So I instead decided to play the Japanese version of Castlevania 3 instead of the original for this marathon and yeah man this ost is fucking baller. Definitely recommend playing this version for that alone, but it also just balances the difficulty to that it's not as frustrating as the North American release. The partner system is the main gimmick of this game and it's great, I love the characters we have (except Alucard) on display here, Grant is a great projectile based fighter, and Sypha nukes enemies with magic, and Alucard is... well he doesn't do much until Symphony of the Night. Just give him a few years to get his beauty sleep and he'll be peak.

Castlevania 3 (Akumajou Densetsu) is one of those games I kept seeing people talk about but never really tried. My extent of Castlevania knowledge was 1 & 4 (never beat either). I went with the Famicom version with an English Translation patch because HOLY FUCK the music in this game is so good. The VRC6 sound chip makes this soundtrack so legendary.

I really think the gameplay loop & level design is vastly superior than what I played of 1. However, unlike 1, this game is hard. Really fucking hard. Holy shit is this game hard. Some of that difficulty comes from the right place & the wrong place. I still don't like how your character gets knocked back after getting hit, and enemy respawns are still annoying, but I will say some of the enemy placement does add interest to the level design, and it kept me on my toes.

I didn't really get much out of the multiple characters, but that's because I only unlocked Alucard. I didn't use him much, but I feel like he'd be one of those characters I'd use more if i really knew his potential. I mostly just kept playing as Trevor (Ralph) Belmont.

I did like a lot of the levels, but the last few started to piss me off a little. The one with the blocks slowly dropping down was just fucking shit. That level sucks ass. The last level wasn't much easier but it didn't waste my damn time at least. I will admit I did cheat a little bit towards the end, but mostly because of how fucking ball bustingly hard this game gets by the last few levels & I didn't want to waste my time playing the same shit over and over again.

The fight with dracula drags on way too long too. The first phase is pretty fucking hard, the second phase is a joke and the third phase is....okay, i guess? I don't really think 3 phases was necessary.

Overall? Pretty good. Something I'd probably go back to in years time, and I'll def keep listening to the music. It def shows its age a little bit but I enjoyed my time with it quite a bit. Maybe next time I beat it I'll do it completely legit

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

Legend of Demon Castle is at its heart a memorization game, and at times it can feel cheap due to the game often expecting you to plan your moves beforehand over reaction to whatever it throws at you throughout its levels, and to that extent I think it pulls it off masterfully.

This is definitely one of the best NES games, and I was honestly taken aback with how many modern design elements were implemented in it. The game has amazing replayability in multiple routes and different recruitable partner characters who are all pretty competent at their respective roles (usually covering Trevor/Ralph's shortcomings in mobility or attack range, while letting him be the main damage dealer).

The level design is often pretty good (if you keep in mind what the game is going for), and the password system works wonders into making Densetsu a very easily accessible and digestible experience even to this day.

Overall, a MUST play if you're into NES games, no questions asked. This game is a masterpiece.

When I first played this version, I was so burnt out by the American one that I just used save-states, so I couldn’t notice any of the difficulty changes. On replay, I beat this game legit and GODDAMN is it better.

The American Castlevania 3 was so hard that it became a slog to play, while this game is a lot more fair. It’s still the hardest of the trilogy, but it’s never really hard (except stage 9). It’s an absolute delight to go through. The final boss is a bit too easy though.

Man, I hate localisation changes.

The better version of Castlevania 3. I still find the difficulty to be frustrating if no save states are used since this uses an old-school life system and levels are fairly long.

The vertically-scrolling levels where you can die from falling down two pixels are incredibly annoying. It doesn't make sense that you just fall through the stairs, too. A lot of deaths can occur from enemy knockback, too. The difficulty doesn't always feel fair as a result.

The music is good. The branching path system is novel when considering how old this game is.

(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

Tough as nails. I’ve never been less ashamed to use save states, and this is the easier version.

With how daring Simon’s Quest was, it’s a little disappointing this game just went back to Castlevania 1, but bigger and better. But with that being said, this is Castlevania 1 but bigger and better, and Castlevania 1 is a fine game. The visuals and audio are stunning for the time, it’s dripping with atmosphere, and the branching paths and multiple characters are a great touch. It’s difficult to recommend due to just how ball bustingly hard it can be, but if you have the time to master it, why not? It’s better than the Netflix show based on it anyhow.

