And I thought the original Castlevania was exhausting...

Simon's Quest has some interesting ideas mushed into a very passionate sequel that was too big for its own good. After a linear platformer, making a story-focused open-world adventure that absolutely refuses to tell you what you need to do unless you look up a guide is an interesting choice, to say the least.

Let's say you wanted to give the players a world to explore, with a city full of secrets, interactable NPCs, stores, monsters, hidden pathways, and a day & night cycle that serves a purpose. I mean, it wouldn't be the first game that requires you to grind to explore it, and it wouldn't be the last. But why on earth would you hide the good ending behind a very short amount of completion time :D

I already lost the good ending before I realized it was an open world that required a lot of backtracking, and a comprehensive guide to actually find the items you're looking for. After the second Dracula piece, I'm calling it quits. I, unfortunately, don't have the patience to follow a walkthrough for this game, especially after it told me to go back to the starter town after all this. A linear, everchanging experience was good for Castlevania but this may not be my thing, sorry.

On a good note: The music is once again a banger, having a currency & upgrade system is a good idea, cities and NPCs also work well (and would work even better if it was linear), combat is less challenging but still fun, especially because it doesn't make you wanna kill yourself. There's a good game underneath all my pet peeves, and I would love to pick it back up when I have the patience for it.

Curious that the game that directly influenced Symphony of the Night, the one that seemingly everyone loves, is overwhelmingly hated because some angry nerd decided to do an awful, flawed review video and successfully manipulated a whole generation of gamers.

It's sad because there's actually a lot to love about this game. It kind of resembles modern gaming's problem in the way that gamers shun any type of experimentation whatsoever and are okay with a regurgitated Assassin's Creed camouflaged into a new IP every year. Here, instead of repeating the successful structure of the first Castlevania, they decided to try something different and ended up setting most of the fundamentals of contemporary action RPGs already in 1987. Seriously, play this with Bloodborne or the Souls games in mind, and you'll see that it's not that different. The gloomy setting; paths that split into two, with one of them leading you in the right direction and the other inaccessible until later; open world but with difficulty walls that lead you; characters that give you tips where to go with really cryptic dialogues; multiple trinkets to use; illusory/hidden walls; deadly traps; required item interactions to progress the story; NPCs that try to misdirect you; even poison swamps. It all sounds too familiar.

Now, I should mention that I've played Castlevania II with bisqwit's ROM hack that fixes the mistranslation issues (I didn't tick the optional gameplay changes), but still, without it, it'd probably be like a 4/10 minimum (and that's because of my rating system, it's probably a 6/10 minimum for most). It's nowhere near a half star like the hive mind make it out to be. I actually considered rating this a 6, but I can't ignore the instakill shenanigans and the lame bosses, specially in contrast to the original that features some great fights. On top of that, there are a few items here that completely trivializes them.

A flawed game, but overall, I loved the intent. Use bisqwit's hack and go into it with an open mind, and you probably won't hate it.

Also, if you're like 20-something+ years old, and grew up listening to retro videogame music in your adolescence you might find that some great tracks came from this. And Binding of Isaac's "What a horrible night to have a curse" reference too.

I've had this game on my backlog for a very long time, dreading to actually play it. At the same time, the longer I leave it the longer I don't get to experience the rest of the Castlevania franchise - yes I am that person that needs to play every mainline title in a series in order - so quite frankly if I never did play it, Simon's Quest would have successfully gatekept me from this iconic Konami franchise.

I've picked this game up in the past and dropped it after endless headaches, and getting stuck and unlimited frustration. This time I just swallowed my pride and said fuck it. I played using a guide and some savestates to beat this shit in about 2 hours and finally get it over and done with.
I can gladly say that I am so happy I just swallowed the pill and finally finished it because I am never playing this piece of shit again. I am so happy I can move onto Castlevania III and IV.

If you lived on the internet during the 2000s, I don't think I need to explain what is so bad about this game. But to give you my version of it; what I loved about the original Castlevania, while it was hard as balls, it was a game you could just pick up, play though some levels and beat the game in about 2 hours if you're good enough. You don't need any guides, there's no bullishit. You walk to the right, whip skeletons and bats, beat the boss at the end - next level and you're done. Anyone can pick it up.
Somehow Konami said "Nah that was shit - let's just change the formula for the sequel" and made a cryptic open world with annoying sections where you're prone to get stuck, the worst mechanics introduced in a video game and boring/cheap copy paste bullshot level design with extended padding and some annoying JRPG grinding. If you don't play this with a guide for the first time, you are a masochist.

I am so happy that this game is no longer a looming pain in my backlog and I can finally get to the good Castlevania shit. Thank you video game guides and emulators for making this a little more bearable.

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.

