The Castlevania Adventure!

The Castlevania franchise has been running for 25 years now, and it is one of the original games that came out on the NES, and since then, has spewed out an insane amount of games, pretty much on every single console. Generally, they have received good reviews and positive feedback, but of course, there are always exceptions to the rule.

Castlevania is a 2D side-scroller, much like Mario, but it’s set more around killing and horror. The objective in most games is to fight your way through a series of levels, using your whip and a bunch of objects that you pick up during the game, like Axes, Daggers, Holy Water etc. to reach and kill Dracula, who has risen. The first Castlevania game was extremely difficult, and was a game where you really had to use strategy and forethought to get through the levels. As I said, it got quite positive reviews and the games are coming out still today. But, of course, there are always exceptions to the rule.

In this case, it’s The Castlevania Adventure. The producers, Konami, decided that the game should be put onto handheld consoles, and soon after that, The Castlevania Adventure was created for the original Gameboy. Now this game, while following the style of its Castlevania brothers, did not come close to the success that the other games got. Not even in eyesight to what the others got. This was because... Well, if you read on, I’m sure you would understand.

The Good:

• Castlevania games have always been well known for their music, and while this game didn’t have the best soundtrack, it was actually pretty good, if you put the Gameboy’s limited speakers into the picture.
• The background on some levels were actually nicely drawn, and considering it is the Gameboy, it looks quite good, even though it is repetitive throughout the game.
• The monsters had well drawn sprites and were well thought out, unlike the rest of the game.

The Bad:

• The speed at which you’re walking at makes it feel like you’re a sloth with broken bones, trying to crawl forwards, it’s ridiculous.
• You and the monsters walk at the exact same speed, which makes absolutely no sense! If the monster is right behind you, then you can’t turn around and whip them quickly, because they either catch up or the speed at which you move makes it impossible to land a hit.
• The jump... Oh God the jump. The only enemy that you can jump over are these little hunched over monsters and actually managing to jump over one is a tremendous feat in itself. There are lots of platforming “puzzles” in the game, and if you don’t stand on the exact pixel at the edge of whatever platform you’re on, you’ll miss it. First of all, the jump animation is ridiculous, as your legs literally collapse into your torso, and the height of the jump is incredibly low also, so that’s impossible. Also in some levels, there are falling platforms, so if you come short of one, then that’s game over.

• Even the speed at which you whip at feels ridiculously slow and 8/10 times when an enemy is right beside you in the opposite direction, you’ll get damaged before you whip him.
• The character looks quite bland and dull. I mean even the rolling eyeball is identified as a rolling eyeball, but you look nearly exactly the same as this weird clay/ zombie monster, with slight differences.
• The level design sometimes is just so stupid that it makes it impossible to complete without dying. They incorporated lots of little platforming puzzles to jump across, except if you’re not standing in the exact position that you need to be in, then you will surely die. They were also extremely repetitive and seemed to have little effort and thought put into.
• Now, in The Castlevania Adventure, they removed all the sub-items, such as the daggers, holy water etc. and replaced them with a power-up that makes your whip stronger and enables you to shoot projectiles when you whip with it. However, as soon as you take a hit, which is pretty frequent, your weapon goes down in power, so really, the process is: Get a power-up, kill a few monsters, lose power-up. Get a power-up, kill a few monsters, lose power-up. It’s pretty annoying as I’m sure you can imagine, and on the really hard levels late in-game, a fully powered up whip is a mandatory item to have if you want to succeed.

• The level design seems to drag on and feel sluggish because of the repetitiveness and the speed which you are moving at, so you lose interest at a remarkable speed.
• While the music was not terrible, the actual amount of tracks that were included in the game was roughly three... Which is pretty pathetic when you think about it. It’s really pathetic actually.
• There is a timer that you have, and if you don’t finish the stage before it reaches 0:00, then you die. And this timer is completely stupid! Since pretty much each level incorporates some sort of platforming or jumping puzzle which is usually impossible, you lose lots of time there, plus trying to kill all of the enemies which are out of range added onto the ridiculous boss battles that are there. It’s just depressing.
• On each level there’s these stupid secret areas, with lives, power-ups etc. but they’re not structured so well. In the first level, if you carry on climbing the rope, you start climbing through the bricks. I mean, seriously, can’t you do any better then that?

Final Thoughts:

The game, to be honest, is just downright bad. I mean this game is just painful to play. With sloppy controls, the speed of Big Foot with broken legs, ridiculous boss battles, useless power ups, stupid level designs, bland characters, average music, this game holds a name as possibly the worst Castlevania game to be released. You quickly lose interest in the game as the pacing is about as fast as downloading a 1gb file at a speed of 8kb per second, the levels are occasionally impossible and the game just feels like no one thought about anything that was going through. My recommendation is that if you’re a Castlevania fan and you’re collecting all the games, spend a bit of cash on it, but don’t get it for ridiculous amounts, because it’s definitely not worth it.

Overall, this game, gets a: D