Honestly great game! This is a game that takes the most solid elements from Castlevania III and runs with them without making a daunting experience.
Visuals have great detail without going to the point of not feeling authentic to an NES, although it obviously wouldn't run this game, but it's a nice look, same can be said for the music even if it never really reaches the height of any of the iconic Castlevania soundtracks.
Level design is non linear with different paths each level and even ties into the different characters, as you progress the first few levels you can recruit new characters to play as and each one has different abilities. Zengetsu has a short sword and not very versatile movement but carries a lot of health, Miriam can jump higher and do a ground dash to reach some extra areas as well as carrying a long range whip like a Belmont would, Gebel is a vampire that can turn into a bat and fly for the same purpose, and Alfred is an alchemist that gets subweapons that aren't usually great for direct combat but are good utilities. Each character has different levels of strengh and HP as well as being necessary to access some of the different areas around levels or to find secrets, and with the different paths available you can explore a lot.
You can also choose not to recruit any characters, or kill them to upgrade Zengetsu's abilities, there's a fair bit of experimentation to be done with the game like this and it fundamentally changes how you play which is really cool to see.
Dying doesn't immediately makes you lose a life as it instead makes you lose the character that lost all HP temporarily, so you can get some progress before reaching a checkpoint and recovering your characters by losing a life, which can be a decent strategy to get through the levels. Exploring can lead you to upgrades for all characters (more mana for subweapons, more health) or even easier sections to reach the end quicker. Challenge ramps up very well and never gets unfair during the main game, although in Nightmare mode I'm not sure of how you're supposed to dodge some attacks but I'm also slow.
When it comes to modernization, the controls are just outright better than the classic Castlevanias and the life system works in your favor, there's also an easier mode with infinite lives and without damage knockback, which is in my opinion a little too much as I feel like infinite lives would have been enough, but a lot of people have seemingly enjoyed playing through that mode and it's fine for quickly getting through the game.
While the game is short there's a lot to explore and the unlockable Nightmare mode very much encourages it, and as it is just more tightly designed than the classic CV games from controls to level design, it just surpasses them. Sure, it's a game that doesn't do much new in this sense, but executing a formula extremely well and being more fun than its predecessors should be enough for it to be worth your time.
Visuals have great detail without going to the point of not feeling authentic to an NES, although it obviously wouldn't run this game, but it's a nice look, same can be said for the music even if it never really reaches the height of any of the iconic Castlevania soundtracks.
Level design is non linear with different paths each level and even ties into the different characters, as you progress the first few levels you can recruit new characters to play as and each one has different abilities. Zengetsu has a short sword and not very versatile movement but carries a lot of health, Miriam can jump higher and do a ground dash to reach some extra areas as well as carrying a long range whip like a Belmont would, Gebel is a vampire that can turn into a bat and fly for the same purpose, and Alfred is an alchemist that gets subweapons that aren't usually great for direct combat but are good utilities. Each character has different levels of strengh and HP as well as being necessary to access some of the different areas around levels or to find secrets, and with the different paths available you can explore a lot.
You can also choose not to recruit any characters, or kill them to upgrade Zengetsu's abilities, there's a fair bit of experimentation to be done with the game like this and it fundamentally changes how you play which is really cool to see.
Dying doesn't immediately makes you lose a life as it instead makes you lose the character that lost all HP temporarily, so you can get some progress before reaching a checkpoint and recovering your characters by losing a life, which can be a decent strategy to get through the levels. Exploring can lead you to upgrades for all characters (more mana for subweapons, more health) or even easier sections to reach the end quicker. Challenge ramps up very well and never gets unfair during the main game, although in Nightmare mode I'm not sure of how you're supposed to dodge some attacks but I'm also slow.
When it comes to modernization, the controls are just outright better than the classic Castlevanias and the life system works in your favor, there's also an easier mode with infinite lives and without damage knockback, which is in my opinion a little too much as I feel like infinite lives would have been enough, but a lot of people have seemingly enjoyed playing through that mode and it's fine for quickly getting through the game.
While the game is short there's a lot to explore and the unlockable Nightmare mode very much encourages it, and as it is just more tightly designed than the classic CV games from controls to level design, it just surpasses them. Sure, it's a game that doesn't do much new in this sense, but executing a formula extremely well and being more fun than its predecessors should be enough for it to be worth your time.
2 Comments
Absolutely, at no point was I thinking that the game was being unfair to me and feeling like dropping it as a result. Classicvania fails at this often, so I can't help but say this is better.
Hunyoshi
1 year ago
Fun comes first over everything while still giving a decent challenge.