It's fine.

When folks decry Super for being a blasphemous take on the tried-and-true formula of Classicvania with it's eight-directional whipping, they're absolutely justified in their thought. It takes away the strategical element that made us love the thinking person's aspect behind the careful movement. An entire sub-system becomes a complete afterthought, with them only being convenient at hyper-specific instances rather than something that was there to truly compliment our whipping prowess to help with entire courses and encounters. Taking a death becomes less threatening as losing a sub-weapon essentially turns into a very minor slap on the wrist at worst, as an empty sub-weapon box may as well had been what it felt like the entire time we had been playing.

It's an ordeal that can't be simply ignored in a self-imposed challenge like the charged mega buster in every NES era Mega Man past the third game, and you're left with Simon being able to skillfully twirl his whip better than any other Belmont before or after him. Perhaps Simon was always meant to be presented as the most headstrong and bullish of the family? Characterization through mechanics? It remains to be seen if that was the intent, or if it was supposed to be an "evolution". An evolution that no doubt would've made this entry an even bigger target of contempt, especially if the stage design would continue to fail to compliment the new system beyond smattering a few bats flying down from odd angles, and if we could still easily thwart Axe Armors from below the floor they're standing on. Luckily for all of us however, this would be the only time such a new take would be used, and instead of being a deplorable turning point for the series, it is in fact unique and now it's own experience.

A retelling of the original that shows Simon's entire journey from beyond Devil's Castle, braving the horrors that crept from the onset of the horrid manifestation of Dracula's power within what was once a peaceful forest accompanied by strings of a violin within a purple and grey console. A walk through the caves with beautiful woodwind arrangements, and mesmerizing illusions brought upon by the seventh mode conjured by unknown forces presumably under the control of the dark lord himself. The approach to familiar scenery from the beginning of our original story of the legendary quest partnered by intimidating percussion for nightmares to come. We make our way through the retold portions of Simon's tale, and upon completion hear echoes of our past one last time before we must move on to beginnings of a new generation. The slow haunting keys of an organ cue the entry of Dracula to the main stage. Simon's Theme of which signaled the entrance of the hero at the very start, returns once again at the final moment the Count is nearing his defeat to build the audience's tension to the epic conclusion of the adventure. The orchestra plays to the agonizing death of the villain, and rings in daylight's victory over the darkness.

The fabled saga, retold and reimagined with added flare of chilling drama and suspense. Not to replace the original, but to remember it through a more cinematic lens. Forever immortal.

I forget when I first played Super Castlevania IV, but it was quite some time ago, and all I really remember is not enjoying it. I've been on a big Castlevania kick lately, and I knew it would finally be time to revisit SCV4. Will I see the error of my ways, or will all the bad memories come flooding back? Yeah, I still don't like this one.

It's not a bad game; it's just completely serviceable. This game feels like what an AI would spit out if you tasked it to make a Castlevania game based on all the previous titles. Story-wise, it's a retelling of the first game, with Simon Belmont taking on Dracula for the first time. In the North American version, the story was altered to take place after Simon's Quest. The gameplay, on the other hand, is a whole other can of worms. The biggest change here is multi-directional whipping. Sounds cool on paper, right? But I'm going to be a snobby, elitist asshole and say this shit stinks. This trivializes most encounters and makes nearly all of the subweapons practically useless. At least you can flail your whip around if you hold the attack button.

Jumping was also changed. In the previous games, your jump was more methodical; you were committed to your jumps. In SCV4, you can adjust your jump midair. I don't mind this as much, but I really do prefer how your jumps were performed in the previous games. Honestly, the most glaring issue here is that I find the overall package boring. I never cared for this game's visual aesthetic, and the soundtrack was just kind of there. Also, why is this game so long? It wasn't until after I finished stage 9 that I realized the game was still going. I replayed Rondo of Blood the day prior to writing this, and that game is a nice, brisk seven stages with branching paths and a second playable character (I would have used Dracula's Curse as an example instead, but I haven't replayed it yet).

Super Castlevania IV kind of just exists. Again, I don't hate it; I just don't find any aspect of it particularly interesting. I get why people like this; 8-way whipping is cool, and more mobility in the air is nice, but for me, I was yearning to go take a nap instead. Ya know, I also wasn't super (heh) into Contra III; maybe I should give that one a second try as well.

played using the Super Castlevania IV Uncensored hack

"Mid July, 2017: Now that I've been getting into games before my time, it's time to finally dive into Castlevania. I picked up Aria Of Sorrow, since I already saw footage of it thanks to a YouTube video, and Super Castlevania IV cause it was supposed to be a great entry point. Time to start with this one and... huh? This was what I was hyped up to believe was one of the best 2D platformers ever, let alone on the SNES? A visual drivel containing unmemorable setpieces and music, and a dull difficulty "curve" that doesn't become truly challenging until near the end because I can whip in any direction like a moron? Pass, guess I'm just gonna one of the guys that's a fan of the Metroidvania (fuck you I'm not using Search Action, that's legit a more limiting term) style... wait, the first game's actually super good and not nearly as hard as people make it out to be? The third game is truly one of the best 2D outings you can buy so long as its the Famicom release? Bloodlines is a better 16-bit showcase of what the franchise can now do? Rondo Of Blood is now one of my favorite games ever? Huh... I'm pretty glad I kept pushing on with Classicvania, but now I'm left with one question:

why did people like this?"

Late January, 2023: Man there's been an obnoxious amount of people trying to act like this was "when the franchise became good", they're becoming the same annoying pricks who think turn based RPGs are only good when they're INSERT NINTENDO FRANCHISE HERE. They're just fans of this specific entry, which would be fine if they stopped acting so high and mighty about it and think they know what they're talking about with "archaic design" (purposefully built on positioning and adaptability like a Mega Man game) and "obnoxious enemy placement" (becoming impatient, not utilizing the many different subweapons for optimal attack, and failing to recognize patterns, with exceptions of course). The only thing keeping me from becoming uber-aggressive about it is from the radical shift in public opinion SCIV has been receiving, probably cause RoB's gotten more ways to be played and more people are talking about Bloodlines. I've been feeling stubborn about replaying this for years, but fuck it, I have nothin to do for the moment, and I'm motivated after Weatherby wrote their review for it, might as well.

What's the point of having the Holy Water, Dagger, and even Axe be here if whipping in any which way and doing the whip dangle is just as, if not more effective? I can do a diagonal attack at a standstill and hit the aerial enemies, crouch down or jump and hit a small enemy in a pendulum motion, and even attack on stairs with the whip now. What happened to that careful planning from before? Now I just feel more encouraged to stockpile hearts for the Cross, which at least still requires some tactful plays, and the Stopwatch. Also doesn't help some of these bosses are so pitifully easy, excluding or including the cross. Let's see here, the only time this mindset doesn't apply is in... 5-8 situations throughout the game's 11 stages, each containing about 2-4 sections within them. Great.... wait wait wait, why is this game so long now that I think about it? Wouldn't it be better to have some of these paths in alt routes like Dracula's Curse did? It'd not only make for replayability, but also lessen this feeling of arduous tedium from having to do all of them at once.

