Nearly 35 years after its release, few action games have managed to match Castlevania. This game has it all: satisfying combat, a good difficulty curve, engaging bosses, and—most notably for its time—very fair enemy placements.
In Castlevania, you play as Simon Belmont, wielding his notorious whip to take on various challenges on the floors of Dracula’s Castle as you ascend to fight the Dark Lord himself. Each level is made up of three stages, with a boss at the end of the third. If you die once, you reset to the beginning of the level. Get a game over, and you’re returned to the beginning of the three-stage level.
The basics of the game feel great. The whip flies out with a satisfying snap, and it’s a joy to learn the spacing necessary to take on tougher foes. The whip can be upgraded to extend its range and improve its attack power. These upgrades are generously placed so that if you die, you’re likely to have your whip back up to its third upgrade in decent time. The various sub-weapons you can get (and upgrade with their own “shot multipliers”) are all enjoyable to use and experiment with. The awkwardness of the jump (you need to simultaneously press a directional button and the jump button to jump diagonally, and you can’t affect your trajectory while in the air) is the only thing that gives away the game’s age, but there are luckily not many technical platforming sections.
Enemies have some patterns that are challenging but not bullshit to learn. The most notorious are surely the flying Medusa heads and the erratic, jumpy hunchbacks. In my experience, though there were some classic “get pushed into the water and die” moments, none of them were completely unpredictable like some NES games can be. The game is also coded better than the later Ninja Gaiden, where certain enemies can respawn at the edge of the screen and essentially halt all progress. Some people complain about unavoidable damage on stairs, and I don’t deny that it would be nice to be able to jump off of them or at least move a bit faster, but I don’t think there’s technically unavoidable damage on them at any time unless you’re rushing.
The real meat of the experience comes in the form of six boss battles that gradually ramp up in difficulty. The Phantom Bat is a simple enough boss to justify inclusion as a standard mob later in the game, and Queen Medusa isn’t too challenging for the most part. Mummy Man can be rough, as it’s the first two-enemy boss fight, but positioning can help to make it a laughable fight. Frankenstein & Igor are where shit gets real. These are the Ornstein & Smough of Castlevania NES. Frankenstein just kind of lumbers around and doesn’t do much but soak up damage from you, but Igor is a complete punk. He jumps around like a regular hunchback with much higher jumping arcs, throws fireballs, and can drain your health completely if he hits you into Frankenstein and decides to come and land on you during your recovery. It’s a ton of fun to get down the patterns and start properly managing two enemies at once, and it’ll prepare you for still more trying fights like the Grim Reaper and The Count himself.
Fortunately, this classic action game is well-balanced and well-designed enough to hold up. Rather than being a grueling slog to return to as many of the 8-bit era’s greats can be, Castlevania would fit right in with a decent number of contemporary indie games if it weren’t so much better than them.
In Castlevania, you play as Simon Belmont, wielding his notorious whip to take on various challenges on the floors of Dracula’s Castle as you ascend to fight the Dark Lord himself. Each level is made up of three stages, with a boss at the end of the third. If you die once, you reset to the beginning of the level. Get a game over, and you’re returned to the beginning of the three-stage level.
The basics of the game feel great. The whip flies out with a satisfying snap, and it’s a joy to learn the spacing necessary to take on tougher foes. The whip can be upgraded to extend its range and improve its attack power. These upgrades are generously placed so that if you die, you’re likely to have your whip back up to its third upgrade in decent time. The various sub-weapons you can get (and upgrade with their own “shot multipliers”) are all enjoyable to use and experiment with. The awkwardness of the jump (you need to simultaneously press a directional button and the jump button to jump diagonally, and you can’t affect your trajectory while in the air) is the only thing that gives away the game’s age, but there are luckily not many technical platforming sections.
Enemies have some patterns that are challenging but not bullshit to learn. The most notorious are surely the flying Medusa heads and the erratic, jumpy hunchbacks. In my experience, though there were some classic “get pushed into the water and die” moments, none of them were completely unpredictable like some NES games can be. The game is also coded better than the later Ninja Gaiden, where certain enemies can respawn at the edge of the screen and essentially halt all progress. Some people complain about unavoidable damage on stairs, and I don’t deny that it would be nice to be able to jump off of them or at least move a bit faster, but I don’t think there’s technically unavoidable damage on them at any time unless you’re rushing.
The real meat of the experience comes in the form of six boss battles that gradually ramp up in difficulty. The Phantom Bat is a simple enough boss to justify inclusion as a standard mob later in the game, and Queen Medusa isn’t too challenging for the most part. Mummy Man can be rough, as it’s the first two-enemy boss fight, but positioning can help to make it a laughable fight. Frankenstein & Igor are where shit gets real. These are the Ornstein & Smough of Castlevania NES. Frankenstein just kind of lumbers around and doesn’t do much but soak up damage from you, but Igor is a complete punk. He jumps around like a regular hunchback with much higher jumping arcs, throws fireballs, and can drain your health completely if he hits you into Frankenstein and decides to come and land on you during your recovery. It’s a ton of fun to get down the patterns and start properly managing two enemies at once, and it’ll prepare you for still more trying fights like the Grim Reaper and The Count himself.
Fortunately, this classic action game is well-balanced and well-designed enough to hold up. Rather than being a grueling slog to return to as many of the 8-bit era’s greats can be, Castlevania would fit right in with a decent number of contemporary indie games if it weren’t so much better than them.