I'd heard for years that this was "the bad one". It's just different from the Castlevanias that preceded or followed it. You can actually see the blueprints of the genre that the series would eventually take on starting with SotN; Simon's Quest has a nonlinear critical path across a map that you're gradually able to access more of as you obtain progression items (although exactly what has opened up to you is rarely very clear, unfortunately). While I didn't really gel with the maze that is trying to "solve" this game, I could absolutely picture someone who owned its original release really resonating with it, mapping out each area and puzzling out where to go.
The cryptic hints are apparently only somewhat less cryptic in the Japanese release, and a proper translation would only help so much; I will grant the game's detractors that much.

So ahead of it's time its kind of unreal. Every bad thing anyone has ever said about this was wrong. Less challenging and less "perfect", so to speak, than the original Castlevania but the gameplay, setting, tone, and story (even with the butchered translation) are much more interesting. So many great little moments, the way each subsequent town is a little more sparse and a little less welcoming, the way the day-night cycle reinforces both Simon's impending death and the impact his curse has on the world around him, the halls of Dracula's castle lying abandoned and in ruins as you push forward to the center... it's easy to see why people say this game is blatantly unfinished or whatever but the occasional emptiness of the world makes complete sense within the story and never really detracted from the gameplay for me. It leads to a dismal atmosphere and a bleaker, more introspective pace to the entire game compared to Castlevania 1, which I really appreciated. Probably one of my new favorite Famicom games. Man, there were so many groundbreaking unique games on this system that just get completely disregarded these days in favor of their flashier, more accessible sequels.





I was going to make a joke about how this is probably as close as you could get to making Pathologic on the Famicom but then I remembered Takeshi no Chōsenjō exists

part of growing up is learning to disregard the opinions of gaming youtubers and to actually form your own

crazily enough, a bad translation should not define how a game is percieved, and in an age of romhacking and text insertions, you'd think that people would've caught on by now that maybe, just maybe, an nes game with countless articles going over the numerous translation errors and unintelligable text would have more people wondering what it would be like to play in its native language. but alas, despite being a game cut from the same cloth as the many pioneers of games as we know them today, simon's quest is usually only met with vitriol.

as good as symphony of the night is, and as much influence it had on the metroidvania genre, to disregard this game and claim that sotn is entirely what constitutes for the "vania" part of "metroidvania" instead is both dismissive and disingenuous. i'm not saying sotn isn't part of the vania in metroidvania, because sotn played a huge part in popularising and refining the formula - what i am saying is that sotn and countless other games in turn inspired directly by it likely wouldn't exist without castlevania 2. It, the first metroid, and the first legend of zelda (which i admittedly have more qualms with) all tackled non-linearity while console gaming was still in its hayday, all to mixed degrees of success, and quite frankly castlevania 2 stands on top as my preferred game. at least, it stands on top when the text actually makes sense. yes the translation sucks, yes "laurels in your soup" and "don't look into the death star" and all that, but if you're going to acknowledge that this game's translation is bad then you're doing it a disservice by playing it with that bad translation and judging it based on that when better, easily accessible alternatives exist.

the control scheme is still classic castlevania with your stiff jumps and knockback and it still feels good to just walk around and whip things. subweapons are definitely lacking though and you're required to throw holy water down a LOT in order to reveal illusorary blocks in the floor and secrets in the walls (the latter being well telegraphed and opting to throw water at each wall you can really doesn't consume too much time anyway) and while i'd be hard pressed to say it plays better than the other nes castlevanias, I can still pretty comfortably say that simon's quest is simply just a good game. it's certainly not as polished as the other two but it tried something new and didn't play it safe, and for that it helped form an entire genre. I respect it. it also had me bringing up a word document to note down all of the text because almost 90% of the text in this game is some kind of clue on what to do next, and I think the clues that you find in walls don't reappear either, which is kind of an issue. so that's something i definitely recommend doing.

here's the patch I used, it's pretty customisable and includes some nice qol additions that you can toggle on and off to get a more vanilla experience if you'd prefer. chief among these additions are the ingame map (which is copied 1-1 from the japanese manual) and a clue browser that saves having to manually note things down. I personally just enabled the retranslation (and kept the day-night transition text the same, mistranslation or no "what a horrible night to have a curse" will always be iconic, glad that's an option). The website is in finnish by default but there's language options as soon as you open it. Oh yeah, this thing is a whole project - it covers translations of the game in finnish, english, french, spanish and filipino. The author also has a page dedicated to dissecting the differences between the original official localization, the japanese script, and their own translations with their own reasoning provided. definitely worth checking out. one major word of warning though: there seems to be a bug where if you press right while hovering over any of the items in the upper half of your inventory, it just. wipes the lower half. scrolling loops around if you keep pressing left though, so it's not a huge issue. might be a good idea to have rewind or a savestate to go back to.

also if we're gonna make avgn's opinions the be-all end-all of retro gaming takes can we also admit that zelda 2 is actually good HE SAID ZELDA 2 WAS GOOD GUYS

This game sucks. Castlevania I and III are great classic Nintendo games, but for Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, the game designers obviously were not thinking straight. At first, it seems like a pretty decent game. A little different from the first in the series but, that's okay. Zelda II was different from the first, Mario 2 was different, but they were all good.

