So, imagine this with the roguelike death clause in the mix as well. Imagine if you now need to grind for hearts to afford the Oak Stake. You keep wasting time and getting beat up because you go around in circles inside of a castle. Now, some of you may be going “Louis, you’re being a bit harsh, don’t you know that each body part you get can make the game somewhat easier? What about talking to townspeople or finding clues, that will help!” Sure, this is an action-adventure game like Zelda. So why not talk to people for clues and find hidden scriptures in the castles? That would be nice if it weren’t for the game being muddled with loads of translation errors or flat out lying NPCs.
I actually don’t have a huge issue with the NPCs because it says in the instruction manual that they are pranksters. There’s also evidence that some people do not want to aid you on your quest because Castlevania II has a pretty deep concept going for it. The world is already saved. In this game, Simon is only out for himself. What do the townspeople have to gain from Simon resurrecting Dracula, outside of the possible chance for him to fail and Transylvania falling victim to evil once again? It may be frustrating for someone to tell you that the ferryman likes garlic only for you to waste it and cause no reaction, but it makes sense.
What I do have a problem with is the poor wording of the townsfolk or even the actual clues! At least the lies flat out tell you what you do, but people telling the truth will just confuse you with utter vagueness and cryptic teachings. There are some honest, straightforward clues that are a blessing to see, but most are crazy. One of the clue books you find tells you that “a flame will flicker when you strike the stake”. That’s supposed to mean you get an Oak Stake to strike the magic crystal shield the body part is stuck in. You wouldn’t figure that out though, because in all actuality, you’re not striking the stake, you’re using the actual stake to strike the crystal in the first place! The rubbish translators at Konami lost a lot of meaning in the English when localizing Castlevania II. Don’t even get me started on the hilarious typos in this game.
This game is not all dud, however. In fact, it can become a great game when you get the power — Nintendo Power, that is. When you take away the lousy guesswork, the game will feels more fun. Castlevania II may try to be Zelda, but it forgot to distribute clues in a fair way. I’m sure there’s some of you out there who have played this game in the ’80s and have sat around an NES with your buddies and passed around a Nintendo Power magazine. It’s a lot of fun because quite frankly, since the item storage system in this game is already clunky, why bother with the awful guesswork? For you new-school gamers out there, this game can be a lot of fun if you must (need) to use a walkthrough. You can even get away with walking around castles without the guide because exploring the castles is actually fun to do.
When you think about it, Simon’s Quest is actually one of the easiest 2D Castlevanias to complete due to its lack of demand for immediate reflexive skill and instead opting for exploration. A full-vanilla playthrough of this game will net you about 8 hours of gameplay, but experts like myself will beat this game anywhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours. The game contains three different endings for replay value, which all depend on how fast you complete it. If you want to have a little more fun, go find some passwords on the internet and plug them in for assistance. If you want to cut out the grinding then use some save states on that Wii U Virtual Console (which I did not do).
The visuals in this game are very appropriate and spooky. The blending of colors shine bright in this game, especially when you look at the backgrounds. There is an obvious graphical improvement over the first game. Although, we could do without the glitchy-looking blocks and poor framerates during tons of enemy processing. Not to mention the visuals constantly clipping out due to poor and rushed coding. This game also boasts an iconic soundtrack featuring the premiere of Bloody Tears, a staple in Castlevania moreso than much of the music in the series. The composition of the soundtrack is actually given a lot of fabulous detail.
Confession: I have a soft spot for Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. It’s a very flawed game with a smart premise. It’s a game I replay more than the other two Castlevanias on the NES. I like searching through its broken exterior to find new things about the game that I didn’t know before. Still, it’s severely disappointing when it can’t meet the potential of its predecessor and its successor, which smartly took the route of treading the original’s formula. The game may as well be a skeleton for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and therefore has a legacy of being inspiration to the non-linear Castlevania formula. As buggy and cryptic as the middle child of the trilogy is though, we at oprainfall believe there’s far worse in the series and that this nostalgic and iconic flawed gem deserves just a look. You have been warned though, it has not aged well.
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Review copy provided by author
This is a review of the Wii U Virtual Console version.