Why do people like this?

The music's like, fine, but what's with the reverence for it? Sounds like the composition team were told to make an atmospheric soundscape and went from there. Simon's Theme has some alright synths and gorgeous organs, but the drums are so tinny and the bass is lacking, making this one of the few times I feel like the rearrangements and remixes majorly stomp all over the original piece. What'd they do to Beginnings and Vampire Killer? This doesn't feel like the final stretch, feels like Simon's just about to keel over and take a nap! The Caves is pretty alright, some nice alteration the two instrument's melodies and, but it doesn't really have anything on Clockwork Mansion a few stages over with its drum rolls, plucks of strings, and more beautiful organs. Entrance Hall and The Chandeliers are pretty good too. Still though, this isn't what I consider to be "grand music", and of the SNES games I've dabbled in, it's nowhere near the best OST.

I'm still not really sure I understand...

I know this was a launch title, but the aesthetics are unruly garish, and not in an appealing way. Nothing really stands out compared to what you can find in the NES games, even including Simon's Quest, and the other two 16-bit titles. Colors are so needlessly saturated even with Ares' CRT filter applied, and stuff like 3-1 feel like hurtful noise to the senses. Goofy Halloween vibes? The only thing goofy about it is... oh, whoa, I don't remember Stage 3-3 having these lovely blues as the water. Did the halls of Stage 4 and Stage 6 always contain these different hues and tones, I only remembered the Mode 7 setpieces. I wish Stage 8 didn't contain such similar looking palettes, cause the actual detail within the foreground and background are pretty damn good, but at least Stage 9 makes up for it with how the treasury is laid out. Hm... though it still doesn't suit my senses and I doubt I'd still remember everything like I could for the other entries, maybe it isn't as bad as I once thought, there's some good stuff going on here.

I... think I get it?

Hmmm.... I still loathe the changes to the whip and changes to the subweapons, but I gotta admit once 3-3 comes on, this can be pretty fun to break open. I could've sworn the whole grapple aspect fell off after Stage 4, but this gets some fair mileage actually, though they still should've leaned harder on what the whip can now do instead of keeping it mostly the same. Wow, finally some fun encounters and thinking with the enemy, it took until the midway point but better late than never I guess. These bosses are still kinda lame though, but I'll concede in that maybe holding onto the Stopwatch is becoming guilty of the same stubbornness I criticize others of doing since Sir Grakul, Akmodan, Slogra, and Death got me to put in more effort into what I"m doing, and I felt limited since I can't be able to use it in this game like in the first game. That being said, why'd they gotta go all-in on the understandably cheap aspects of insta-pits and one hit spikes? These are already pretty adequately laid out such as the use of turning platforms and tight object drops, they could've cut it back a bit. Man some of these scenarios are gimmicky, but I'll gladly take the block paths in Stage 4-4, the intermediate and lax nature of Stage 5, pretty much everything in Stage 7, and of course the Clock Tower, they stand out. Aw fuck, now that I'm writing this, I learned there's some pretty cool secret rooms to uncover, I don't usually dabble in doing this but they look cool.

This Dracula fight is somethin... it's probably the only time in the game to really get me to act like how I usually am with the other Classicvanias. The fire attack sucks shit, and the timing window for the lightning pillar is a smidge too tight for my liking... yet there's something about this allurement that pushes me to keep trying. Feels like even the designers figured this out with that secret invisible staircase right before the actual leadup. I gotta admit, timing the triple shot cross attack, combining the jump turns with whip movements, finalizing the kinks of these patterns... seems like there's still a little bit of the old formula under the hood after all. Would never recommend this as a starting point at all cause of the extremities taken in streamlining this, especially since there's still the first games and even Bloodlines if people really wanna go at it, but I guess I was a wee bit harsher on SCIV than necessary.

Alright, I get it now. This isn't and won't ever be for me, but I understand the appeal finally, after all these years.

Castlevania IV is a re-imagining of Simon's first adventure, but for the Super Nintendo. It's actually a totally different game, introducing an interesting control scheme never seen before in the series, and also presenting a new approach to gameplay, making it a little less difficult for newcomers to get into the franchise, but without leaving out the challenge altogether.

This is the first Castlevania game to be developed for a 16-bit console as such, and the improvement is clearly substantial in every way, but I'll start talking about the graphics, which are superb especially for its time, as the pixel art is very well detailed and despite being one of the earliest Super Nintendo games, are still an aspect of the game to highlight. Although later installments such as Rondo of Blood leave a little "obsolete" the artistic style of this game, as it has more stylized designs and more vibrant colors, however, I think Castlevania IV is far superior when it comes to attention to detail in the scenarios, as each place is full of small details that fill them with life, from grass growing between the bars in the first level, or things like when the water falls on Simon and you can see how it crashes when falling on his shoulders and head, or when it passes through his legs. The only downside to this is that the game can suffer from constant slowdowns.

Another thing I love is the soundtrack, as each piece takes advantage of the Super Nintendo sound chip in a very unique way. There are songs like the intro and the forest song from the second level that are incredibly atmospheric (and part of my favorites as well), or there are also other songs like the one from the submerged city level that have that cool jazzy feel but surprisingly retain the atmospheric and gothic feel of a Castlevania game very well.

Perhaps the most controversial change, but one that I personally adore, is the great versatility given to Simon when it comes to attacking with his whip, as now instead of just being limited to the direction he is facing, you can direct the whip upwards, downwards or even diagonally. This in itself makes the game get a more frenetic pace, because if you know how to use the whip with precision you can defeat in the blink of an eye the enemies that come your way, which allows a faster progress through the levels. Many are annoyed by this and the fact that you can redirect your jumps as well, as it makes everything much easier, but I think it's a good change, and a good attempt to evolve the gameplay of the series that unfortunately was not taken up in later installments. Other small tweaks that I appreciate for how significant they are is that you can now get on ladders by jumping on them and also instantly get off at any time from them, which really makes a difference.

The level design is spectacular, and this game is a good example of how technological advances can really change the way game levels are designed, as the levels are full of little gimmicks that make use of the Super Nintendo's capabilities in creative ways in the stages. Not to mention that I think this game has a difficulty curve that makes it easy for new people to have a good time with a reasonable challenge that increases with each level.

Speaking of boss battles, the variety of monsters you face in this game is good and even though some still have that erratic factor that makes them a bit unfair at times, there are other battles that I quite like, specifically the last 4.