The first thing that's strikingly different is the fact that ya have to go through towns, talk to people, and buy stuff. I never really minded that, it makes it a little more like an adventure story, and it's kinda like Zelda, so that's okay. But the first problem comes in when it changes from day to night.

Why does this need to happen so often? Like, every five minutes? Why does it take so long? Nobody feels like sitting through this every time. How would you like it if you were playin' a game and then every five minutes I came over and paused it, then counted ten tedious seconds and then let you continue play the game? Now, I mean, why did they think that that would be a good idea and interrupt the gameplay? Did they think it would be more realistic? I mean, in real life, I don't have to stop in my tracks when the sun sets and a fuckin' box doesn't pop up in the air. I mean, this is one of the most annoying features in any game ever. What's the point? Yeah, the, I mean, the monsters are stronger at night and the stores are closed, but why's that necessary and why does the game have to stop? It's fuckin' retarded.

And why do ya have to die when you fall in the water? That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. This guy (Simon Belmont) can go all over fightin' hordes of evil monsters, but he can't even fuckin' swim? Sometimes I don't feel like goin' down the stairs just to get down to ground level. I mean, there's no reason I should have to do that when I can just take a shortcut and jump down. But oops! I shouldn't do that, there might be water down there.

Another thing that's really annoying about this game is the fact that ya have to buy weapons and items. I mean, still, that's not uncommon, you know like I said: that's the same thing ya have to do in many great games like Zelda, but, lemme explain.

Here ya have to collect hearts, which count as money; I mean, that's kinda odd, because usually hearts count as life or energy, y'know, so that's kinda strange. But, y'know that's not the point. The point is that the items you need to buy are too fuckin' expensive, and the hearts don't add up enough. It takes too long to get enough of them to buy something, and it gets boring wandering around killing the same monsters over and over again just so you can buy a Flame Whip or somethin'.

Speakin' of Flame Whip, that's pretty weird itself, isn't it? I mean, they were really being creative with that one, the flame whip.

Anyway, about the hearts. It takes too long to buy stuff. And, to add onto the problem, when you die, you lose all your hearts and ya have to start all over again. I mean, doing this doesn't add to any of the game's difficulty or challenge, it just makes us have to do more of the same monotonous stuff over again, and it's not fun, it's boring.

Oh look, I finally got enough hearts to go and buy a plant that I need to cross the swamp. Now let me get to the store. Oh shit, it's fuckin' night time. Now the stores are all closed and I have to wait for it to turn day again. Oh well, I might as well kill some zombies in the meantime and stock up on some more hearts. Oh shit, now I gotta start all over again.

One of the worst things in the game are the Pitfalls, which are areas where there's, like, stones or blocks that look like you could walk on them, but instead ya just fall through. It's impossible to tell where these spots are the first time walkin' through, so you just have to keep throwin' Holy Water all over to see where they are. It's retarded. Why should I have to do that? Again, it doesn't add up to any of the fun, y'know, challenge of the game. It's just unfair and it's annoying.

In the dungeons, there's no bosses at the end, which is a big disappointment. Every Nintendo gamester knows that at the end of a level or a dungeon labyrinth, or whatever, there's always supposed to be a big guy who ya fight. But here, they just got lazy and only put a few bosses in the game and left some of the dungeons just empty like this one. So, most of the dungeons you go through (the mansions, to be exact), there's nothing at the end except for a crystal orb that ya can't touch.

In the rest of the Castlevania games, the tradition goes like this. You fight a boss, ya defeat him, then an orb comes down, and ya touch it. There you go, on to the next level. But in Castlevania II, how would you ever figure out that you're supposed to throw an Oak Stake at that orb? I mean, when you first get the Oak Stake you assume it's a weapon. And you throw it... only to find that it does absolutely nothing... and that you waste it by throwing it, so ya have to get it all over again.

There are parts in the game that are definitely not self-explanatory and are too hard to figure out. Take this dead end for example. Would you guess that you're supposed to pass through this wall? How? You have to kneel down by it for like ten seconds. Now still, that's not enough to make it so cryptic and hidden that we can't figure it out, "oh please, give us more for our buck and make it harder so we can wander around the whole game and exhaust every possibility before we find out". Okay. Guess what? You need to have a Red Crystal selected, and be kneeling down, and wait a little while before this magic tornado comes and takes ya to the next part of the game.

