reviews

*This is a retro game review, but I assume that's okay? 

 
Castlevania: Simon’s Quest. Like many sequels of its time, it was significantly different from the first and later games, though some aspects have become part of modern Castlevania tradition. It introduced a more adventure aspect, which included purchasing weapons and items from collected money (for some reason hearts were money), talking to villagers, and solving puzzles. Some things it did very well, other aspects failed miserably. It was the first game that I got really into as a kid- writing down clues, playing for an hour or two each evening, reading hint books, etc.

While it did have villagers to talk to, most of what they said made no sense and was useless to the game. Apparently, they purposely had the villagers give you false or useless info to mess you up. Its already a game where the “puzzles” make no sense, and they give you misleading clues.

The puzzles are often idiotic. Okay, so you find an orb and are somehow supposed to able to know that you should throw a stake at it. If you find the stake and use it, you wasted it and have to find it again. Fun times. The main idiotic puzzle is the part where you have to crouch down in front of some wall and wait several seconds while equipping the red orb. I only figured it out from reading a guide. A guide is basically required unless you want to find all the hints scattered throughout the dungeons that can only be found by randomly hitting walls with holy water. Now that’s some sophisticated level design.

It did have some cool overworld level design. I loved traversing the massive world connecting the towns and dungeons. Every few minutes, a screen comes up telling you that it’s a “horrible night to have a curse”. Most people complain about how long the text box lasts and how annoying it is, but I always loved the day-night transition, and would always yell out the words when it appeared. At night, the screen got dark and the enemies got more difficult, which was pretty fun. Also the shops were closed and the towns were overrun with zombies. Zombies = good source of money. By the way, if you die- you lose your money, which is insanely annoying.

Many people complain about the dungeons being to difficult, because of all the “false bricks” where you fall through the floor and other unreasonably difficult tasks. I liked it though, because I felt like I was really exploring the dungeon, and would map it out, and write the locations of the pitfalls and such. I thoroughly enjoyed the dungeon experience in this game.

Also, the music in this game is fantastic. I’m a big fan of Castlevania music, and this game is no exception. Its daytime overworld music is the awesome song “Bloody Tears”. I’m listening to it as I write this review. All the music is great and fits the game. The graphics are good for its time and it really brought out the horror elements as best it could on an 8-bit system.

Its been forever since I’ve played it, but I’m pretty sure the story involved finding the body parts of Dracula (conveniently scattered among the game’s dungeons, of course) and bringing them together to resurrect Dracula and defeat him again to destroy a cursed placed on Simon Belmont by Dracula. I think I read that he “forgot to burn the body parts the first time he killed him”. WOOPS.

Castlevania: Simons Quest broke away from the basic platforming of the original, and turned it into a more adventure game with RPG-elements, including selectable items and permanent whip upgrades. Despite it several major flaws, it still delivered a very enjoyable Castlevania adventure. 

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