Reviews from

in the past


Do you ever play a retro game and see a name like "Grant DaNasty" and just wonder how the fuck anyone working in a localization house at that time could ever hold a job

I was really deciding between a 4 or a 4.5, but i feel the more frustrating moments of the game (9-04) hold it back. Anyhow, its a fantastic game. I played through nearly all of the stages, and beat the game once with Sypha and once with Alucard, just wanted to add that in

yo this game kinda slaps, at least the Japanese version you expect me to pass up the VRC6 chip lol

this is basically just more Castlevania 1, everything that made Castlevania 1 is here, but bigger and better, Simon's Quest never happened btw. one of the selling points of this game is that there's branching pathways in this one, being able to go through different routes really increases the replayability and I appreciate that. on top of that, depending on which paths you choose, you'll face off against three separate characters: Grant Danasty, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard. after you defeat whoever you encounter, you have the option to bring them along with you to beat the crap out of Dracula for the war crimes he and his minions are committing.

another thing is that if you're playing the Japanese version, you'll get access to listening to the music with the epic VRC6 chip Konami put in, and BOY does it make its magic. this is one of the best 8-bit soundtracks I've had the pleasure to listening too, and some tracks like Dracula's final form sound absolutely amazing for the time. the NES soundtrack isn't a slouch too, give that one a listen too it deserves some respect for being able to convert the VRC6 music into a regular sound chip. not to mention the game looks just as great as Castlevania 1, and it has a good amount of unique locations to boot.

if you're a huge enthusiast of classic video games, give this game a shot, just make sure it's not the American version. they really increased the difficulty when they localized this game, and the game was already difficult enough so unless you're a masochist who's super into mental declines, just go with the cool version.

Stage 7 sucks though

Not sure how you can be mad at this game when every time your character dies they do a family guy death pose

This game is like, difficult. I don't talk a lot about a games difficulty, but this one actually is decently hard to play. Its fun to play though, and I like the swapping mechanic even if it's kind of weird to use.

It's neat.


Even with the American tweaks that make it way too frickin' hard, Castlevania III is a real banger. Play the Famicom version for a slapper of a soundtrack taking advantage of a special sound-chip, as well as a more forgiving (but still tough!) difficulty.

Castlevania III takes the already basically perfectly executed Castlevania 1 (in my heavily biased opinion) and improves on it in basically every way. More levels, better graphics, more characters, better music, better overall structure and challenge, some path choosing for replayability.... this game is amazing. It's a strong vote for the NES game to play if you can only play one in your entire life, in my opinion. It's got everything.

5 - Masterpiece: Either a personal favorite or so good I can't deny it a 5

GOD that soundtrack is good.
But "best game in the NES trilogy"? I don't know about that.

I love the visuals, the branching paths and the extra characters, but the difficulty shot up to 11 while leaving much to be desired in terms of mechanical polish.

Trevor is just as stiff to control as Simon, but CV3 requires a lot more precision from the player when compared to CV1. Trying to use items while going up stairs? It was already a problem in the first game, but it's 10x more noticeable and intrusive here. The side characters alleviate this issue a bit; Sypha can freeze enemies, Alucard can fly, and Grant can climb shit. That helps, but the stiffness is still there.

Still a great game though, filled to the BRIM with some of the best music in the series. A shame that it went on to inspire the animated series, but what you do. We can't all be winners ¯\(ツ)

(... Why does a crow deal 3 bars of damage early on, but then deals 5 bars in the late game??? It's the same bird! At least palette swap the damn chicken!)

this would be a 10/10 if it wasnt for those stupid falling blocks and the checkpointing on the last level

After the ambitious, yet ultimately large misstep of Simon’s Quest, Castlevania III sees the series go back to its linear action-platforming roots, building upon the already established formula, rather than trying anything new and outrageous. What this led to is core gameplay that overall remains the same, but generally feels more refined, and with greater variation to the environmental obstacles thrown in the player’s way spicing things up nicely. That said, along with greater variation, I’ll quickly touch upon the fact that this game’s difficulty is also significantly higher than past games, like, seriously, this game is insanely tough.