Conclusion
Castlevania III set the kind of level design, music and atmosphere that the series should have, and I think this game set very well the kind of locations and attention to detail that game settings should have, as well as the smooth and satisfying gameplay that the series should follow, a culmination that came with Symphony of the Night in my opinion.

This game is superb no matter where you look at it, it won't be perfect, but it is truly one of the greats and a good reimagining of Simon Belmont's first adventure.

Castlevania is a series I missed the boat on as a kid. The first one I played was Symphony of the Night which was awesome but kind of sucks because that was my Castlevania measuring stick. Super Castlevania IV does not measure up to SotN however it is a very solid entry in the series. As a remake of the original it mostly does its job with better gameplay (the whip control is a game changer) and obviously going from NES to SNES a major graphical improvement. I did however enjoy the originals music a little more overall.

My main problem with this game is somewhat janky controls and difficulty inconsistencies. Sometimes I was dying over and over in the same exact spots, many times due to some janky controls/movement, and sometimes I’d fly through levels with ease.

I’m guessing that if I had some nostalgia for this game I would think of it as an all time classic but playing it today it was just a good game that I definitely can recommend to people that like retro platformers.

i'll admit, the prospect of a castlevania game with more control options was always one that allured me. now that i have some experience with the series however, i can't say i'm particularly fond of the changes made in super castlevania 4. the identity of the first game was founded on it's difficulty, and by extension it's lack of control. it's not fair to say the game doesn't control well though. every action performed in the first game had to be calculated in advance, and the game is clearly structured around this. however, when the series moved to the snes and more power was given to the player, i'd argue it lost a lot of its identity. simon can now whip in many different directions, control the arc of his jump, and generally speaking just feels snappier to move around with. on paper these all sound like positives, but unfortunately konami didn't accommodate for this in the rest of the game. sub weapons in particular feel the effects of this change. what used to be a system designed to cover the blind spots of the whip, now has very little reason to exist. any positional challenge can be overcome by the whip and jump control. i hesitate to blame this on the nature of this being a remake/retelling of the first game because there are clearly small moments that utilize this newfound control (the crouch walk sees interesting moments later on) but they clearly didn't want to reinvent the wheel with the series quite yet. to make matters worse, instant death traps such as bottomless pits and spikes are placed all throughout, possibly as a way to counteract the ease of control. this makes deaths feel more frustrating than before, as the few times the player is punished, they're punished to an absurd degree. the soundtrack is surprisingly weak too. not that the compositions are bad, not by any stretch. it just lacks the punch i normally expect from the super nintendo sound chip. i won't make the claim that this is a bad game, but something was certainly lost in translation from the 8-bit classic that preceded it.

This was my Castlevania growing up, so of course I have generally positive feelings about it, but over time I have come to see why it's a real weird junky one of these in the minds of many. I have grown and reevaluated and now I appreciate it for what it is: hilarious.

Today we might call this a """"""remake"""""" of the original Castlevania, but that doesn't matter. There's an aspect of CV4 that's just like, totally misunderstanding what made Castlevania tick. You can now whip in eight directions because we have the technology now. You can change your jump momentum in midair. You can jump onto stairs. These points of friction are the cornerstone of old Castlevania, and removing them leaves you with some stuff that feels too easy and a lot of points where they compensated with some real fuck you shit. Even now, when I've got most of the game on lock from having played it multiple times, I used save states to get myself through a couple of nasty late-game segments. Swinging on a whip is very cool, and it makes sense that it's there, and I love how it's totally different from the whip swinging in Bloodlines, but it's just a bit imprecise. It wants you to engage with regular physics in a game that otherwise wants you to engage with video game physics.

HOWEVER! All of this, the desire to "update" the game to SNES tech, is aslso the where the unique charm of CV4 is born. In order to call the original Castlevania a horror game you have to start spouting a lot of pretentious shit about player disempowerment or something, because the super cool bouncy music and bright colors don't exactly turn whipping skeletons into actual horror. CV4 has a different answer: this is a horror game because it's just a corny-ass haunted house. This is the most halloween game of all time. There are hands that erupt from the ground or from haunted paintings just to grab and hold you for a brief moment, often not causing you any actual damage. There's a ton of evil poltergeist furniture. There's a giant rotating funhouse tunnel full of skeletons for some reason. The music is more subdued, just a little bit spooky, until you get towards the end of the game and are finally granted your remixes of Bloody Tears and Vampire Killer, sounding heroic is ever in glorious SNES synths.

It makes sense, doesn't it? I'm the sort to really get into the mechanics which make the old Castlevanias tick, but I was two years old when CV4 came out. You didn't sell a two-year-old on a game with esoteric game design principles, you sell them on it by putting cool bugs on the title screen and when you press start there's a wolf howl. The series that is Castlevania is always existing on a spectrum where on one end you have the actual gothic horror of the novel Dracula, and on the other you have a bitchin' guitar solo. CV4 simply represents the closest the series ever went to one side. It's delightful. Every stage has new background details and one-off obstacles that sell the unique character of the location, from haunted books in the library to chests stuffed with gold in the treasury. I never get bored of it.

Also, and this just didn't fit anywhere else, I love the font they use in the name entry and credits. It's so fancy and unreadable it's like a parody of itself. I love it so much.

PolaroidJack’s ‘Mid March’ Birthday Weekend Castlevania-athon Extravaganza Part 5:

Without a doubt the best of the original 4. Not even close. But its still got some pangs. Notably the last few levels are still a pain in the ass as ever, with a really terrible boss gauntlet (thankfully they had enough empathy to checkpoint you to before the start of each boss, you don’t have to fight all 4 back-to-back). Controlling your whip makes a huge difference on how you’re able to handle threats, it feels like you can finally style on certain enemies with enough quick thinking.
My main complaint is just certain ideas on how the whip being out ‘works’. Mainly complaining here about the Death fight. Why the fuck does holding your whip out but keeping still allow you to take all those shots. If that weren’t the way to steamroll that fight I would have killed myself trying to beat the gauntlet with how fast he throws out his ‘sickles’.
I also didn’t realize until super late that you could extend your reach when swinging with the whip by pressing up and down, leading to some more late game frustration.
A lot of my main complaints from prior games still stand here but I do think the added freedom of movement with regards to yourself (you can control your jumps now! revolutionary!) and your whip helps this game in the long run.

luci não é possível que você vá conseguir dar overshare falando de super castlevania IV que que tem aqui pra isso

check this out

super castlevania IV era um jogo que eu não gostava e não gostei quando joguei 11 anos atrás. por muitos anos eu falei que era ruim, fraco, que era um ultraje o Simon usar o chicote pra tudo quanto era direção, que não era o MEU Castlevania. agora porque que eu não gostei? será que foi porque o AVGN não gostava? será que foi porque joguei virando a noite pra viajar pra praia de Torres cedo de manhã? (uma das piores viagens de todas) será que eu só não gostei mesmo? seja la o que for, o motivo foi perdido ao tempo.

