um jogo complicado, sucede o primeiro castlevania com ideias interessantes e ambiciosas, uma aproximação mais direta com o mundo e o simon como personagem, feitas a partir não da mudança do gênero plataforma, mas pela incrementação de rpg e puzzle.

Acho essa premissa muito boa, não vou mentir, mas na prática é tão sem sal e mal feito quanto as músicas do coldplay. Zero indicação de nada tornando IMPOSSIVEL progredir sem um detonado, sistema de dia/noite estranho, dungeons horriveis, "bosses" piores ainda. O único acerto dessa bomba é trilha sonora, de resto, mantenha distância

Played via the Castlevania Collection on Switch.

Castlevania 2 has some pretty impressive ideas for the time. I like the day and night cycle, I like talking to villagers, I like exploring and figuring everything out. However, I still like Castlevania 1 just slightly more.

Simon's Quest had me opening up a guide towards the end. I like the simplicity of Castlevania 1 more. And that's a personal taste preference, I fully admit that.

Castlevania II is still a solid game, I just wished I enjoyed it more.

The game really deserves its bad reputation. I can kind of appreciate that the developers tried to break new ground and change things, but my gosh, it backfired. The navigation is an absolute horror, I never had the slightest idea where I had to go and what I had to do to get ahead. There are "hints" from NPCs but they are either super cryptic, mistranslated or INTENTIONALLY mislead you...are you kidding me :D The dungeons/mansions are an absolute joke, no variety, neither visually nor mechanically. There are exactly 3 boss fights, the first of which (against Death, one of the most powerful enemies in all other parts) is even optional. All 3 fights are super easy, just stand around and shoot until the boss falls, even Dracula himself only has one phase and can be defeated this way. Yes, what else can I say, an absolute disgrace and disappointment on all levels, the music is partly ok, but it feels like it only consists of 3 songs... you really don't need to have played this game.^^

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

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

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

This is an extremely influential game, Konamis first attempt at the metroidvania concept they would define later.… but this is clearly a first attempt because Simons Quest is.. honestly awful.

Okay I like the sprite work and the music is banging, but this game is literally next to impossible to play without a guide. Despite the open ended level design, the game doesn’t feel the need to give you any real guidance, a map, area names, item descriptions, or anything that could potentially help you figure out where to go.

The aim is to “prossess” the 5 pieces of Dracula and kill him again in Castlevania. The world isn’t huge but many areas will require certain items to progress, and even then you need to know how to actually use them, like crouching by a wall with an item equipped so a small tornado will carry you to the other side? What’s the correlation?

The actual dungeons are simpler, but still expect you to defy logic and walk through walls.

It’s not as hard as the first game in terms of enemies, but combat is pretty braindead, I didn’t like the sub weapons because they cost hearts to use.. which are also currency needed to get better weapons…

The game has a day and night system which can literally lock you out of progression, and serves very little purpose… yeah this game sucks, don’t play this unless your as curious as me - 2/10

What I love about the late 80s in video gaming history is that almost so many sequels to now established franchises were some major departure from the original title. Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros., Zelda, along with Castlevania of course.

I hated this game the first few times I played it. I cut my teeth with the franchise on Symphony of the Night, then went back and played some of other early games, and by the time I tried this it felt different and wrong. A few decades of playing unending iterative sequels makes the heart grow fond for different and wrong.

To start, there's actually quite a bit that carries over from the first game and Vampire Killer: The gameplay controls are virtually identical, the music is still amazing, and the general presentation is still the grim medieval setting. Gone are the eponymous castle, and all but two bosses.

The game reverts to the non-linear style of Vampire Killer as it sends you on a quest to collect Dracula's bits, which in and of themselves act as item upgrades. It also introduced a day/night cycle as well as multiple endings depending on how long it took you to resurrect and kill Vlad again.

While I really do now like that the game tried different things instead of throwing you right back into another castle, it did stumble with the lack of bosses, some bad English translations, and stages that by the nature of the game scenario felt more repetitive than those of the linear first game. I still think it's laudable that they veered off the easy path and a title worth playing if you've enjoyed other games in the franchise.

