Yet another Konami Game Boy game that makes me question if it was even tested. There are so many moments where the level design and enemy placement are so constricted, moments where enemies spawn right on top of you, and moments where enemies will instantly aggro as soon as you enter a screen that I swear you have no choice but to take damage. This is also the first Castlevania game I've ever played where the timer killed me. How the hell are you going to make levels with an emphasis on openness and exploration and not give me enough time to even finish them? Better question: how the hell are going to make such levels and have so many of the alternate paths lead absolutely nowhere? And why in FUCK would you hide a level needed for the true ending behind something so utterly illogical?

The subweapons are pretty much worthless except the one that maxes out your HP, but that combined with the Burning Mode (which I often activated by accident because the controls are so dick) makes it possible to tank every boss after it's accessible. The bosses themselves are already pretty embarrassing, especially the Death fight, but when you add these elements to the mix, they're completely trivial. It all comes together for one of the easiest frustrating experiences I've ever had, if that makes any sense.

This is surely better than The Adventure, but it's far from exceptional. I really don't know why it exists, but Konami's decision to pretend it doesn't may be the best one they've ever made. I'm going to follow their lead.

For context, I haven't played the other GB Castlevanias, but as a fan of the series in general, decided to give this a try. I'd heard it was bad, and I wish I could disagree.

Sonia has two modes: agonizingly slow... and twice as fast + invincible. You can only use the invincible "burning mode" once per life, and it doesn't last for long, but it should be enough to get you past the more frustrating spots and help you mindlessly blast through bosses. But as cheap as it may feel, you wouldn't want it otherwise; one of the shorter Castlevanias, yet also one of the cheapest, this game basically begs you to use its built-in mechanics to brute force your way through. I didn't feel like I had cheated myself by making liberal use of Burning Mode, as the game just isn't really fun to play except in that brief span of feeling overpowered. In addition, the adventure overall has an option called "light mode" where you can choose to give your file a constantly fully-powered whip. I didn't play with this, but wish I had, since there didn't end up being much of a challenge regardless, and by the time I was halfway done I just wanted to make it to the end.

I know people have praised that Sonia can change direction while jumping, and also walk/whip while ducking, which is apparently a step up from the previous GB titles… but the default feel is still clumsy, especially with the change in the subweapon system removing a lot of the player's toolkit and creativity. Something I normally adore about Castlevania games is hunting down the best strategic subweapon for your preference and needs, but here you get power-ups one by one after beating various levels, making the game feel very limited until later on.

This game has some annoying enemy placement (and they'll respawn if you scroll the screen, too), and is filled with bats that will knock you around before you can maneuver your horizontal whip to kill them. The devs also loved tall vertical rooms which the hardware cannot handle, leading to slowdown every time.

The final boss is a test of learning patterns and figuring out where to stand, which is... ok if you like that sort of thing, I guess. It actually made me feel engaged for once.

The idea of the first vampire-hunting Belmont being a young woman is cool, and I was happy to see my boy Alucard show up... until the implication that the two of them were an item, which was weird. It also makes the implications for the future of the Belmont clan weird. They really drive home the strong independent girl thing, and yet have to make sure to tie her into having a romantic involvement with beloved Alucard from that better game. In the end, I don't mind that this is no longer canon.

When I was in high school I had a MegaMan game on my calculator. That’s what this game reminds me of. This is the beautiful and elegant idea of Castlevania stripped down to its barest essentials, so that you might play it portably. Isn’t that cool?? At the time, getting the Castlevania experience on a road trip must have been entertaining enough to get some to cut this game some slack. In the modern era, only the most hardcore and curious of fans need bother.

I knew from the moment I saw Alucard show up in this nothing game, starting to spout words to a character he never mentions ever again in the series, this game was definitely someone's fan-fiction. Like there's no other way to explain it, no offense to the character herself, I think its great that we have a female protagonist after all these sweaty buff guys, but she really fucked herself over by having a Gameboy game of all things, as we know already those games aren't the greatest, and neither is this one.

No soc gran fan dels Castlevania de la Game Boy, però crec que este és encara pitjor que els altres.

El tema d'agafar objectes col·leccionables per al final vertader no està mal de per sí, que per a fer-ho toque menejar-se per escenaris lineals amb rutes alternatives fàcil de confondre amb les normals, és una idea HORRIBLE.