Most of the townspeople have things to say which aren't important at all, so why do ya have to read 'em? Here in the dungeons, there's books that you may find which actually give ya clues about things in the game that you may need to know about. But when I find these books half the time, it's by accident, so I may hit the button and cancel it out which means that I don't even get to read it and I don't have a second chance.

Why can't I do that when it changes from day to night? That would actually be helpful. So what the game designers figured is this: it isn't absolutely necessary for me to read about how to find Dracula's castle or what I'm supposed to do with an Oak Stake, but what I do need to read, again and again constantly, is, "The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night". How 'bout "vanquished this horrible GAME"?!

The only sure way to get through this awful game is to enter a code, but even that is way more tedious than it should be. While most of the Castlevania games have symbols ya enter for a code, this one just has a whole bunch of numbers. I mean like, one of those little parts would be enough for a password, but why... four? Like, why so many?

In general, I hate games that have passwords like this, because sometimes they have uppercase and lowercase letters. Like the l's, y'know, look like I's, the 0's look like O's, the 8's look like 5's so, why does there have to be so many digits? Y'know, like why can't it just be numbers or somethin'? Like y'know, just numbers and not letters? I mean, it takes me like five minutes to enter this code when it should only take like five seconds. It's friggin' stupid.

Okay. So, say we enter the code, and we go to Dracula's castle. You'll be pretty disappointed how anticlimactic this game is. It isn't even worth putting in a code, let alone playing the whole game all the way through, which, if ya did, I feel bad for you.

I mean, first of all... there's no enemies in Dracula's castle. You just walk all the way through and the only obstacles are just, like, goin' up and down steps, which won't hurt you and they aren't challenging either. It's just tedious. I mean, what the hell's the point of going through the castle if there's no way to fight? Did the game designers just, like, run out of time or somethin'?

So then you get up to Dracula, and guess what? He doesn't look anything like Dracula. Instead, he looks like a Grim Reaper and he throws sickles. I mean, did the people who made this game even know what Dracula is? He's a fuckin' vampire.

Alright, on top of everything, Dracula's way too easy. Check this out. This is a trick that I discovered myself, and so could you without the help of any strategy guide. When Dracula first appears, he stands there for a while, and he gives you plenty of time to land lots of free hits. Not only does he stand there for a long time, but everything that hits him will stun him and give ya even more time.

Naturally, you'll probably be using the flames, because it's one of the most effective weapons in the game. But using it against Dracula, it makes it simply impossible for him to even do anything. He has no chance. The second you start throwin' that shit at him, you've already won. I mean, why is it that easy? Did they even test this shitty game out before they released it?

What a piece of shit. I mean, I feel horrible that I had to play this game in order to make this video, but I did it to demonstrate its dreadfulness and I forced myself to play it just so that ya don't have to. So you should thank me for telling ya to stay away from this horrible steaming pile of goat shit. I mean... I know it's useless complaining about a game that was made back in the late '80s, or early '90s or whatever, but it just blows my mind how fuckin' horrible it is. I mean, it's consistently annoying.

Why? Why is it so bad? If all these problems were changed then we'd have a great trilogy of classic Castlevania games, but... history is history, and we might as well try to count Castlevania III as... y'know, the second in the series, and leave this awful piece of horse shit alone, as it stands today as one of the biggest fuck-ups of all time.

Thank you for listening, good night.

The ending sucks too.

There's no denying that Castlevania II is an ambitious sequel, trading the linear platforming of the original game for a prototypical open world RPG formula, complete with leveling, inventory management, and a binary day-night cycle that directly impacts exploration. Whatever goodwill that this game gains from its ambition, it squanders with its cryptic, nonsensical progression driven by badly-translated dialogue and clue books, the latter of which are mainly hidden in unassuming blocks of walls and floors. I can understand why this game has garnered cult appreciation over the years, but I also imagine that this is one of those games that would have been a lot more impactful for someone growing up in the 80s with no internet and a limited game library — hunting down the next step in the arbitrary sequence of progression in Castlevania II would be more engaging if it were a cooperative effort with your friends, trying to brainstorm solutions from Nintendo Power hints or by combing through every square inch of the map with every item. Completing this game without a guide in a reasonable amount of time, however, is a fool's errand; I sincerely doubt anybody has ever been able to figure out the tornado puzzle themselves unless by pure accident. In a world where there are thousands upon thousands of games to play, I struggle to find a reason to put up with Castlevania II's obscurities and lack of respect for the player's time.

The soundtrack is absolutely great, though, arguably even better than the first game. I doubt I'll ever replay this, but I will have the original rendition of "Bloody Tears" stuck in my head for weeks to come.