One of the more noteworthy points of interest in this game is the fact that your can switch between characters, each of which providing different mobility and/or combat benefits to provide additional potential solutions to certain parts of the game, 2 of them tied to specific routes that the player takes at specified parts of the game. Not only does this make each area of the game more interesting to take on, but it also gives the game some great replay value, since it’s impossible that the player will play every level in a single run, given how many branching paths there are. This of course wouldn’t matter if not for the fact that just like the original Castlevania, this is a game that makes simply being able to see a new level a reward in itself, with absolutely incredible atmosphere combined with often creative level design that manages to make each part of the game charming and distinct. This once again goes all the way down to each enemy requiring slightly different approaches to kill them, making each encounter something that requires a lot of split-second planning and strategizing, especially with the classic, stiff Castlevania mobility making each input potentially lead to your death. One of my personal favourite instances of this is in a section where the player is forced to walk across a series of platforms that will flip and cause the player to fall to their deaths if they jump, requiring them to carefully navigate around the constant onslaught of flying medusa heads, requiring prediction on the general pattern of each of these enemies along with apt reaction time to be able to quickly move back and forth.

With that said, despite the fact that the game is in a lot of ways a more interesting one, it also has the same glaring issue as the first Castlevania, but to even greater lengths, that being that this game tanks DRAMATICALLY past a certain point, where the late game feels more focused on beating down the player rather than providing a fun, fair experience. There’s one big difference between the approach to difficulty in this compared to Castlevania 1 however, as while Castlevania 1 began to throw short bursts of stupidity and near unavoidable bullshit, Castlevania III demonstrates more of a gruelling endurance match, where the player will have to go through a great deal of obstacles before they progress to the next area. While I initially considered this a good thing, as the level design became far less overtly unfair in this, it also required too much of the player and became a tedious slog to go through so much just to get another shot at trying the latest thing you’re stuck on, which you’ll almost undoubtedly die on a few times until you learn what you’re meant to do.

The biggest example of this was the entirety of the 7th area, the sunken ship, which had multiple parts dedicated to waiting for falling blocks to land in order to be able to slowly inch your way up to your destination, with one section taking about 2 or 3 minutes of waiting that’s mindless enough to be painfully dull, but just difficult enough to make it that they can’t zone out, lest they likely get hit by one of these blocks and are sent of a cliff to their death. While this on its own is bad, the issue is exacerbated by the fact that there are still multiple parts past this point that will ensure that if the player dies, they’ll be right back at the bottom of this section. The most obnoxious part about all of this is that after another couple of autoscroll sections with every possibility to kill you, the player is then put up again an onslaught of 3 boss fights, each one almost certainly requiring a few shots at before the pattern can be learned, especially with each of them only needing 4 hits to kill you.

Another particularly egregious example is the fact that the 3 phase final fight against Dracula doesn’t heal you in between each phase, and doesn’t even have the courtesy of giving the player a checkpoint anywhere even close to the fight, causing the player to have to go through a run back that will once again take a couple of minutes, but this one could also kill you at the drop of a hat, as you’re forced to jump between swinging pendulums over more bottomless pits while bats fly at you from all directions, a single hit surely sending you falling to your doom and potentially making the player go through even more tedious bullshit if they run out of lives. To make matter worse, the fight against Dracula is once again one that feels quite cheap, with many situations causing you to almost certainly take damage unless you’ve ascended and become a god, all made especially worse when the final phase introduces more pits that you can fall down and die. This last set of levels ended up making the game a borderline miserable experience to play through, new areas no longer felt fun, everything just seemed to test my patience more than any sort of actual skill, almost everything felt as if it had to initially be trial and errored through, which would’ve been cool if not for how damn long it took to get back, everything about these final levels genuinely felt as if the designers wanted the player to hate this game, and to an extent, I feel like it worked, because it made me have no desire to play through a lot of this second half again.