El major interès d'haver-lo acabat era fer "check", la veritat.

For someone who grew up loving Metroid 2, this game scratches a similar itch. It translates the original Castlevania's gameplay to the Gameboy pretty well. I played this on the Switch emulator, where moving around feels smooth and having the ability to rewind is very nice. I can imagine on original hardware it is a much different experience -- the countdown clock, the dead ends, the way it would look without backlight, and the way enemies respawn just outside the small screen are punishing. But modern hardwar and rewind makes sometimes unfair fights more tolerable. This is not a game that's meant to be played in one shot like games are played today - you're supposed to be putting it down and coming back, finding secrets, and writing down passwords to come back later. But if you don't have time for that and are willing to bend the rules a bit for modern convenience, it can be a a very fun 90 minute adventure.

The first few zones are pretty easy, and if you use the powerups, you can get past most obstacles pretty easily. The game gets a little more abrasive as it goes and you'll take some unavoidable hits due to the screen size. The ropes are an understandable platforming downgrade from stairs, having it kill you immediately when you fall down is an unfortunate reminder of the times. Having secrets to discover is great, and I like the way they handle the upgrades. However the story, the appearance of Alucard, and the dialogue isn't much of anything so definitely don't play this game if you're looking for a story. But if you're looking for a game with good vibe to hang out with, you could do a lot worse than this one.

I actually hadn’t even planned on playing this any time soon, but, going through my Switch and doing my usual checking of the new games on the Switch Online retro services, I found that I’d completely forgotten that this got added to the GameBoy service! One of the few classic Castlevania titles not on that collection that Konami released a few years back, this was a great excuse to finally play through this and see what the last GB Castlevania game is all about~. It took me about an hour and a half to play through the Japanese version of the game with my Switch Pro Controller without using save states or rewinds at all.

Legends follows the story of Sonia Belmont, the original first of the Belmont clan, as she goes through Dracula’s castle to put him down for the (at the time) canonically first time. You bump into Alucard along the way, but it’s a pretty straightforward and simple story that you’d expect from an action game on the original GameBoy. Konami eventually struck this from the canon, and I imagine it was a combination of them wanting to make a larger, grander “The Saga Begins!”-type game later via Lament of Innocence alongside how the little writing this game does have is a bit embarrassing in retrospect (like how in their one conversation together that we see, Sonia is not only Alucard’s protégé but also implied to be a romantic interest for him ^^;). As is, it’s an inoffensive and funny story that does more than enough to set up the action at hand, much like its many classic Castlevania brethren.

But stories, silly or no, really aren’t why we go to Classic-vanias after all. We’re here for gameplay! And this game, while certainly not the strongest of the Classic-vanias, is a pretty darn good one! Across the game’s five (or more, if you find the secret stuff, which I did not bother to do <w>), you’ll trek through Dracula’s castle fighting monsters and bosses along the way. Nothing surprising there. Reusing the same formula (and likely the same engine) as Casltevania Adventure, you’ve got your whip that has two upgrades with the second one being a fireball, but this game mercifully decides not to downgrade your weapon upon getting hit like Adventure does. The weirdest part of this game is how it handles sub-weapons. Instead of finding them throughout stages, you get a new one every time you beat a boss, and you can select one from the pause menu whenever you like. You also have a “Burning Mode”, which gives you temporary invincibility alongside a doubling of whip strength once per life, and it’s a HUGE help for the harder fights and sections (especially Dracula).

Beyond just the very forgiving addition of the burning mode, boss and level design is overall pretty solid while still trending towards the easier side. There are a few traps or mean-ish placements of enemies here and there, but playing carefully should see you past most obstacles on your first or second try regardless. Even with that, the game’s approach to dying is very kind too. Losing all of your lives and continuing puts you back at the last door checkpoint you went through exactly like just losing a life normally does, making this a very nicely forgiving Classic-vania, and a better game for it, in my opinion. It’s certainly not going to set your world on fire, and it might be a bit too easy if you’re a super fan of much harder, meaner games like Castlevania 1, but if you want something a bit more along the difficulty of a classic Mega Man game like I tend to prefer, then this is a great time to play through.

