Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

"Why the low score? Here's why..."

Castlevania 2 is a fun game. IF...you're playing it with a Nintendo strategy guide open in front of you. Then you can beat it easily within a couple hours. BUT...if you don't have that strategy guide...

You'll have gotten so sick of the graphical uniformity that you'll puke! Atmosphere? Pah. Metroid did the bleak uniformity thing a lot better, and got away with it mainly because it was one of the first titles for the NES. It's not that the backgrounds are bad, far from it. It's just that they're...bland. Same village pallete swapped, same mansion pallete swapped, a little variation in certain forest and swamp areas, but generally the same dreary visuals whether it's night or day(yet another example of gee-golly-gosh pallete swapping.) At least in Castlevania 1 they put a little variation into the different areas. Not here. Some people might say that this was creating a REAL scary gothic atmosphere, bleakness and all, I say that the graphical designers were lazy.

Fortunately, the music director managed to get some pretty cool tunes out! Unfortunately, there aren't nearly enough of them...same one for day...same for night...same for village...same for each mansion...it gets old until you finally reach Castlevania. Now comes my big complaint...

If you haven't read the strategy guide, you will be absolutely CLUELESS on what to do. The villagers have to be the worst sources of ''help'' ever, about as incoherent as the old man from Zelda 1 and as ''helpful'' as your apprentice in Phantom Fighter. In other words, you REALLY want to practice whipping on these guys, but they just keep giving you the same darn cryptic remarks, bad advice, sexual come-ons(no joke) and general useless crud that makes these people more of a hindrance then a help to your quest. And speaking of the quest...some sequels which sport a totally different style are good, like SMB2. Some, like this one, suck. Think of the fact that unless you knew from the strategy guide which item to have selected at which places and how long to duck down waiting for an event to occur, you could be screwing around for a LONG time before getting anything done. The items needed to accomplish a task generally had practically no logical relation to it(especially those involving crystals.) I will reiterate: THE ONLY REASON THIS GAME WAS POPULAR WAS BECAUSE IT CAME OUT AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME NINTENDO POWER WAS IN VOGUE. In other words, the non-cheaters were stuck holding the bag(without the faintest clue on what it did.) And the sad thing is, once you know how to get past the impossible-to-figure-out spots, the actual fighting portion of the game was criminally easy! Only two of the mansions have bosses at all, for crying out loud! Castlevania 1, on the other hand, took me a while to beat even with save states. This...naaahhh...Dracula was gone pretty quickly, since he has only one form and you have an item that insures invincibility. What all am I trying to say? This game was hard where it was supposed to be easy and easy where it was supposed to be hard. Wrong way to do a game like this, even though it was one of the first ones in its genre.

Sigh...this is sad, the only reason I had fun on this game was because I cheated through all the wierd puzzles and breezed through all the bosses. It's the fun of a quick play-through, and while I would add this title to your emulated collection, stay as far away from the used cart as you can.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/00, Updated 02/25/00