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chuckroWhat is a man? A miserable pile of…yeah, you know the drill. Dracula comes back, a Belmont kills him, but then the castle stays around and Alucard has to come save the day.
The voice-acted dialogue is so magnificently hammy, over-written and over-acted in a way no other Castlevania game has ever managed to match.
The slow start gets to me. Once you get a couple of the exploration items, the first castle really opens up and you can really start to explore. I think 90% of my deaths were in the first two hours of play (then two against Beelzebub and one against Galamoth). And I opened up an FAQ after I finish the game and was reminded there was a Sword familiar (which I missed), a blood-suck healing ability (which I never used), and some secrets you can access with the wolf (which I basically never used). And I never figured out how to work the high-jump boots, though I don’t think there’s anything you can’t reach with the bat transformation instead.
They fixed a bunch of problems with this in the later games: The store is hidden in a far-off corner, so going to buy healing items or equipment is a pain. You need to equip healing items and buff items to use them (later games just let you use them from the menu). The off-hand weapon/shield is a cute idea that never really is necessary. Adding card/soul/etc. drops to almost all monsters makes fighting a variety of creatures seem more worthwhile, instead of grinding against a select few easy ones and using mist to pass the rest. (There aren’t many rare drops, and really, most of the weapons and armor aren’t useful because there are a couple of pure upgrades. I use maybe half a dozen of the 20+ weapons I collected, and virtually none of the consumables except in the aforementioned Galamoth battle.)
But it occurred to me, the biggest question nobody ever askes: Maria, how the hell did you get behind the spike-filled corridor with the locked door and metal grating in it?
Overall: I last played this in 2012 and my opinions haven’t really changed. It’s solid, but later games improved on it.
The voice-acted dialogue is so magnificently hammy, over-written and over-acted in a way no other Castlevania game has ever managed to match.
The slow start gets to me. Once you get a couple of the exploration items, the first castle really opens up and you can really start to explore. I think 90% of my deaths were in the first two hours of play (then two against Beelzebub and one against Galamoth). And I opened up an FAQ after I finish the game and was reminded there was a Sword familiar (which I missed), a blood-suck healing ability (which I never used), and some secrets you can access with the wolf (which I basically never used). And I never figured out how to work the high-jump boots, though I don’t think there’s anything you can’t reach with the bat transformation instead.
They fixed a bunch of problems with this in the later games: The store is hidden in a far-off corner, so going to buy healing items or equipment is a pain. You need to equip healing items and buff items to use them (later games just let you use them from the menu). The off-hand weapon/shield is a cute idea that never really is necessary. Adding card/soul/etc. drops to almost all monsters makes fighting a variety of creatures seem more worthwhile, instead of grinding against a select few easy ones and using mist to pass the rest. (There aren’t many rare drops, and really, most of the weapons and armor aren’t useful because there are a couple of pure upgrades. I use maybe half a dozen of the 20+ weapons I collected, and virtually none of the consumables except in the aforementioned Galamoth battle.)
But it occurred to me, the biggest question nobody ever askes: Maria, how the hell did you get behind the spike-filled corridor with the locked door and metal grating in it?
Overall: I last played this in 2012 and my opinions haven’t really changed. It’s solid, but later games improved on it.
