som de vampiro
amaldiçoado
e quando toca
ninguem fica parado
(bloody tears logo no comecinho bicho)

What an awkward, rough-hewn, gangly tween of a game. And still my favorite Castlevania.

I play it mostly for the music. Somber, jazzy, mournful. The next-gen trickery of its time feels silly now, but it does give the game room to stretch and breathe, to unfurl its bleak ambience and moody rhythms at leisure.

Super Castlevania IV offers neither the chunky lockstep of the NES games nor the urbane manners of Symphony of the Night. It’s loose and gimmicky, like Simon’s 16-bit whip, which I like to wiggle about for no reason. It feels, all these years later, strangely soulful.

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.

It was clear that by the time the SNES rolled out, developers largely had a better understanding of game design fundamentals in many ways, often with games featuring far less artificial difficulty, along with a much smoother learning curve combined with an often more streamlined gaming experience. Super Castlevania IV is one of those games that really demonstrates this, especially when looking back at the NES titles of the series. This game is overall far easier for the most part, but is also even more interesting in atmosphere and world design, playing to the strengths of the series while also complementing it with mostly improved gameplay.

When starting the game, the thing that immediately became apparent was how the player’s basic capabilities were expanded upon, with jumps that were no longer completely committal, now giving the player the ability to move in midair, albeit just enough for extremely minor alterations to trajectory, allowing the more rigid feeling movement to exist to some degree. That said, the biggest change to the basic moveset of Simon Belmont is the ability to now whip in 8 directions, opposed to just directly in front, allowing for it to be easier to find yourself in a favourable position against more obstacle, while also being conducive to more varied level design without sacrificing playability in the process. This more player-friendly control strikes an excellent balance between the constant fast paced planning of the original trilogy with much more lenient design and care required to be able to proceed past each obstacle, with a great deal of trial and error that could sometimes rear its head being nowhere to be found here. What this does is make the game considerably easier when combined with far less artificial difficulty making for a game that’s still very difficult yet feels far fairer.

Level design and variety is really where this game excels once again with the game seeming as if it’s trying to push the limits of the SNES hardware constantly with some very ambitious ideas employed throughout, with far more attention to detail of the environment than ever before. Each level feels considerably longer, but somewhat sparser as well, with a far greater distance between each core obstacle of the stage, which gives a much larger sense of scope that could sometimes be lost in the often relentless, sometimes cramped feel of the NES games. Given how one of the strengths of the series has always been the ability to immerse the player in the gothic atmosphere of the settings explored, this game really succeeds, with each area feeling unique yet very unified and cohesive, some based around making your way through a gauntlet of dangerous traps and enemies, while some others could be more focused around a dramatic vertical climb. This allows the game to be even more complex and varied in its level design than ever before, with some incredibly memorable set pieces providing a spectacle as well as an often-entertaining gameplay challenge, such as jumping across giant chandeliers or grappling your way up a waterfall.

The game’s biggest accomplishment in my eyes however, was largely making a much more enjoyable, fair end game than anything before this point, with the first time in the series where the final stages of the game had a truly climactic feel to it, with the standard clock tower stage being followed by one of the most intense sections in the game as the player has to frantically climb up falling stairs and jump from rising platform to rising platform on their way up Dracula’s tower, giving a grand sense of scale that goes unmatched. To further fortify this absolutely powerful feeling as the player then continues climbing, they’re met with a set of bosses one after the other as they’re making the final little bit of the way to the final boss. What makes it even better is how good of a final boss Dracula manages to be in this game, being a 3 phase fight and having ludicrous HP compared to anything else here, initially intimidating the player with seemingly unbeatable odds, but being a fight that can be learned comfortably, with no attacks that feel outright unfair, allowing this endurance battle to be one of epic proportions. The final nail in the coffin is as Dracula enters his 3rd and final phase, the music from the opening level of the game plays, bringing an extremely triumphant tone to the battle as it comes to a close that truly feels like a final boss done right and leaves an incredibly good impression as the game closes off.

That said, there are obviously some flaws to this game that do bring it down slightly. For one, the overall better design of the stages makes those moments of unfairness stick out like a sore thumb, with instakill pits becoming far more frustrating because of this. Furthermore, the much longer nature of the stages is a bit of a double-edged sword, even if it’s largely a strong positive, with sections that focus on avoiding these one hit kill spike traps and pits becoming far less enjoyable due to the fact that a single wrong movement will send you back way further than in past games, forcing the player to repeat large sections of the stage to give it another crack, with many obstacles in the way increasing the chances of potentially messing up in another critical moment. The level that this is most apparent in is the dungeons of stage 8, which revolve around carefully manoeuvring through spike traps with questionable hitboxes and constant pits, making it a gruelling stage with man moments of utter garbage thrown in. The biggest example of this is right at the very end of it right before the boss fight, when the player is expected to jump across a bridge of disappearing platforms that lack literally any pattern on when they appear or disappear, while spikes fall from the ceiling, leading to the player being forced to just hope that RNG is in their favour as they jump across, the punishment being getting sent back a long way away and having to get through the instakill traps all over again, but this sort of stuff is fortunately contained to a very small portion of the game.

Overall, this is an extremely well-crafted platformer that took the best elements of the previous entries and ran with them, elevating them to greater heights and taking full advantage of the more powerful hardware it was built on, leading to the best entry in the series up to that point. The journey that the player takes through the rich, immersive gothic world here feels grander and more exciting than ever before, with an even greater variety of potential obstacles leading to a truly impressive game. Even with its flaws, there’s no doubt in my mind that this is a great game that I’d happily return to in the future, and it’s clear to see why this is regarded as a classic.

Scattershot statements:

The music in general is a bit more average in this game, but Simon’s Theme is absolutely incredible, and the reprises of the most iconic themes from the first 3 games during the final stretch of the game is an absolutely golden moment that makes it an even more exciting end section to the game.

Subweapons are mostly pretty useless in this due to how much more powerful your whip and mobility are, but the massive damage of the cross makes it the only truly worthwhile one here.

The fact that there’s a secret staircase before the Dracula fight that maxes out your hearts, fully upgrades your whip and gives you a triple cross, yet Dracula is still a tough fight, really makes him feel like a truly powerful force, really elevates the encounter.

Other than the final rush of bosses, bosses here tend to be pretty lame and easy unfortunately, but at least it’s better than being broken and frustrating.

The entirety of stage 4 with its rotating level and spinning background feel like a display of what the SNES can do, and I think it makes for a very cool area.

That said, the game REEEAALLY needed to show some restraint in parts, because seriously, the amount of lag that some of these places would have got a bit ridiculous at times.