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

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

Before being retconned out of the series chronology, Castlevania: Legends used to be the very first game in the series' timeline. It features the first incarnation of Count Dracula as well as the first Belmont, Sonia Belmont, to rise against him. For what would be a pivotal game in the series chronology, it's... definitely one of the Castlevania games ever made.

The Game Boy and Game Boy Color were filled with boneless, unambitious platformers, be them licensed games or attempts to bring home console franchises to the portable, and Castlevania: Legends is one more game in that latter pile, featuring uninspired level and enemy design, a janky, barebones implementation of traditional series mechanics and encounters that are an exercise in frustration. It has a very short runtime, but even so, it's better off being skipped.

It's a shame, too, because it features a female protagonist, whose appearance on the cover of the game was what drove me to try it in the first place. Sonia is pretty cool, it's just that her game is... not. I do enjoy the implication in the best ending that she had a son, Victor Belmont, with Alucard, thus forever tying the Belmont bloodline to Dracula. My gal literally doomed her entire bloodline to get a piece of that gorgeous dhampir, which... based and goals? Mad respect for her.

Besides, just think about it: had Legends stayed canon (which in my heart, it did), it would recontextualize every one of Alucard's appearances as him looking out for his great great great great grandchildren. "Richter, get down from that throne, you're going to hurt yourself". "Trevor, take an adult with you to fight grandpa's dad, okay?". I can only assume Iga struck the game out of the continuity because he was too afraid of how powerful such a narrative would be.

Yeah... not counting remakes, this was the last Castlevania game with the classic gameplay, and I have to say that, although I understand that many people are fond of it because it was part of their childhood or because they believe that having a female protagonist saves it, on the other hand, this game sucks and I think nothing justifies it.

Without exaggeration, this game feels like a prototype of Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge (the second GB game, released in 1991), which for some reason 6 years later Konami decided to release to get some easy money. Everything is a big step backwards from Belmont's Revenge, the gameplay feels slower and clunky, the graphics are less detailed, the level design is bland and boring. There's no challenge in the game, sure, you'll die a couple of times, but when you do it will be in the most boring way possible, because the enemies are positioned in ways that are simply annoying, but not challenging. It's too easy, and yet it's extremely tedious to play.

The game has some interesting concepts and mechanics, like for example, to unlock the true ending, you have to get the classic sub-weapons of the series (which for some strange reason you will NEVER be able to use), which adds that exploration factor to the game. The bad thing is that exploring in this game is annoying because of two things. The first is that there are a lot of paths that lead you to dead ends and don't reward you in anything, feeling like a waste of time, and besides that, there are also traps that lead you to some sort of arena where you have to defeat waves of monsters as punishment, and that's not the worst thing, the worst thing is that many times the enemies are positioned on a very small platform where it's hard to attack them since when you defeat them they reappear in the only places from where you can attack them, making you always take damage. They are a real nuisance, as they don't add anything of value to the experience. Secondly, if for some reason you went down the wrong path and forgot one of these special items, you block the possibility of accessing the true ending with no other option but to start from the beginning.

The true sub-weapons in the game are weird, these are powers which are obtained every time you defeat the boss of a level. What I like about this is that you have at your disposal the ability to swap sub-weapons on the fly by simply accessing the menu, however, these powers are very broken, the first one you get freezes time, and there is another one that wipes out all enemies on the screen.

You can also enter a “hyper-powered” mode if you press A+B, in which you are invulnerable to all attacks and greatly increases your movement speed. With this you'll defeat the bosses in no time.

Somehow, I feel that the developers put all those “interesting” elements as a way to “correct” a flaw in the game's design. For example, the powerful sub-weapons serve to compensate for the game's mediocre and annoying enemy positioning. The alternate paths “compensate” for the blandness of the level design. The hyper-powered mode compensates for the slow character movement. But to me, these additions more than fix the game make it much worse, because it implies that the developers knew the game wasn't that good and still decided to keep going.

Yes... I would talk about the story, but it's not worth it, it's sappy, it's nonsense and it's not even canon.