It's been a few years since I've last played this game.
I would play it again for this review, but... considering how difficult this game can get... yeah, I'm working with my memory for this one, folks.

So, when I played Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse back in 2019, via the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, I specifically remember playing the Japanese version, because it's easier.
There's no bullshit enemy damage outputs in later stages, Grant has a better default weapon and while the HELP ME code doesn't work anymore, the checkpoints in the final stages compensate for it.

In spite of that, Castlevania III (or Akumajou Densetsu, as it's known in Japan) is still a really hard game. So hard that I remember just not having much fun by the end of it, even with the difficulty being easier in the Japanese version.

There are a good amount of things I do like about this game though.
One of which is that you get multiple playable characters that you recruit as you go along. While it's unfortunate that I can only select one partner at a time, all three rock in their own ways.

Grant (in the Japanese version, at least) has a throwing dagger as his default weapon, and that's awesome for taking down threats at a distance! He also can cling onto walls, even upside down! And he has fluid mid-air control, unlike Trevor. I don't understand why they'd limit that to just him, but I digress.

I only played as Grant in my playthrough, but from what I've seen, Sypha and Alucard looked to be fun in their own right, especially since Sypha has a lot of magic at her disposal and Alucard can temporarily fly in his bat form.

There's multiple pathways you can choose after you beat a stage, as you can go to either one stage or another, giving the game more replay value.
And the stages are just very varied in general, with great background and an awesome soundtrack, especially in the Japanese Version, with the VRC6 sound chip that it had, adding more instruments to the mix!

But even with all of that stuff going for it, Castlevania III just became too hard by the end, and in a way that Castlevania I, I don't think ever reached.

Approach with caution.

was recommended to play this version instead of the version of castlevania 3 released in the west... not sure if i like this or castlevania 1 more but damn the musical and graphical upgrades the famicom disk system adds are incredible for the time. both kicked my ass but gotta give 1 some brownie points for putting a checkpoint right at dracula. for this game's dracula fight i used my one and only save state bc a game over puts you right back at the beginning of the level instead and i wasnt about that shit. forgive me.... my goofy ass probably couldnt handle finishing the western version at all... i'm a fake gamer ahh....

EDIT: it was the VRC6 chip responsible for those upgrades not the famicom disk system..... i'm even more of a fake gamer now ahhhhhh.......

Taking a break from the Zelda marathon to play some Classicvania.

This is the Japanese version of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. For some reason, it’s easier than the western releases and has way better audio quality, so I chose to play this over the American version (thankfully, the Castlevania Anniversary Collection has both). I’m glad I did, because if this is the “easy” version of the game, then I shudder to think of how brutal the American version must be.

This game is hard, even by Castlevania standards. There are bottomless pits galore, loads of booby traps, enemies scattered across every screen, and Death. Death is very hard in this game. He really wants you to die… which is kinda his job, so I can’t really be mad at him for that.

Luckily, this game is saved by its many positive qualities. The graphics are some of the absolute best that the NES and Famicom could muster up; the backgrounds are colorful and detailed, every sprite pops out, and there are even some cool lightning and weather effects. You can tell that this was released towards the end of the NES’ lifespan, because holy shit does it milk the hardware for all its worth.

The level design, likewise, is pretty damn solid. Very challenging, but rarely unfair. That being said, everything in Block 7 is fucking awful, so it’s a good thing you can skip it altogether by picking Sypha over Alucard.

Oh yeah, there are also multiple playable characters for the first time in the series. Obviously, the main protagonist is another whip-wielding Belmont: Trevor, the ancestor of Simon from the first two (and fourth?) games. He controls just as well as Simon did, so nothing new there. However, newcomers Sypha and Grant offer some great variety, having useful long-range attacks that can decimate certain levels. Alucard kinda sucks, though, so ‘80s kids had to wait until Symphony of the Night for him to become an absolute badass and the best character in the franchise.

Also, the music. It’s amazing. Like, genuinely phenomenal. I don’t even know how to describe it because it’s just so fucking good and sounds so crisp, especially for the time. Go listen for yourself.

So yeah, Castlevania III is flawed, but pretty fucking based overall and definitely one of the NES/Famicom’s crowning achievements that successfully evolves the Classicvania formula.