mas o que eu não perdi foi o medo do primeiro exemplo que mencionei. embora eu respeite e adore james rolfe avgn, eu sou (ou era...?) uma pessoa muito influenciável por quem respeito. apesar que eu sempre tive lampejos de personalidade, por muitos anos ela foi... suprimida. eu não era perfeitinha, minhas notas no colégio eram além de péssimas, mas eu também não era rebelde. eu concordava, tinha a mesma opinião dos meus pais, eu era confortavel, uma bonequinha. com meus amigos era diferente, lá eu sentia um sentimento geral de não pertencimento, então eu era defensiva, defendia tudo com unhas e dentes, talvez porque eu não respeitasse muito a opinião deles visto que eles não me respeitavam quando eu era permissiva. e ai entra as relações parasociais pra piorar as coisas mais ainda, pois veja, james rolfe avgn nao sabe de minha existencia, ele me respeita unilateralmente ele queira ou não. o que significa que vou escutar atentamente o que ele tem a dizer e talvez, quem sabe, tornar a voz dele a minha. aconteceu com mais frequência que gosto de admitir.

eu tenho um medo mortal de ler opinião negativa de algo que eu gosto escrito por alguém que respeito, pior ainda é se eu estou jogando o jogo. pois aquilo entra na minha cabeça, toma espaço, fica martelando "nossa mas isso é tão ruim assim e eu que não notei?", tem chance de tomar conta de mim, da minha identidade, da minha personalidade, das minhas opiniões.

o que pensamos é certamente um amalgama do que os outros pensam e já pensaram ao longo da história da humanidade, não me acho, nem quero particularmente ser, única. mas eu queria encontrar minha voz, ter uma identidade, ser eu mesma. isso era impossível por muitos anos por motivos que não cabem mencionar aqui, mas sinto que isso melhorou muito de lá pra ca. melhorou tanto que agora que consigo olhar nos olhos de Super Castlevania IV e dizer: muito fofo que você celebra tudo o que veio antes e ainda assim tenta ser único. não briga não esperneia, mas faz seu esforço pra ficar de pé com os outros. e por isso eu te respeito mais, super castlevania iv.

adendo: as musicas são boas msm mas são bem dissonantes do resto da série. o que não é ruim! mas não são super lembradas por esse motivo.

yeaaaaahhh Super Nintendo time

it's pretty interesting that this game is a retelling of the first Castlevania and I'm not sure why they went this route since the first game still holds up surprising well outside of that NES jank (technically this is the third retelling of the first game but we don't talk about the first two attempts)

gameplay is amazing, and that has to do with the fact that Simon Belmont actually took the time to make himself some cool lighter armor that lets him move around more freely and that is a godsend in my opinion. other people will argue that "but muh stiffness!!!" and to that I say that while I do respect your opinion and that you have the right to prefer whatever way you want your Belmonts to control, I will also say that your opinion is very poopy and stinky. I'm not afraid to admit that having the ability to swing the Vampire Killer in eight different directions is quite overpowered, as fun it is to do so. I tried to minimize my use of it to just the straight forward attack a good portion of the time, but god it is so tempting to just swing the whip in different directions when the urge comes! I'm sorry I can't help it it's way too fun even if it does make things easier than it should! I was barely doing it during the earlier stages but man I just wanted to do some funny whip stuff! besides as far as I know they went back to the old stiff movement and singular directional whip after this game so let me enjoy it while I can! oh yeah the last two or three levels are kinda annoying just want to bring that up, not with enemy placement just some annoying platforming segments (who could have guessed).

these graphics man, they're pretty nice, also I do love me my Mode 7 as well. my only gripe though is that it could be maybe a little more colorful, the colors can be a bit dark at times and there could certainly be some more eye-popping color choices, that's just me though. also this might be a hot take right here, but out of all the Castlevanias I played so far, this one probably has the weakest soundtrack. yeah I know this game is trying to be atmosphere and moody and it does do a great job at that, but I don't know this style of music for Castlevania isn't really my cup of tea.

that said, I get it though. I get why people like the music because while I was playing, I had a similar moment to what I had near the end of Simon's Quest. after defeating the second-to-last boss, I walked through this hallway as torches lit up and this track began playing. it wasn't intense or menacing like the other times before Dracula, it was foreboding, sinister, and even melancholic. going up those stairs had a different emotion compared to the other times. in the others it was like "alright time to kick Dracula's ass!" but here it felt more like "oh god I'm really fighting Dracula....". the best part is that the track continues playing while you fight him, so the whole somberness and uncertainty remains during your battle, and the difficulty helps contribute to that. then near the end, everything changes. that track fades away, taking it's place a very familiar upbeat one instead. all of a sudden, the tables turn and you're given the confidence to finally finish off this guy in triumphant glory! I love it when games successfully manage to build atmosphere like that, so much so that they get me typing for an entire paragraph.

so um yeah I enjoy the game, a second playthrough someday is not off the table. it'd been pretty cool if it had different pathway and characters like Dracula's Curse, but it's fine though. I think the perfect Classicvania game for me would be having the ambitiousness and upbeat music like Dracula's Curse, while retaining the fluid movement and high quality graphics like this one. put those together and we have a great idea in our hands.

why is the IV in the title though this is a retelling not a sequel, Konami back at it again with false advertising

Now we're talking videogames, son.

Castlevania 3 is a great game that sadly stumbled thanks to its clunky controls not meshing well with the increased difficulty and level design challenges. On the other hand, CV4 maintains the difficulty, adds new level gimmicks(flexing some of that newly attained SNES power), and finally elevates the controls to match everything else, making for one hell of a game. Simon controls like a dream, no longer having to commit to one direction when jumping, able to whip in 8 directions and wiggle the whip to deal with birds and bats, not to mention HAVING A DEDICATED ITEM BUTTON! HALLELUJAH!

It also features one of the most unique soundtracks in the series, a real "love it or hate it" kinda deal. I personally love it; it's very experimental, almost relaxing in certain cases. "The Library" being one my favorite examples.

The visuals fully lean into the "Barbarian-esque" vibe that early Castlevania games had going on, from Simon's design all the way to enemies and even locations. It doesn't get very gothy until the last few stages, but honestly, I dig it. We're still ways off from Rondo of Blood's early 90's anime vibe or Symphony of the Night's Ayami Kojima designed gothic goodness, though.

