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Favorite Games

Mega Man X
Mega Man X
Bloodborne
Bloodborne
Deus Ex
Deus Ex
Doom II: Hell on Earth
Doom II: Hell on Earth
Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Umineko no Naku Koro ni

430

Total Games Played

000

Played in 2024

264

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Ib
Ib

Oct 28

Super Castlevania IV
Super Castlevania IV

Oct 20

Earthbound Halloween Hack
Earthbound Halloween Hack

Oct 17

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

Oct 08

Prodeus
Prodeus

Oct 01

Recently Reviewed See More

Neat little game but the puzzles were wayyyyy too easy. Would make it a chore to run through again to get the good ending, if that weren't also so easy to get. Or maybe it wouldn't as this is extremely short. Anyway it's pretty fun. And how come nobody ever asks Garry why he's named that. How many punk rocking loners are named Garry

Keeping the sense of "weight" the previous games had despite expanding so much the player's movement in general and their control of their jump arc specifically is pretty remarkable. SC4 rarely uses the new hardware to load the screen with enemies or flashy effects, and it rarely needs to. It seems that from moment 1 of having better-than-8-bit hardware available to them, Konami started progressing noticeably towards the complete gothic atmosphere they'd master in time for Rondo and Symphony.

However, despite the technical leaps and gameplay changes, the persisting fundamentals here start to show themselves once the player acclimates in a not-always-positive light. Enemy designs/behavior is rarely more complex than it was in previous games, and while that's mostly OK in the levels thanks to other obstacles and the fact that blazing through with your 8way whip once you know how to handle enemies just feels great, the same doesn't hold for the bosses. The boss fights in this game are just bad and probably the biggest thing holding this back from feeling like a MMX-level generation leap. Once again, get the item that's best for damaging bosses (this time it's the cross) and spam it until they die. If you want to whip only, you can, it'll just take longer. The continuing simplicity is just a weird choice when so many of the boss monsters are reused from previous games, it's like if the Super Mario World castles ended with the Lost Levels versions of the original SMB castle fights instead of actual new bosses. (To be clear, my gripe is not that this game is a sorta-remake of the first and as a result has some of its bosses, it's that the levels feel enough of the time like a new Castlevania for a new generation that the bosses being exactly the same sort of interaction -- with the same characters -- as the old makes them all the more disappointing).

I should probably also mention the music. It's, uh, really good. Except for that remix of Vampire Killer you'll hear for a couple minutes on the final stage, that's really bad. But most of the soundtrack uses SNES's capabilities so well for so early in its lifespan that I guess that's a case of it standing out for sounding more like what you'd expect a dev's beginner attempt at bringing their old series composition to new hardware than all the great remixes and new songs on the rest of the soundtrack.

Maybe it's been too long since I played Undertale, but I'm not sure I really understand the sentiment that undertale shows some crazy growth over this; the most memorable parts of that game to me always were the music (which uh, is here) and the writing, which is very funny here too (and it's not like it's hidden away either, half of the NPC dialogue in Twoson is already that level. The item descriptions and other easter eggs at that point are just a bonus). The story writing is edgy yes, but like... it's for Halloween (you may notice it's in the name) and also has tons of jokes besides; is The Evil Dead "too edgy" to those who say this? I admit that's a bit of an exaggeration as the shifts here are sometimes jarring, and the hack's no masterpiece of narrative for damn sure, but it comes up with a good justification for a hellish version of the EB world to exist and then an original-ish way of pushing the player through it which is more than I ask of almost any mod.

Part of that 'originality' (at least compared to the original game) unfortunately includes a near-mandatory grind that I would say is a pretty inexcusable timewaster for a fan project with such little content besides. The original enemies honestly include some quite nice Halloween enemy ideas, more outwardly horrific ones, and corrupted/funny riffs on existing enemies, so either having more of those or enough of an EXP boost to not have to fight each type 100 times would probably help to keep the luster of the moment-to-moment experience of playing the game. Fortunately, the bosses are all pretty great and generally are beatable enough that you won't wear out their impression via constant retries -- the fact that the grind is still necessary though makes this a double-edged sword as it is in fact moving through the areas between bosses without getting your party wiped by near-unavoidable mob ambushes that makes up the real challenge.

Overall, worth a play for anyone interested I would say; plenty of romhacks and mods try to have stories but few can elicit a reaction from the player, be it fear or laughter, aside from the anger that a difficult one can prompt. The Halloween hack at varying times achieved all three reactions, which I think is no small feat for a small project.