My first experience with this game comes from hearing people online bashing this game. Particularly, a video saying that besides Castlevania 64, this game was the worst in the franchise. After beating Castlevania 1, I was a bit worried about playing this game considering what I’ve heard. I am happy to say that not only did this game exceed expectations, this game turned out to be a fantastic experience. Although not perfect, this game was extremely good and worth playing.

Taking a completely different approach from the first game, Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest is more of a RPG, with leveling systems, a day and night cycle, more than one ending, NPC’s, merchants, and needing key items to progress in the game. The game is essentially a very long, straight horizontal line but the game cleverly adds sub routes and requires backtracking to unlock and use key items to get farther in the story. You upgrade your whip, collect sub weapons that you can choose through a menu, there are several optional sub weapons you may not even encounter in your first play through, although the only one truly required to progress is in the first town to buy. You talk to NPC’s to get hints on where to go and what to do, but please just use a guide, the biggest flaw of this game is the bad translations that actually make the game extremely hard if you don’t know what you are doing, in particular the puzzle with the red crystal and cliff has such a bad translation of you followed what the NPC says, you will not progress the story. This game focuses more on backtracking, level grinding, some dungeon crawling, and atmosphere more than a gauntlet of boss battles compared to the first game.

The graphical improvement from Castlevania 1 and 2 is astounding. The backgrounds are gorgeous and high quality given the time, they hold up perfectly. The enemy designs work really well, Dracula himself has a fantastic design. Unlike a lot of games from this era of gaming, the items in game actually look like what they are, you don’t have to really guess what each one is based on look. The UI is very clean, any information you need is in the pause menu which cleans up the screen. The only thing you see is your health when playing, it really declutters the screen and lets you enjoy all the visuals this game has to offer.

The game handles well; I played through the anniversary collection on Steam, the game control wise doesn’t suffer, you can adjust the controls in the collection since the collection itself seems to have swapped buttons, but for a nearly 40 year old game, it holds up well. The game sound also holds up well, the 8-bit music sounds great and doesn’t get old, in game sounds fit well and are pleasing to the ear. Overall the age of this game does nothing to hinder the experience in the modern time.

The combat is well fleshed out; once you get a few items, the combat is pretty versatile. Pairing your sub weapons with your whip feels really good and not forced in the system. Running the flame whip with sacred flames feels like you are the terminator sent back to medieval times to hunt Dracula. I also enjoy that the game does not tell you everything and lets you figure out what weapons and items do and if the cost hearts. This game heavily rewards experimentation and thinking outside the box.

If I were to have complaints about the game, the translation, as previously mentioned, is the biggest flaw of the game. I cannot stress enough, use a guide. I would also say that the two boss fights before Dracula are too easy. Also the ring item does nothing, which is lame.

I am very happy to say the Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest is a fantastic game, one I will revisit, and is far better than its perception given to it in the modern time (the game upon release was reviewed positively, and held that perception until the AVGN review, the timing of the review and how early internet content sharing was, tanked the games image). This game is worth seeing past its flaws and has aged gracefully.

Eu sempre vejo as pessoas xingando e falando que esse jogo é o pior da franquia inteira principalmente o AVGN ,mas eu não acho ele tão ruim quanto dizem

Sim ele tem seus problemas que muitos dizem,os Bosses são muito fáceis se tiver pego os itens e os itens são muito difíceis para achar e tive que até ver vídeo na internet e a gameplay é bem sem sal, porém a trilha sonora é muito boa e tem uma ideia bacana

Ele não é um jogo ruim mas ele não minha de jogos de Castlevania como um jogo ok

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While the Castlevania Anniversary Collection DID add all the Japanese versions of the games on it in a post-launch patch (the Japanese versions for the English release, and vice versa), the one exception to that is Castlevania II. I even bought the Japanese version of the game on the Japanese Switch eShop, and even THAT version just has the American NES game instead of the Famicom Disk System version of Castlevania II. Given that this is even more of an adventure game than the MSX game is, and therefore has a lot of text, it's easily the worst game you could possibly do that with if the intention is for Japanese players to be able to understand what they're playing XP. The only explanation I can think of to why they did this is that Konami just didn't want to bother getting Famicom Disk System games to work on their Famicom emulator, so they just slapped the NES version on there since, unlike Castlevania 1, no cart version of Castlevania II exists in Japanese. Weird version nonsense aside, despite this game's dire reputation, I was actually very pleasantly surprised by what it had to offer.