All in all, a superb experience. My favorite SNES game, and second favorite classicvania. The dedicated item button alone makes it a 5/5 lmao

So you are telling that not only has the Count tried to destroy an entire country multiple times employing the foulest, most monstrous forces ever conceived… but he’s also hoarding riches and making entire pools out of them Scrooge McDuck style? He really is a monster!

No but really, the fact that money can literally kill you is some next level commentary through gaming, Konami really was onto something back in the day…

Castlevania IV is… weird, and not because it differs a ton from its peers, but because of the complete opposite reason: the original NES/Famicon trilogy, as unabashedly hard and obtuse as it could get, was probably some of the most unique and impressive collection of games hat the 8-bit machine had to offer, but not only compared to other games, amongst themselves. For better and sometimes for the worse, each of the games are so distinct from each other at their core that if the team really wanted to, they could have created another two IPs, but they still feel deeply tied with one another and the connections, evolution and experimentation are what make them such an impressive trilogy. Even when Dracula’s Curse went back to a closer style of gameplay to that of the first one, it still felt different, but no matter what, it always felt like Castlevania. And hey, IV does feel like Castlevania too!

… and that’s about it…

Well, actually, even if it seems like I’m presenting that as a complete negative, that would imply this series isn’t the amazing bastion that is, and if even the first game in the series was already bringing the console it was on to its limits, Super Castlevania IV wasn’t going to break tradition: this game. Is. GORGEOUS. Some backgrounds aren’t the prettiest and some color selection stuck out to me as, to put it bluntly, pretty jarring, but I think that’s because the rest of the game establishes a standard that of the Mona Lisa. Simon and the foes he must face look flawlessly, perfectly horrifying, beautifully haunting, every single returning face is the most perfect translation into the 16 bit realm you could think of, and every new enemy fits with the crew like they’ve always been there. There’s a clear and palpable desire to make what wasn’t possible before, a wish to make the macabre feel alive coming being realized, make levels shift and spin in impossible ways, hearing the howls and growls of beasts as you make them fall, it’s uncanny in the best way imaginable. Even as someone who doesn’t really enjoy this OST compared to what previous outings had to offer, it offers that characteristic SNES ambience sounds that I enjoy and many people love, and for good reason.

Castlevania IV feels like the team behind it decided to make what they wished they could have done on their first go, and I mean, it’s meant to be a re-telling of that original adventure, but even beyond that, its otherworldly detail, its focus on ambience, its desire to be even bigger and greater, none of the stuff that IV does could have been done before… at least partially.

I wouldn’t call the game ‘’derivative’’ as much as I’d call I ‘’inconsistent’’, one moment you are presented with a super cool new idea, like the reworked whip and its seemingly endless possible uses, and right after you realize that, aside from the fact you can hook and balance through certain levels which is amazing, this is just more of what was seen in Dracula’s Curse, except it’s not even close to being as fun or inspired. Many of the hazards and level ideas are entirely lifted from that of the last NES entry, and when they aren’t that, either it’s because they are either a minor spin on a preexisting idea, an actually super cool challenge or layout that only gets used once and then forgotten, or a very simplistic and/or dreadful thing to have to repeat over than over, and let me restate, the original trilogy wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of completely fair design, but one thing is to be a meanie with the player, and then there’s the boss rush before Dracula that’s in her which… that’s just evil, man…

The game takes a ton of ideas from the works that preceeded it without really having the same tact or mindful design as something like the Clockwork Tower in Dracula’s Curse had, and even if it has snippets of excellent, creative concepts that make up for pretty fun parts of levels, it doesn’t last long before we are back to ideas already seen or that don’t really work. Even the aforementioned new whip control, which I fucking love, aren’t really that compelling to use simply because, aside of some instances when being on ladders, hitting an enemy that’s on an upper platform or when being swarmed by birds, there aren’t really a ton of instances where using it feels fun or well-thought out. Enemies still behave like they did the last three times, the only exception being the bosses, who are easy to kill at best or obnoxious at worst, so it’s not like they are the best example, to be honest.

It tries to tell a story that was already told by expanding it, but its idea of expansion is grafting more levels onto it that tell a part of the story that wasn’t necessary on the original and that, without the path feature from III, feels tacked on and is only saved because of how some scattered levels like Stage IV are pretty memorable, and that’s the thing, it can be fun, it can be creative, and in some places and moments, it clearly is, but it seems afraid to stay out of the shadow of its older brothers.

Effects may be pretty and the sounds stunning, but IV doesn’t aspire to be anything more than yet another vampire vanquishing adventure, and so its destined to be stuck at the halfway point, one that needs to be compensated with instant deaths and immediate fail-states, ‘cause no matter what, the game has to be difficult, this is Castlevania after all, no matter the cost…

It still isn’t quite what I feared Dracula’s Curse was gonna be, but it isn’t far from it either… moon-walking on stairs in the best thing in any of these games tho!

So far in this series, we have had a trilogy of frustrating, yet wonderful games on the NES (all the problems with Simon’s Quest aside), and two handheld titles that weren’t quite perfect, with Castlevania: The Adventure in particular being extremely flawed, but for what they were, they were pretty effective as the first handheld titles for the series. Oh yeah, and there was also that one arcade title as well, but shhhhh, we don’t talk about that game in this household. Now, after this slew of titles, it was about time that this series was brought to the next generation of systems, with Masahiro Ueno being up to the task, not only deciding to make the game less frustrating in comparison to previous games, but also making a game that would be a remake of sorts of the original Castlevania. So, after two years of development, Super Castlevania IV was released to the public, and has since been praised and enjoyed for many decades to come.

This is considered to be one of, if not THE best, game in the entire Castlevania series, and when you play it, you can definitely see why. I myself wouldn’t consider it the best game in the series, as there would be several games made later down the road that I would say I enjoyed a lot more then this game, but don’t think that I am saying this game is bad, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. In my opinion, this is what I would consider the PERFECT rendition of the original Castlevania, and it is executed flawlessly in practically everything that it sets out to do. Yeah, it is kind of a step back when compared to Castlevania III and the features that game introduced (which is understandable, but still), and some of the bosses can be a huge pain in the ass, but none of those things ruined my experience with what is the perfect way the Castlevania series could have entered the 16-bit era.

The story is… basically the exact same as the original Castlevania, which is completely fine, as you really don’t need a big story to get you into the action, the graphics are absolutely fantastic, not only having the perfect look for these gothic environments, but also having fantastic atmosphere, which can even be seen as early on as the intro cutscene and the title screen, the music is GODLY, with plenty of original tracks along with remixes of classic themes, and there are some real head-bangers to be heard from this, the control is… I’m not ready to gush about them just yet, we will get to them eventually, and the gameplay is a pretty good evolution of the classic formula, while keeping things mostly familiar for those who are coming from the previous games in the series.