Aesthetically the game is very nice for a late-life original GameBoy game, though it’s hardly the nicest thing in the world to look at. You have lots of big, nice sprites and I never found it difficult to tell what I was looking at, but it’s not a particularly pretty game one way or the other, even if it’s not exactly ugly either. There is some slowdown as a result of all of the detail on the sprites and backgrounds, though it mercifully never really affected gameplay negatively. I usually appreciated the bullet time it provided, more than anything XD. While the graphics may be a bit middling, the music is however excellent. It’s largely a collection of classic Castlevania tunes, and these are some absolutely delightful 8-bit GameBoy renditions of them. Granted, you could quite fairly fault the game for lacking much originality in its soundtrack, I still think that the quality of the reused older songs more than makes up for it, especially in such a bite-sized Castlevania package~.

Verdict: Recommended. While it’s not a particularly stunning game one way or the other, I found this to be a really fun one! The wrinkles in its design don’t put it quite as high as the second GB Castlevania game for me, but if you’re a fan of 8-bit action games and/or Castlevania, then this is a game you’ll likely quite enjoy spending an afternoon with as I did~.

So, after talking about one of the most content heavy games with pages upon pages of talking points, I guess it only makes sense to follow this up with what is easily the most unremarkable, mediocre game in the series where I’ll barely be able to find anything worth mentioning. After the genuinely enjoyable GameBoy game Belmont’s Revenge, my expectations were heightened for this entry, given that it showed that even with the limited hardware of the handheld console, something genuinely fun could come from a Castlevania game on it, which made this one all the more disappointing when this title felt so devoid of much of anything.

In a lot of ways this game feels like a massive downgrade from the previous handheld game honestly, going back to simply proceeding through Dracula’s Castle, rather than evoking a wide range of atmosphere that Belmont’s Revenge did, along with having much weaker variety overall, most stages having the same few enemies, along with no meaningful new or interesting mechanics or ideas between stages, making for an extremely uninspiring playthrough. Probably the most perplexing of the decisions in this game is the fact that the role of subweapons was decreased further, each stage having a particular subweapon that you seemingly cannot change, but with the issue of none of them actually being worth using in the slightest, making the game feel closer to the awful Castlevania: The Adventure than its sequel. Other issues with the game are that the levels end up feeling way too long and repetitive, with some setpieces seemingly used multiple times in each stage, almost feeling as if you’re playing through the same area 2 or 3 times, not helping is the fact that the game’s incredibly easy. Any challenge this game potentially could have is removed by the invincibility feature, which allows you to move incredibly fast and take no damage once per life for about 10 seconds, making those few moments of potential challenges absolutely worthless anyway. The only time I struggled in the slightest here was in the very last section of the final level, and it was more a test of patience than skill.

Overall, this game is pretty bloody disappointing just in how it feels devoid of practically anything good, although it’s not the horribly misguided mess of the first GameBoy title at the very least. There wasn’t a point in this game where I felt like I was actually having fun, just happens to be fortunate that it was very short and easy anyway, otherwise I’d probably rank this as my least favourite, since even Castlevania The Adventure managed to have some more distinctive level design, for as horribly flawed and unbearable that game felt.

Sonia is an enjoyable protagonist and the small bits of dialogue are surprisingly good, but that really doesn't save the rest of the game. Many of the improvements seen in Belmont's Revenge are simply not present here. The difficulty is completely unbalanced thanks to the new gameplay mechanics, making this one of the easiest Castlevania games to play through, and yet also one of the most frustrating due to poor and overall just very sloppy level and enemy designs. The graphics are uninspired and dated even for its time and the music is the same 20 seconds long track on loop.

The soul weapons, the previously mentioned new mechanic which replaces the sub weapons, are an interesting idea but they all vary completely in usefulness. Combine them with the newly introduced burning mode that makes this game's Belmont unstoppable and you have the easiest boss fights in the series, Dracula included. Castlevania Legends is still by all means better than the Adventure, but there is not much to enjoy here. It's kind of shocking to realize it was made in the same year as SotN and see it take inspiration from the game in form of hidden rooms and branching pathways, but it just never gets the execution right, again leading to more frustration than enjoyment.

i have no words. actually no, i have 7

What a Castlevania Legend!
Ooww!
Ohh, no!