ever want to experience it via the "proper" English release (which seems to be a machine translation (did those exist in the 80's?)) or without a guide, but this is an incredibly interesting piece of video game history filled with awesome ideas. Really feels like both an epic horror adventure and a blueprint for a lot of the best games from the following decades. I firmly believe that this is a misunderstood classic, though its prominent design flaws and abysmal official localization make its punching bag status fairly understandable.