The game is your typical 2D Castlevania title, where you travel through many different side-scrolling levels, whipping many different gothic monsters along the way, gathering hearts, sub-weapons, and items to help you deal with the many baddies seen throughout, and taking on many larger-then life bosses, with the bosses themselves having great variety, either being classic monsters we have seen before, or new types of monsters with their own gimmick. Yeah, the game sticks closely to the original formula from the original Castlevania, which is kind of a letdown, again, considering what Castlevania III brought to the table, but what makes up for this is how the game manages to take this formula and perfect it.

Playing through the game overall does feel a lot less frustrating then that of the original game, with there not being too many instances of cheap damage or deaths that you will encounter. Now don’t get me wrong, this game is still pretty damn hard (after all, it wouldn’t be a Castlevania game if it was easy), but a lot of the hardships you will encounter can be taken care of pretty easily, and you will feel responsible for the damage you take and deaths you suffer… well, most of the time anyway. There will be several bosses, especially towards the end, where you will have quite a difficult time with them, as they are relentless, but thankfully, with the help of the unlimited continues, they shouldn’t take too long for you to take down once you learn their patterns.

One of the defining features of this game, and one of the reasons that I absolutely adore it, is with the control. This game has the BEST control scheme out of any of the classic Castlevania games, and I wish the future games would’ve stuck to, but hey, at least we have it here. For all of the previous game, while the control was enough to get a hang of, it was still pretty limited, with a very stiff movement and being unable to change your jump in midair. Thankfully now, despite still have a somewhat stiff movement, you can change your direction in midair while jumping, as well as do things like jump onto stairs to help you get through places faster. It may not sound like much, but it does help out a lot, making the pacing much faster, and giving you an edge up over the enemies. And speaking of getting an edge up over the enemies, this also goes into your whip, which is the best that it has been and will ever be in any of these games. Not only does it still pack a punch and have a great length, especially with the powerups, but you can also whip it in 8 different directions, as well as being able to… flail it around like an idiot, for some reason. I don’t need to explain to you how helpful this maneuverability and attack range is, allowing me to get plenty of hits and kills in on enemies that, if the attacking was the same as the original game, I would never be able to do easily without some damage.

Overall, despite some slight hiccups to be found here and there, this is definitely the best entry in the Castlevania series so far, and one of the best in the entire series. If you were a fan of the original trilogy of games, or you want to experience the series but don’t know where to start, then I would highly recommend it, as I guarantee that you will have at least some fun with it. I can’t even think of an ending joke this time around, the game is just too good. Go play it. NOW.

Game #254

Vee commented on my review for Belmont’s Revenge expressing interest on whether I’d be a Super Castlevania IV liker or hater which did surprise me a bit because, in my complete ignorance of this franchise, I was under the impression that this is a really well-liked game! I’m glad to hear it’s a little more divisive because I was beginning to worry I was just going to be an eternal, obstinate contrarian with this series. It’s nice to know that I have a camp of people with me in thinking this one is a bit of a disappointment.

Super Castlevania IV takes the tack of a lot of early or series-first-outing SNES games (in this case it’s both, squeaking in just under a year after the console’s debut in Japan) in acting as a sort of ground up reimagining of its NES forebear rather than a true sequel. The goal here is to take the basic framework of the original Castlevania and balloon it to much more expansive proportions while simultaneously introducing new mechanics in both play and presentation that would have been impossible on less powerful hardware. SC4 goes in whole hog on this, expanding itself to probably four or five times the size and width of Castlevania and shoving 16-bit graphical luxuries at you so frequently and with such enthusiasm that it sometimes feels like a tech demo as much as it does a lavishly produced Castlevania sequel.

These aren’t bad things, necessarily. It IS cool that they can have Simon travel from the foregound to the background element now; even if this mechanic doesn’t really amount to anything play-wise, there’s an obvious giddyness to its implementation, or that of the truly migraine-inducing rotating cylindrical skeleton hallway halfway through the game. None of this stuff HAS to be here, and indeed Mode 7 sees much more practical use in the room immediately preceding that hallway where you turn the entire geometry around your character, or the boss fight that is actually a Mode 7 background element cleverly disguised as a character sprite to allow it to grow and shrink in size. It’s here because it’s COOL. A LOT of stuff is here because it’s cool and I fully support that.

In fact the single best thing about the game is its visual presentation. When they found themselves with suddenly a LOT more graphical fidelity than they’d ever had before, the new Castlevania team headed this time by a relatively young Masahiro Ueno needed to decide whether these games were gonna go all in on actual gore and horror or like, goofy cartoon B-movie shit and they went ALL in on Spirit Halloween vibes, it’s nonSTOP in this game. There are skulls just like, everywhere, on the ground, hanging from the ceiling, embedded in the walls, following you with their eyes; paintings reach out to grab you and books rattle supernaturally in their shelves. All of the familiar Castlevania mainstay enemies are here but there are some really great additions to the repetoire, my favorites being the ghostly ballroom dancers that haunt the middle range of the castle, floating around to music only they can hear and seeming to harm Simon by accident as they shoulder check him during a dance they don’t realize he’s not a part of. There are cobwebs and goop everywhere, and a lot of the returning bosses from the original game have new twists (special shoutout to the giant bat, who has been placed significantly later in the game and is now made of a mass of evil sapient gold coins that take the SHAPE of a bat, very sick). It’s just wall to wall a visual treat. I wish I could say that about literally any other part of the game.

It’s not that I DISLIKE any particular aspect of Super Castlevania IV, it’s more that none of it really moves the needle for me either way? The music is a prime example of this – after the first level opens with an absolute banger track, one that’s both foreboding of the adventure to come and full of this jazzy soul, confident that Simon will claim victory, almost all of the music in the game is just like, incredibly mild, borderline ambient. None of it is bad but it’s not the vibe I’ve come to expect from Castlevania, and it doesn’t even instill dread like calmer tracks in Castlevanias past. It’s a strange choice to make the music so sedate when the visuals of the game are SO maximalist at all times. The gameplay at large is in a similar spot. There are key changes at play that drastically alter the feel of the series in the form of 8-directional-whipping and being able to adjust your jumps in midair, but there are smaller things too. Subweapons are significantly less powerful by and large, or at least they feel it, while your whip is MUCH longer than in any other game, and you now have the ability to also like, freehand shake it around once it’s out, at which point it will still do damage when it connects, a fact you can use to absolutely obliterate literally anything in the game that gets close to you. What you’re left with is a game that massively empowers you but despite being expanded hugely from the game it’s based on, doesn’t seem to really account for your new tools in its level or enemy design. I definitely don’t mind a game being easy, and I don’t even care about the sanctity of difficulty in Castlevania in particular either. What I think sucks about this in particular is that the game is just kind of unengaging. It’s a long game by Castlevania standards, easily the longest one so far, but there isn’t a lot of variety to the actual stuff you do in each level despite fantastic visual theming across the board. It’s a long game that feels very samey across the board. This all culminates in a really bland, simple Dracula fight that hands you a win nearly as easily as the one in Simon’s Quest but without any of the thematic weight that one has. In a microcosm of the game’s play problems, he doesn’t even have a second form but he DOES have three equally simple attack patterns. It’s a long, boring fight that doesn’t ask very much of you at the end of a game that’s long and boring and doesn’t ask much of you.

