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.