Did you know that there are people out there that don’t like this game? That’s nuts. It’s pretty good. It really became a kind of meme to just dunk on the game without really knowing what’s going on with it. But I get it. It’s got some problems, but it’s not the worst thing ever. Not even.
Some time after the events of Castlevania 1, our pal Simon isn’t feeling so hot. Turns out he’s been cursed by Dracula and his time is running out. The only way to break the curse is to reassemble Dracula and beat him up all over again. It’s a little weird, but sequels on the NES were generally a little weird. Zelda 2, Mario 2, TMNT 2. Stuff like that. Zelda 2, actually, kind of similar in a way.
Anyway.
Simon has to travel a fairly confusing and complicated world to visit 5 different manors, in which are housed one part of Dracula’s remains. Upon collecting all the remains we head back to Castlevania, reassemble out Vampire Voltron and break it all over again real good like.
Gameplay is similar but different than CV1.
Simon’s Quest isn’t a stage based romp through a spooky castle. It’s an action rpg with adventure elements. Simon collects hearts which, in this game are ammo for sub-weapons (kind of), money (kind of), and experience points (kind of). He goes from town to town through caves, swaps, and forests stopping in on these manors along the way.
He collects sub weapons, powers up his whip, finds secret magical items to help open the paths forward. Or backwards as the case may be.
Once you make it to a town you can rest at a church and get healed, there’s almost always something to buy and hints to find. When you find your way to one of the manors in the game you’ll have to wander around avoiding enemies, traps, and explore the area till you find someone selling you a wooden steak. You’ll need that steak to break the seal on the container holding the part of Dracula that’s stored in the house.
Fun fact, the wooden steak and garlic (another item in this game) were intended to be in CV1 but were dropped later in development.
Some of those manors will have a boss at the end, but not all. Keeps you on your toes like that.
The game also introduces the day/night system. At night you’ll encounter stronger enemies in the wild, zombies and bats in town, and you won’t be able to enter any homes or churches. Time passes outdoors but not in buildings. Enemies at night generally give more experience and hearts at the cost of being more difficult to defeat.
I mentioned earlier that the game has some rpg style elements. Simon will gain levels after so many points. Points are given when you pick up hearts and after X amount of points you’ll level up. This generally means your health bar will increase but I think it also ups your attack damage every so often. I don’t recall for sure.
Speaking of attack damage, Simon begins the game with the basic leather whip and that can be upgraded all the way to a flame whip if you’re able to track down it’s location. Very cool stuff.
Now for, what I think, is the most glaring problem with the game… the translation. It’s not really bad in terms of things like pigeon English and things like that. “I Am Error” doesn’t exist in this game. The problem, I think, really lies in that the translation makes the game more cryptic than it needs to be. Different locations in the game have names, but the NPCs in town you talk to sometimes give you bad information or directions. They may have the wrong name for a place you should visit or use a word that isn’t quite right.
Some of that, I think, is probably intention on the writers part to keep the game challenging, but some of it really feels like it was just a translation error. There are, for example, seven different “woods” in the game. The game does nothing to tell you when you’ve entered one of these forests. This isn’t really all that bad for the most part but in once instance two different forests go right into each other.
An NPC in town may say something like “West of here in the Jova Woods” but there are 3 forests west of where there is. Which one is Jova? No one else in the game may mention Jova at all. It’s an oversight I think.
Of course at the time it was expected you’d have the manual which came with a map anyway.
Side note on this – MetroidQuest added area names to his CV2 Revamped game. I pushed pretty hard for that. You’re welcome.
Graphically the game is an upgrade from CV1. The sprites and animations are better, the backgrounds are generally better. It’s a small improvement across the board.
Musically the game does feature some classic tracks and I feel like the voicing is better. Konami was figuring out the hardware better. I think, overall, CV1 has the better soundtrack but CV2 has it’s fair share of enjoyable tracks.
I got into this game deeper than I thought I would. It wasn’t intentional, there’s just a lot to it when you step back at see one of the many forests for the many more trees. It plays great. It looks good. It sounds good. It’s an interesting story idea and there’s a ton of things to explore and discover. But the way the game presents you with information is troubling for sure.
Oh, and did I mention that there are multiple endings depending on the time you take, number of deaths, score, all that kinda stuff? Mostly time but I think the others play into it somehow.
Anyway. Go play it. It’s better than you think.
| Plot | 7/10 |
| Gameplay | 7/10 |
| Graphics | 8/10 |
| Music | 8/10 |
| Overall | 8/10 |