I wish I wasn’t writing this because I wish I wasn’t feeling this way because there is SO much to love here. It’s just ultimately swallowed up by the fact that these ARE games that are so far mostly driven by the part where you walk to the right and whip a skeleton in the face until he explodes (the explosion effect is incredible in this game they really just burst like a clattering water balloon full of pretzel sticks) and that part is juuuuuust tedious here for me. More like Middling Castlevania IV. More like, Super Mediocre Castlevania IV. More like, more like, more like Subpar Castlevania IV. That’s pretty good let’s go with that one.

EDIT NOW THAT I HAVE SAT ON THIS FOR A FEW DAYS I TAKE IT BACK THIS GAME IS FINE IT IS NOT SUBPAR CASTLEVANIA IV IT IS SOUP-N-SALAD CASTLEVANIA IV, LIKE IT’S NOT WHAT I’M HERE TO EAT BUT I’M NOT GONNA NOT GET DA SOUP OKAY

PREVIOUSLY: BELMONT'S REVENGE

NEXT TIME: RONDO OF BLOOD

I'm not sure when it became vogue to dump all over Castlevania IV, and I don't really get it either. I've seen people say diagonal whipping is disruptive and antithetical to Castlevania's design, and others who think there's too much held over from the NES games which results in too many cheap deaths and artificial difficulty. The latter one is especially weird to me as I think Castlevania IV is the perfect series starting point, easy to get into and finish in a single session, and a portent of better games to come.

The core gameplay of Castlevania IV is as simple as it's ever been: you jump, you whip. Strut your way through levels filled with spooky skelemen and ghouls, then whip the ever-loving crap out of a boss. Repeat. It's the good sort of simplicity, though. The kind that makes it extremely easy to sit down during an empty afternoon and just play. I enjoy Castlevania IV like I enjoy a hot bath, one frame at a time.

So, performance is a problem. There is a lot of slowdown, especially against some of the bosses and any set piece using Mode 7. To be fair, Mode 7 was flashy but rarely ever facilitated good gameplay. There's notable exceptions of course, like F-Zero and Pilotwings, and I can't imagine the SNES without it, but it does Castlevania IV no favors. The section where you're rotating the level around and taking out medusa heads isn't difficult or anything, it's just tedious, and that tedium is made worse by how slowly it plays out; and of course there's the spinning tower you find yourself in shortly after runs at a cinematic 6 frames per second.

My only real gripes from a game design standpoint are towards the very end of the game. The clocktower is a nightmare to navigate, and the vertical scroller that leads into the boss rush requires a level of precision the game simply does not expect from you until that point. Otherwise, I find IV to be a remarkably smooth game, at least as smooth as it can be for something that is still so decidedly stiff. Weapons have a great punch to them, there's some fun set pieces, the visual design makes everything feel suitably dreary, and the soundtrack is one of my favorites on the console.

I sure hope it's not a Weatherby Hot Take that Castlevania IV is a good game, but if I hear any of you say so in the comments I'm going to call Grant DaNasty and give him your home address. The complaints levied against this game are doubtlessly valid to those expressing them, but they've always come off a bit exaggerated to me. Game just feels good! I like it.

Castlevania makes its jump to the Super Nintendo, with Super Castlevania IV!
In spite of its title, this game is more of a re-imagining of the events of the original Castlevania, rather than being a sequel or anything of the sort.
There are some similarities with the original NES title, but a lot that you'll see here is brand new, and also showcases the power that the Super Nintendo has.

Super Castlevania IV is perhaps one of the best showcases of a console I've seen. Like yeah, it's not perfect, and there's plenty of slowdown when there's many things of screens, or when you're in one of those Mode 7 sections, but graphically, this game is very impressive.

Sprites are very detailed, backgrounds have many colors to them, and you can instantly recognize what type of stage it is by them, and there's so much variety in the places you traverse.

Just like Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, it takes a while for Simon Belmont to get to the actual castle.
You go from forests, to caves, to aquatic ruins up until you reach Castlevania itself in Stage 6. Then certain things will play out like the original game, but only really in concept, like falling down a hole to reach an underground layer of the castle, but the stage here looks much different than last time, and it takes a while longer for Simon to reach to the top of the castle.

While this game has some hard parts here and there, like Slogra being the bane of my existence, or Stage 8 having many spikes that are one-hit kills, Super Castlevania IV is much easier than Castlevania I and especially Castlevania III.

Not only is the level design this time around much less punishing, and there's way less bullshit enemy placements, Simon himself not only has mid-air control, but he can also whip in multiple directions, and jump off or on stairs with ease!

In addition to him being able to use the Vampire Killer to swing from specific chains, this game has some of the best controls in a Classic Castlevania game!

And the soundtrack, oh baby, that soundtrack!
Even though I never grew up with a Super Nintendo, I've always been a fan of its sound chip ever since I was young, and Super Castlevania IV puts it to good use, being able to pull off atmospheric music, while being pretty catchy!
There are so many themes I like, from Stage 2's theme, to the Prologue theme, to the theme that plays at the end of Stage 5, to Stage 9's theme, to of course, Simon's theme, which makes you feel like a badass, especially when it plays during the final part of Dracula's fight!

As you can probably tell already, while it's not perfect, Super Castlevania IV is my favourite Classic Castlevania game, and one of my favourites in the franchise. For being a game that came close to the Super Nintendo's launch, it's amazing how well this game has aged, and how fun it still is to this day!
It's a high recommendation from me!

Oh man what an incredible game. This is peak classic Castlevania in my opinion. The improvement on control makes this game feel amazing, Simon controls so well with 8 direction whipping and all. I can't help but feel like the future entries took a step back with the control, the Belmonts would never control this amazingly ever again...

Every annoying thing about old Castlevania like stairs, bs deaths, and all that is gone. The stage design, graphics, and music not only hold up really well, but I think its the best in the series, at least for the classic Castlevania games. This game really pushes the SNES's limits graphically, the 16 bit still looks awesome today. Even though this game drops the alternate level paths and characters, I still find that I will come back to this game pretty often, as it's a perfect Castlevania game. If only Konami made games like this today...