Overall, it’s hard to deny that in quite a few ways, this game nicely improved upon the first game, with the greater variation that almost always felt meaningful providing the player with even more potential challenges as they explored the atmospheric world of Castlevania. That said, while the first half to two thirds of this game was 2D platforming in top form, that last portion of the game hurt this to such a horrible degree that I ended up liking this somewhat less than the first Castlevania. Despite how much potential even this part of the game had, it just seriously had some terrible decisions compounded with asking far too much from the player to feasibly do without cheating in some way, at least not without utterly demoralising them by the end (as a note, I beat this game completely legitimately, not even using save states). I definitely like a lot about this game, but overall find it to be quite flawed and frustrating, ultimately making my experience far less enjoyable than it potentially could have been.

Scattershot statements:

The music isn’t quite as good as the previous 2 entries for me, but this is still top notch stuff once again

Playing through the game with Alucard as your partner has the benefit of turning into a bat, but it also means taking on that stupid ship level

The bosses in the game tended to be more interesting than in Castlevania 1, with some genuine pattern recognition and skill being required to get past them, with them almost all feeling as if they were designed with the sluggish mobility in mind

Subweapons remaining entirely unchanged for most of the cast felt like a missed opportunity

The fact that the Doppelganger fight seems to be built around the concept of exploiting its AI is something that I absolutely love, as it makes it a really unique, challenging fight, even if it’s placed at the end of a garbage-fire area.

The game seemed to have even more focus put into the art than in the first game, like, this game is downright gorgeous in places despite fact that it’s 8 bit.

grant: im REALLY FAST!!

and then we shake hands

Didn't like the western version but the Japanese Famicom version makes this the best NES Castlevania game. Lots of different routes to take increasing replayability. Still very difficult though.

This game is like the Abel to my Cain, in that it makes me want to smash it with a rock

eu gosto que esse jogo mantêm a mentalidade de design que eleva a dificuldade que é típica dos castlevanias clássicos mas sendo bem menos injusto que o primeiro, pelo menos na versão japonesa, já que a versão americana faz mudanças pra aumentar a dificuldade do jogo mas de uma forma que torna ele menos divertido. a música é muito boa - na versão japonesa - e os personagens extras oferecem maneiras interessantes e diferentes de passar pelas fases. eu gosto de ficar escalando tetos com o grant e das magias da sypha.

honestamente, foi nesse jogo - na versão japonesa desse jogo lol - que eu percebi que eu meio q apaixonei por essa série. eu quero tanto chegar em rondo e symphony.

A mecânica de personagens foi inovadora e deu um toque legal pro jogo comparado aos outros. Não é um dos meus favoritos mas ainda sim é muito bom

This is a great game i liked the multiple characters and branching paths definitely one of the best NES games.

The true next installment to the first game, instead of the garbage that was castlevania 2, castlevania 3 takes the gameplay from castlevania 1 and refines it, adding three other playable members to the crew as well as a branching level system, with multiple pathways and different levels to play, increasing replayability. It still suffers from NES bullshit, but to a lesser degree than the previous one...for the most part. I recommend you play the japanese version. The soundtrack in there is the stuff of legends.

A much better step after Castlevania II. This is a real expansion on the first game, with far more content, level paths, even characters to play, adding a TON of replayability. Unfortunately, to accommodate for this, this game is also significantly harder than the first, and not in a fun challenge kind of way.

The first Castlevania felt like each screen was a puzzle specifically constructed with a solution to make it by unscathed, but this game’s more loose design due to the different possible characters overcompensated with unfair bullshit and perfect precision to scrape by.

I think it is a much more impressive game than the first, and if I decide to play it more I may end up liking it more, but the first Castlevania just feels so classic, so perfectly designed, whereas this feels like a really impressive fan game without the technical game design behind it to back it up.

Way less frustrating than the first Castlevania, and a game I believe has a ton of replay value. Thanks in no small part to the companion characters you meet along your playthrough. Each of the three characters (Grant Danasty, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard) all have unique ablities that make traversing the levels so much easier. This alone makes this my favorite Castlevania game of the classic NES trilogy.

