Akumajou Densetsu

released on Dec 22, 1989
by Konami

Akumajou Densetsu is the Japanese version of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. This version has many differences in gameplay and level layout, making the overall experience easier than its western counterpart.


Released on

Genres


More Info on IGDB


Reviews View More

(My review seems like it got duplicated for some reason, no idea what happened...)
Castlevania 3 and this version of it feels like a modern game when you don't play on normal, you have the boring easy mode and the frustrating hard mode squeezed into the game for the sake of existing and with very little effort. I expected this to be a more balanced version of Castle 3, but they made this way too easy, your whip is faster and you take less damage, some enemies seem to have less HP too I guess, anything else is a small change or something I didn't notice.
I just quickly breezed through the game feeling like a TAS, which isn't exactly what these games are about, I didn't plan any of my attacks like you do in other games, I just saw an enemy, killed it, and moved on, sometimes I just damage boost myself because it didn't matter, the whip being faster and your defense being higher just made this game too easy, I died very few times and only one of them wasn't from pits, I was so used to killing everything with ease that I didn't put much effort into a few of my jumps. Would've been better if either the whip was faster or if you took less damage, but not both at once, or maybe it's just impossible to make this game good. I just quit out of boredom, at least the original made me put some effort into the game to progress, rather than:
walking forward
attacking
walking forward
spam attack at a boss with even more ease than the original
yawn
a million stairs
yawn
repeat

Castlevania 3 and this version of it feels like a modern game when you don't play on normal, you have the boring easy mode and the frustrating hard mode squeezed into the game for the sake of existing and with very little effort. I expected this to be a more balanced version of Castle 3, but they made this way too easy, your whip is faster and you take less damage, some enemies seem to have less HP too I guess, anything else is a small change or something I didn't notice.
I just quickly breezed through the game feeling like a TAS, which isn't exactly what these games are about, I didn't plan any of my attacks like you do in other games, I just saw an enemy, killed it, and moved on, sometimes I just damage boost myself because it didn't matter, the whip being faster and your defense being higher just made this game too easy, I died very few times and only one of them wasn't from pits, I was so used to killing everything with ease that I didn't put much effort into a few of my jumps. Would've been better if either the whip was faster or if you took less damage, but not both at once, or maybe it's just impossible to make this game good. I just quit out of boredom, at least the original made me put some effort into the game to progress, rather than:
walking forward
attacking
walking forward
spam attack at a boss with even more ease than the original
yawn
a million stairs
yawn
repeat

Massive improvement from the first Castlevania: better controls, the game runs better, incredible soundtrack, difficult but fair and the addition of new playable characters is genius.
In terms of visuals and performance, it's really impressive for the FAMICOM considering how bad the first game runs most of the time.
All-in-all, great game.

Really fun and decently challenging, with great music. Dunno about the western version

idk if i hate classicvania or not