Second Castlevania game I tried after SotN, and a damn good one as well. Controls very, very nicely, and from the looks of the previous games this seems to have toned down the frustration levels significantly, though of course I'll have to see myself. Atmosphere, music and detail are all incredible too, making it yet another one of those early SNES titles to to a great job showing off what the console could do. Both of these games give me a wonderful impression of both the earlier and later Castlevania series, and I'll definitely be sure to check out more.

Finished playing Super Castlevania IV.
Out of all the Castlevania games that i have played this is probably the best one in my opinion. Super castlevania IV is considered a remake of the 1st one so the story is pretty much identitical but everything else was improved. You are now able to use ur whip (which i also found it to be more satisfying for some weird reason)in all directions and spin it around.You can also use the whip to swing around these rings that you find in some stages making the platforming a bit more fun.The sub weapons are the knife/dagger, axe, holy water, the boomerang and the time stop. Other than the time stop which uses 5 hearts all the other sub weapons only use 1. The enviroments and the atmosphere of the game without a doubt look very great. The game has a total of 11 stages. The first one is the ruined fortress and the boss that you fight here is rowdain which is a skeleton that rides a skeleton horse and they are a very simple and easy fight that there isn't really much to sag about. The 2nd stage is the forest of evil spirits and you fight Medusa here and all she does is throw snakes and circles at you so again another very ez boss. The 3rd stage is the ancient ruins where you fight the orphic vipers and their a 2 headed dragon and this is the 1st boss that i kinda liked. There's also the Puwexil fight and its basically a huge skull with a tongue? Again its a very meh boss. The 4th stage is outer keep and you fight koranot which is this huge rock golem that shrinks whenever you hit it. The 5th stage ks the castle court. The 6th stage are the halls and the boss fight is a dancing couple(dancing spectres)💀 its unique i'll give it that. The 7th stage is the unliving quarters and you fight sir grakul which is a very good fun fight . The 8th stage are thedungeons and you fight the monster or frankestein and oh wow he throws potions at you what a boss! The 9th stage is the treasury and you fight zapf bat which is basically this huge bat made of treasure which is very unique even if the fight itself is meh. The 10th stage is the clock tower and you fight akmodan II and it had a very unique arena that made the fight enjoyable imo. The final stage (castle keep) has multiple bosses. Slogra is meh, Gaibon is meh, Death is cool and Dracula is meh. The stages were all so much fun but the bosses are my biggest complaint about the game are the bosses and other than 4 bosses all of them were just so lame but their still not as bad as Castlevania the adventure's bosses. Lets get back to the positives now tho holy frigging smokes the music i mean do i even need to say anything? Overall other than most bosses being lame i don't have many complaints about this game. It is a fairly short but great experience 8.5/10

It makes me so mad that they kept the mechanic from the NES games where you can’t drop back down in a level. Once you climb up somewhere, if something knocks you off a ledge— which happens OFTEN— you are dead, even if you KNOW there is ground RIGHT THERE, because you were literally just on it. It’s just slightly offscreen! ahhhhh. Enraging.

In general, the platforming in Super Castlevania IV is brittle and terrible-feeling—spikes with giant hitboxes will one-hit-kill you, you have to make these awkward jumps onto the itty bitty corners of ledges all the time, your jumps are often interrupted by some obstacle above you and you die, etc etc. All of that might be acceptable in an NES game, but in the 16-bit generation, it feels like a pretty massive failure to evolve.

However—whippin stuff is fun. The free-swingin chain is especially neat. Though, it sometimes feels as though the game was designed NOT with an all-directional whip in mind, and like that was only implemented late in development… because there are so many enemies you can just whip to death from below super easily, and it feels a bit odd/broken.

Not that the game isn’t difficult. It is. It made me very mad, a lot. Luckily it’s nice enough to give checkpoints and infinite continues and passwords, so I did end up making it to the end— though, I didn’t beat Dracula.

My big problem with Super Castlevania IV, other than the oft-critiqued platforming, is that, for my money, the Castlevania series is all about bops, tunes, jams—and this doesn’t have any. The music is shockingly ineffectual, considering how outright delightful and immediately grabbing the NES soundtracks were.

Overall, I guess it was fun enough… but it just didn’t quite learn the right lessons from the older games. It feels stuck right alongside them, to me, instead of being the entry that pushed the series into the future, as it perhaps wanted to be, and should’ve been.

A cool game but on a replay I really started feeling as if this took on the role of being a somewhat awkward middle ground between the two extremes of the more linear games in the series. A lot of the changes to how Simon controls that make him feel "less clunky" take away a lot of the appeal of the games for me. He doesn't feel as if he's got as much weight behind his actions as the characters from the previous entries in the series, which also serves to take something away from the requirement to very carefully consider your next move, now that you can adjust what you do so much easier. This on its own isn't inherently negative, after all, quite a few of the later games feel as if they play out by having 2 unspeakably powerful forces constantly clash, but in this case, a lot of the design still feels stuck in the trappings of the NES era of the series, only now without Simon having a moveset that complements it all too well.

This is most clear with the additional directions you can now use the whip essentially trivialising the subweapons in 90% of cases, shifting their role from something to complement your capabilities and make a lot of situations easier if you knew what you were doing, to a case where occasionally you'll just throw a knife to hit an enemy slightly far away to change things up slightly. The one way that this has been very nicely implemented into things is the way that each stage seems to have moved away from being shorter gauntlets of death into these long winded endurance test where each time you get hit feels meaningful because everything feels as if it's going on forever. I think it's a neat enough way to approach things, making each hit taken feel more punishing to balance out the fact that it's easier to avoid damage. It works really well for the first 2 thirds of the game as well, and helps provide a greater sense of scale to everything as you're making your way to Dracula through locations that feel utterly endless in places.

This side of things do end up falling apart a bit towards the end though, with the level design starting to throw more cheap deaths at the player, while further increasing the stage length, leading to a situation where getting blindsided sends you back frustratingly far. This is exacerbated by the fact that despite supposedly being a far less clunky game than its predecessors, this is the one game where I feel as if there had been moments of me actively fighting controls, particularly with stair climbing feeling far weirder and less trustworthy. Despite all of my complaining, the game's still pretty good, especially in terms of its presentation. Everything is so maximalist, it feels as if it's excited to be on more powerful hardware and to push that as far as possible, with all kinds of cool visual effects (most notably that one rotating circular hallway) and just go all out in creating a set of really cool, varied environments to walk through. I similarly like the enemy and boss designs visually, still utilising a lot of that classic gothic horror iconography, but in greater detail and having some neat new enemies that would become mainstays in the series (I love Slogra's design a lot). Basically, even if it doesn't always play great, it's one of those games that's still pretty fun to just immerse yourself in, even if it's not quite the well-oiled machine that the first game is.