Castlevania 3 is my favorite NES game and my second favorite Castlevania game. It perfected the series on the NES and is honestly a must-play for any gamer. It retains everything good about the first, but also has better level design, more replay value, and 3 extra characters. While these characters aren't as beautifully balanced as the Belmont Subweapons, they are balanced pretty well and offer the aforementioned replay value alongside two splitting paths. The level design is more varied as well, and it feels like a perfect blend between the action and platforming, and that includes many bosses.

Not only that, but the audiovisuals are also improved, which might sound crazy considering the excellent sound design of the first, but seriously. They made an entire sound chip and stuff, and the visuals are pushing the NES to its limits.

You should absolutely play this game. I'd recommend the Castlevania Collection, not only because of its value, but because it's the only official release of the Japanese version, which is what I played. The North American version was not only made much harder, but the sound isn't as good. Play the Japanese version.

I DID IT!!! WHAT THE HELL!!!!

(I beat akumajou densetsu though lmao the US release looks like a medieval torture device in video game form)

After reading the other reviews, I now realize I should’ve played the Famicom version. The American version is stupid hard.

That’s honestly ok though— I expected the game to be punishing, so I wasn’t even that put off by it. I liked the character switching in this one, the clock tower level is legitimately impressive for an NES game, and the soundtrack, unsurprisingly, bangs.

This one may not be as timeless as the first game, or as interesting as the second, but I think it’s the most fun NES Castlevania to play. I will definitely be checking out the Japanese version.

Aaaaaah it's good but horribly horribly mean in many many ways. At least the game over song is cool.

vou ser sincero, se não fossem as passwords eu não conseguiria ter zerado esse jogo hausehusheu

This game does not hold up like I remember.

Idk, maybe I'm just too good at the genre? But this is just a weak as hell selection of levels and I made sure to choose the "Hard" path this time. Character swapping doesn't really give meat to the amount of fat the game has, with bosses that are borderline pushovers. I didn't lose a single life for the first five levels and even though the challenge ramps up as it goes, it's definitely one of the more dull castlevanias I've played despite the fantastic music. Maybe Bloodlines is to blame for partially spoiling me.

What hurts is that I loved this game so much on my first playthrough, some 7-8ish years back. It was probably really challenging for me back then, but now I'm breaking the game's metaphorical spine. It's not bad still, I guess I should say, but it's really really difficult for me to think of what else is POSITIVE in the couple hours it took to lay waste to CV3.

Potentially worth a look still, definitely recommend as a first-time platformer, not a game I enjoy anymore.

Dracula's Curse is the true sequel to the original Castlevania and is a top tier game for the NES. The level paths and new playable characters add so much more depth to this game, and of course the music and atmosphere are even better than the first Castlevania. To put it simply this game is just improved upon Castlevania 1, they play very similarly, it's just that this one is better.

I might as well also mention that this game is relentlessly difficult, which is what you'd expect from Castlevania, but be prepared to die over and over and over again because this game is a different level of difficulty even for a Castlevania game. Still a great game regardless.


It's basically what would you expect from a sequel from the first Castlevania game. Bigger, longer, prettier and expanded. The map and levels are divided in a lot of sections, we have to choose our path starting a level; either up or down. Choose wisely.

This time we can use 4 character. 3 of them locked up somewhere so we need to find and rescue them:

Sypha Belnades: A mage, focused on long range attacks.
Alucard: Dracula's son.
Grant DaNasty: A pirate capable of climbing walls.

Had to play it with all the characters for the achievements in the Castlevania Annivesary Collection. This means finishing the game 4 times.

This also, was what that inspired the Netflix serie. Awesome.

0/10 Trevor Belmont doesn’t say FU….

Controles terríveis, precariedade de movimentação, checkpoints pouco generosos, dificuldade muitas vezes frustrante. Boa trilha sonora, e level design bem feito e variado.