In a weird turn (particularly for Westerners without access to the MSX game), Castlevania II is much more a successor to the MSX game than the Famicom game. Releasing the year after the first two games, Castlevania II is an action-adventure game through and through. Just like the MSX game, you have hearts not really to use subweapons, but to buy things from merchants. In an even more odd twist, those hearts also function as experience points that you will level up with to gain a larger max health bar. Unlike the MSX game, however, there's not a set of levels to go through, but a side-scrolling overworld connecting a series of towns and mansions to explore. This is the first time we start getting much any story in a Castlevania game as well. After Simon killed Dracula in the first game, he unwittingly was cursed by the vampire despite his victory. He now must go through five mansions around Transylvania to collect the remnants of Dracula and then bring those remains to Castle Dracula to destroy them to free himself from the curse once and for all. It's not much, but it's something, especially for a series that would eventually become much more narrative focused.

Simon goes from town to town hunting for items, and these items take all variety of forms. Like the MSX game, you can buy subweapons, and some of those subweapons consume hearts but some do not. There are also items you'll need to progress through dangerous areas, as well as passive items to unlock secrets. Even Dracula's remains function as passives when selected, like Dracula's Rib being the return of the invaluable projectile-blocking shield from the MSX game. Most interestingly to me is how your whip can be upgraded to simply do more damage forever. The temporary upgrades of the past are gone, and now you can even get a really awesome flame whip if you REALLY wanna heck fools up. You're gonna need those better whips too, because this game works on a day/night cycle, and enemies get twice as tough at night time. This game has three endings, and you need to beat it within a certain amount of time (which is a pretty damn tight time frame, all things considered) if you want Simon to live through his quest.

And that time limit comes down to the ultimate flaw with this game: signposting. Like so many other adventure games of the 8-bit era (even the Zeldas of the time aren't free from this design hurdle), the massive amount of time spent with the game will be wandering around utterly lost as you try and stumble into the next totally unexplained thing you need to do to progress. The combat and platforming in Simon's Quest aren't particularly hard, but what IS tough is just knowing where to go or how to progress in the first place. The times I did use save states were largely just to save time should I make a wrong turn or take a bad jump, and not usually for larger difficulty reasons. Simon's Quest in particular suffers from a pretty rough English translation that makes the information you ARE given that much more difficult to use in the first place. A guide is absolutely essential if you're going to make it through this game in any reasonable amount of time, let alone get anything other than the worst ending. Personally, I didn't use a guide for my first attempt, ended up totally hecked after accidentally skipping the first three mansions, and then started using a guide. I took a wrong turn near the end of the game and the time it took to recover from that still put me over the 8 day limit you need to beat in order to get the best ending, so all I got was the 2nd best ending XP

The presentation and base mechanics of the game are both good improvements to the first game. You'll sometimes get framerate slowdown, but it's not too brutal or game affecting thankfully. This game polishes up Simon's movement a fair bit too. He moves just a bit faster, jumps a bit quicker, and whips a bit faster. It makes the whole thing feel a bit better to play than the first game, although the kind of action and platforming you're doing isn't exactly the same most of the time. This game also has some of the best music in the classic series, with the main theme, Bloody Tears, being one of the most iconic songs of the entire franchise.

Verdict: Recommended. My recommendation here is largely on the condition that you'll use a guide. If you don't use a guide, then it's honestly largely on you for how frustrated you get being lost, because this game is a doozy of a game for how lost it makes you XP. As a relatively early Famicom adventure game, however, this is a really solid one. The difficulty almost never feels unreasonable, and it's a pretty good time to spend an evening trekking through if you know what you're doing. I was very pleasantly surprised by my time with Simon's Quest, and I'm looking forward to someday playing through the Japanese version so I can compare just how misleading the hints and information are in the original Japanese compared to the cryptic English text.

I went in to this thinking it would be awful due to AVGN but surprisingly this game is good. It's not great but it's still a solid time.

Some enemies can be really annoying like the slimes especially with the placement of them, and the bosses are way too easy including Dracula.

I found some of the items to be pretty good and found myself often using the Flame Whip, Holy Water and Laurels.

The day to night transitions aren't really that bad, and while I appreciate them trying to make a more exploration based game, the cryptic puzzles are just annoying.

Overall it's a good game, not great but still fun
62/100