Conclusion
If Castlevania The Adventure was an admirable attempt to adapt the series to the GB (failing in said attempt), 8 years later, Castlevania Legends arrived to give it competition, but this also being the most unnecessary game of the franchise. I wish it was funny, but it's just sad.

At least Castlevania The Adventure is somewhat justifiable because it came out when the franchise was just starting, but this game? it came out after Symphony of the Night, after the classic formula had peaked more than once. Nothing redeems this bad game.

Eu gostaria muito de entender o que se passou na cabeça dos desenvolvedores pra considerarem criar essa horripilosidade. Não apenas o pq de considerar lançar um jogo para Gameboy 8 meses dps do lançamento da pérola de ouro da série, chamada Symphony of the Night, como também considerar fazer um 3° jogo para Gameboy, ignorando totalmente as adaptações e melhorias de Belmont's Revenge (que é o Castlevania definitivo de Gameboy) e fazendo um jogo tão limitado quanto o The Adventure e surpreendentemente conseguindo ser AINDA PIOR!!!

A gameplay é lenta, limitada, cheia de inimigos que aparecem do nada e são difíceis de desviar e, o pior de tudo, os mapas possuem áreas opcionais que envolvem atravessar até duas ou três telas de fase a mais para pegar certos itens e então vc tem q voltar todas as telas extras dnv para prosseguir a fase. Beleza, isso serve para pegar as relíquias que desbloqueiam o final verdadeiro, compreensível - mas o verdadeiro problema está nas partes extras chatas e cheias de inimigos que respawnam que, no final delas, vc SÓ CONSEGUE UM ITEM DE RECUPERAR VIDA!!!
E UM DETALHE MUITO IMPORTANTE QUANTO A ISSO: Quando vc mata um boss, vc ganha uma habilidade nova, e a segunda habilidade que vc ganha É UMA HABILIDADE DE RECUPERAR VIDA! ENTÃO QUAL É O SENTIDO DE DESVIAR POR 2-3 TELAS INTEIRAS LOTADAS DE INIMIGOS PURAMENTE PARA PEGAR VIDA????? E UM ITEM QUE RECUPERA SÓ METADE DA VIDA AINDA, ENQUANTO A HABILIDADE RECUPERA TUDO!

E, outra coisa, a ideia de ter diálogos é legal, mas cara, os diálogos desse jogo são exageradamente grandes e monótonos, a ponto de parecer uma fanfic amadora.

Sério cara, quem diabos considerou como válidas todas essas ideias horríveis? É foda dizer isso, mas esse Castlevania não passa de uma gigantesca piada. Só passem reto desse negócio, pelo bem de vcs.

igarashi making order of ecclesia and shanoa was his personal apology for making the single female belmont to fight dracula non-canon. im kinda glad it is though because the idea of the belmonts' strength just coming from being alucard's descendants as opposed to the power of god™ and intense physical training is kinda lame and alucard will always be aroace to me. the game itself is also just. okay. reviews here are painting it as some kinda irredeemable dogshit but it's really just kinda slow and lacking in enemy design or variety but i'd still sooner find myself replaying this over the adventure considering how much more digestible this in comparison. at the end of the day though the only gb castlevania really worth playing is belmont's revenge but i still think this deserved some kinda retelling or remake ala adventure rebirth so sonia got a place in the timeline and her design didn't go to waste - she deserves one and she's also the single belmont to assume dracula once felt human emotions which is kinda real tbh

Not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, but hold on! It's not even that good.

Castlevania Legends has a cool protagonist design and a nice soundtrack.

... that's it. Everything else feels uninspired, unbalanced (since the first power-up you get is literally the best one) and mostly out of touch with what made the other GB Castlevania games good. There's no enemy variety and even if there was, they all walk and fly towards the player as their mastermind plan. There are forks in the levels, but you can be locked out of the good ending if you choose the wrong path even once! I love being locked out as soon as I start the game!

Adding that the gameplay itself is ok at best, sluggish and tedious at worst, it can be seen why Legends isn't beloved by many. I tried making it work, but it felt more like a roadtrip distraction, as it maybe it was meant to be, compared to an actual videogame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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