Let’s Play Castlevania 2!
Octoboo! 2016 began with Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest. This is one of the great games for the NES, and one of those games which intrigues me because of how much it gave up from the formula of the first game which made it successful, yet STILL made for an awesome game.
More than that, it made for my favorite game in the Castlevania franchise.
Let’s play Castlevania 2:
Despite what I was incorrectly recalling during the let’s play, this game takes place AFTER the events of the first game. I think that’s right… now my memories and what-I-thought-I-knews are all battling one another but I believe it follows after you beat Dracula in the first game.
Anyway, for some reason the land is cursed so you have to put Dracula back together (at least the important body parts like his nail) just so you can kill him again.
There’s a certain bit of mystique this game had to it when I was growing up, and damned if it isn’t still intact all these years later when I picked it up again.
They really do a great job putting together the gothic and bleak atmosphere in all of these games, but when they add the ability to explore what was actually a pretty large world at the time rather than making it linear like the other games in the series, plus the ability to talk to the townspeople and the internal clock, all of it added to the feeling this game created.
Yes, they split from the straight up action convention of the first and third installments for the NES with Castlevania 2. Sure you still killed stuff and stuff tried to kill you, but you also had times when you could gather information and items in the safety of a town (in the daytime, of course).
You could upgrade your whip and other weapons, get items to progress the story, and even collect hearts to gain more health as I did at the beginning.
This game was different from every other game of the time in so many different ways, both look, fell, and mechanics. I mentioned the internal clock. This game had three (slightly) different endings which you would receive depending on how quickly you beat it. Arguably the middle ending which probably most players saw was the best which is a bit odd, but I was happy to be able to offer all three in this let’s play.
Ultimately, I have no idea why they chose to abandon this formula for subsequent Castlevania games. It was my understanding that because it wasn’t linear like the could be that it made for too difficult a game which was one of the major criticisms of it.
To me the fact that this game stands alone makes it that much more special. If they repeated the same thing in Castlevania 3, it may have taken some of the shine off of this game.