Always felt like a crazy person for liking this just as much as the other NESvanias but I'll just say play with a retranslation patch if you value your sanity and want to take a serious jab at the game in its intended form. Simon's Quest in Japanese does still feature NPCs that don't always tell the truth, however basically all of the nuance between truthful and untruthful NPCs was lost in translation, and the quality of the official translation certainly didn't help matters. Either way there's a very high chance you've watched the AVGN episode and know about all the cryptic stuff, and a lot of old games were reliant on word-of-mouth to pass secrets and ways to progress around. It was far from a good thing, but Simon's quest is also far from the only game of its era with obtuse means of progression. Despite this, it's consistently framed as the prime culprit of this trend. I'll always appreciate Simon's Quest for its ambition, awesome soundtrack and the series' first being shot at a "Metroid-y" format.

Um dos jogos mais injustiçados da história dos videogames.

É absurdamente impressionante e admirável o quão ambiciosos foram os desenvolvedores quando projetaram isto aqui: um Castlevania de mundo aberto com elementos de RPG, sistema de level up, progressão não linear com ciclos de dia e noite. Coisa que não seria repetido nenhuma vez durante a série clássica e que apresentara muitos elementos que só seriam vistos novamente na revitalização da franquia em Simphony of the Night, é muito interessante ver um jogo lançado 10 anos antes dele já possuir algumas das mesmas ambições.

Muitas das ideias sofreram bastante em sua concretrização, seja pela falta de recursos da época ou pelos próprios males do envelhecimento, como a maior delas sendo a pouca inspiração em tornar cada área única, já que os assets das partes do mapa são quase idênticas, e a ausência de chefes para conceberem uma dinâmica maior ao looping de combate e exploração, as dicas dos npcs são péssimas e em alguns casos até mentirosas (apesar disso fazer sentido tematicamente), o único sistema de sustain do jogo são as igrejas nas vilas, a movimentação é uma evolução ao anterior mas continua muito lenta e pouco precisa..etc

Em contrapartida, consegue apresentar um mundo interessante e bastante atmosférico, muito por conta da sua ótima apresentação audiovisual com cores mais mortas diferenciando bastante do primeiro e terceiro títulos, que trouxeram uma estética mais focado em cores vivas e deslumbrantes, e isso entrelaça perfeitamente com a mecânica de dia e noite, já que tudo isso que eu acabei de falar é amplificado na passagem de tempo gerando um ambiente bastante tenso e hostil, além das excelentes músicas escolhidas para comporem o conjunto. O segundo grande ponto alto são os desafios de progressão e segredos muito bem escondidos que são bastante recompensadores, os objetivos são sutilmente ditos através do level design, quase todas paredes ou pisos invisíveis são notórios mas não de maneira expositiva, todos os recursos coletados são de grande utilidade.. outra coisa a se dizer é que o looping de gameplay geral é ótimo já que o foco durante o dia é caçar os segredos e ir explorar o mapa enquanto de noite é exclusivamente a sobrevivência, gerando um certo dinamismo ao ritmo de game, algo impensável quando se lembra que este é um jogo de NES.

Em suma, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest é um jogo muito bom e ainda vale a pena, além de ser bastante autoral e apresentar elementos que só voltariam a ser vistos na série 10 anos depois. Um remake deste clássico aqui seria um sonho realizado.

[Played on Retron 5 with original cartridge]

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest gets a lot of hate nowadays. Hate which I can definitely agree with. This game is pretty damn cryptic about its secrets, and a lot of them are near impossible to figure out on your own considering how bad the English translation is. The gameplay is completely different from Castlevania, and none of the fair action challenges is really present. Hell, the game isn't tough in the slightest.

Some of its issues are kind of excusable for me though. I'm fine with playing cryptic games nowadays, considering walkthroughs and strategy guides exist (I always used to read NES strategy guides when I was a kid so it's always pretty nostalgic). Castlevania II's gameplay changes are frustrating for a diehard fan of the first and third Castlevanias, but as flawed as it is here, this paved the way for the future of the Castlevania series. While this game is definitely not great, barely being good, it's pretty admirable.

