A much grander game than the first Castlevania, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. On the positive side, the sprites are beautiful and the locations are much more varied, giving a great sense of place and adventure as you make your way through the castle and it's surroundings, and even more so because of the branching paths. The extra characters are a great addition to the game too, not just allowing for more variety, but also helping you through some of the more frustrating sections, if you know how to use them. My personal favorite is Grant because of his wall climbing. It really lets you cheat your way through some of the platforming, which has always been what I struggle with the most in these games.

The level design in this game, while mostly good, can sometimes feel like the developers got carried away. The early Castlevania games have very restricted controls compared to other (good) NES side scrollers. Now I don't necessarily mind these controls, but when you push the level design to be this crazy, you start to notice how rigid it can feel in tense situations, and it gets pretty frustrating. It doesn't help how LONG some of these levels are. If you fuck up you might have to replay a significant amount, likely multiple times.

And yet, in spite of it's absolutely crushing difficultly, which admittedly does feel a bit unfair at times, it's still well designed enough to keep you coming back for more. It pushes you to want to beat it. It BEGS to be beaten. And fuck me if it ain't satisfying to do so.

Worth mentioning that I played the Japanese version of this game. Not only does it have a unique sound chip built in to give the music more of a kick, but it's actually a bit nicer with some of the difficulty.

...still a really fucking hard game though.