My favorite part of this game is definitely the story. Castlevania II follows up Castlevania rather directly, beginning with Dracula cursing Simon at the end of their duel in the first game, perfectly explaining Simon's weak state and the new RPG elements like the level up system. Additionally, Dracula only revives every 100 years, so it makes perfect sense that Simon starts without his kit of subweapons. The need to collect Dracula's body parts is pretty cool because you have to dive into 5 mansions dedicated to Dracula's worship. That sounds cool as fuck on paper but the mansions are rather boring in design, feeling like enemies and platforms were just thrown together with little consideration for fair challenge.

That need to explore 5 mansions leads to the need to explore a more open world in a more non-linear way. It's pretty cool, but I found it really easy to lose my place in the world. Not good considering the multiple endings separated by how many days it takes for Simon to complete his mission. This is where the real challenge comes from, stringing together all your objectives so that you reach the end with enough time to get the best ending. Admittedly, it was pretty fun strategizing my run-through, and at the end of all my strategizing, I ended up smashing Dracula on my 5th day, obtaining the best ending. So, while the day-night cycle can be really annoying in-game, especially on your way to a town, there's that little benefit from it all.

Graphically, Simon's Quest seems to replicate a lot of the quality from the original. The major difference is the game's use of colors, being a lot darker, not nearly as colorful. I see how this matches the darker tone of this game, with Simon slowly withering away due to Dracula's curse, but I just found this visual change to be really gross and displeasing. I think if Simon wasn't basically in the middle of the screen for most of the playthrough, I might have lost him in some of the backgrounds.

The soundtrack is just as excellent as the previous game. You can really say this about most Castlevania games. I don't think they ever really skimp out on the OST.

I guess the best way to sum up Simon's Quest is to say that it has some great ideas but it's executed pretty poorly. With the shift in gameplay, a lot of the charm and fun of Castlevania is lost here, something I don't believe was lost in future titles like Symphony of the Night, which picked up this style. I can understand why people like this game a lot, considering some of the general fun of Castlevania is still here, whipping monsters and fighting bosses (which you can just walk under...), but I cannot honestly say this is anywhere as good as the other Castlevania titles, nor is it as good as most of the other landmark NES titles. Against Castlevania, which hasn't aged a day, this game's aged a lifetime, and it's hard for me to call it anymore than okay.

6/10

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.

This feels like a troll game more than a game; secrets are meant to be secrets, not a mandatory thing, except that the whole game is based on that concept, and as you can guess, it doesn't fucking work, imagine having to understand the entire FNAF lore for the FNAF games to be playable, this is the game. This piece of cat shit is extremely confusing as to where you need to go and instead gives you stupid tips and expects you to understand them, and a lot of the tips are also hidden without tips to find the tips. It also doesn't help that most areas look the same with slightly different colors.
And here it comes the: "Erm, actually, just use a guide or a proper translation and the game becomes good"; first, if the game is good then it doesn't need a guide to be playable in the first place, Second, the game is still shit even with a guide and stopping to check the guide every 10 seconds is not fun, it only makes this pile of shit playable. How do you explain these? The faster whip is just there to hold your hand, you will find yourself mashing to kill enemies and not strategizing when to attack like the first game, the game is pretty easy, just very tedious that if you ever take damage to any enemy, they're either badly placed or you're too bored to pay attention to them, and wow, the enemy placements... the game can place them right after screen transitions... Devs were too lazy to make a checkpoint system so instead they respawn you right where you died with a few I-frames but without your currency (if you game over), and if you died by falling, it respawns you on the very edge of your failed jump, making you accidentally fall off again by walking 1 pixel, or what about false floors that make you backtrack from Japan to Brazil, enemies either stand still and shoot, walk back and forth or fly towards you, dead ends and a lot of walking (corridors with or without enemies or devs with stairs fetish just putting stairs everywhere where you go up and down slooooooowly) that are only there to waste the player's time; the bosses are somehow WAY worse than the ones from the first game, and you get like 4 places to heal in the whole game that barely feels useful for not resetting lives, just buy what you want and die to reset lives next to where you will start to farm, again.
The very few positives are very small things that can't get the game any higher, movement is better if not the same as 1, visuals are slightly better though they still don't look so good and a lot of places look the same with different colors, music isn't as forgettable as 1 but they're very mediocre and you will listen to the same 4 for the whole game.
Worst game I logged in to this website though I still completed it for the sake of getting to know the series, what a terrible game that uses secrets as 95% of its design, this piece of garbo is unironically... A miserable little pile of secrets