1989 brought us Castlevania's first foray into the portable space with Castlevania: The Adventure. Developed by a different team than the NES games, this is the story of Christopher Belmont's first quest to take down big ol' Dracula. This game has something of a bad reputation among those who have played it, and in my time with it I grew to find that its reputation is absolutely deserved. The Japanese version is almost identical to the International releases, so there really isn't anything to comment there (Switch port or no Switch port), so this game's faults are entirely its own, no matter the region you're playing them in.
The story as its presented is pretty basic Castlevania fare of "Oh look there's Dracula, let's go kick his face in." Not a whole lot here other than an excuse to go out vampire-huntin', and who really needs more of an excuse than "he's here to destroy the world yet again"? The presentation as a whole is pretty sub-par, though. The music is fine and the graphics are alright, but the game runs VERY slowly when there's more than a few enemies on screen, and that's something that affects your ability to play the game significantly at times. Much like the MSX game, there were many times where Christopher just wouldn't do a quick turn or a whip I needed him to do simply because the game was slowing down so badly.
That slowdown just compounds onto the game's already fairly mediocre design. This is a Castlevania game that is once again an action game (no adventure game aspects to find here), but it's a far more simple action game than even the first Famicom game. You have your upgradable whip, but other than that, you don't got nothin'. This game has no subweapons of any kind, and not even a fireball to whip out when you have your whip at max power. Then add in that your whip gets downgraded EVERY time you get hit, and you have the realization that you're gonna need to memorize these levels quite well if you want to have anything other than your base whip.
The level design isn't MSX Castlevania-levels of vindictive, but a lot of it is just really uninspired. Like Belmont's Revenge (the second GameBoy game) would later do as well, this game eschews stairs for ropes to climb, but that's really the only "special" thing about it, if you can even call it that. The downgraded whip and a fair amount of really precise jumping sections really make this entry an unforgiving time in a way that has a lot of trouble finding a fun-factor, even with save states (and I only used save states in this one right before Dracula since stage 4 was so difficult I didn't wanna have to go through the whole thing again XP). The way the game slows down and speeds up can those jumping puzzles and dealing with enemies, particularly tougher ones, feel far more frustrating than it should be, and it makes the whole game feel like a slog. It's far from the toughest Castlevania game, with even the bosses not being terribly difficult (save for Dracula who's pretty tough but very learnable after a few tries), but that just never gets around the fact that this game just isn't terribly fun to play.
Verdict: Not Recommended. If you ABSOLUTELY MUST have more Castlevania in your life, I can certainly recommend this game more than I can the MSX game, but I still think your time is better spent playing or replaying one of the other classic Castlevanias instead. It's more frustrating than fun, and on the whole pretty unmemorable outside of those most frustrating sections. I didn't despise the few hours I spent with this, but I certainly feel no need to ever repeat them again, and "I didn't totally hate it" is a pretty difficult watermark to recommend a game at in any regard XP
The story as its presented is pretty basic Castlevania fare of "Oh look there's Dracula, let's go kick his face in." Not a whole lot here other than an excuse to go out vampire-huntin', and who really needs more of an excuse than "he's here to destroy the world yet again"? The presentation as a whole is pretty sub-par, though. The music is fine and the graphics are alright, but the game runs VERY slowly when there's more than a few enemies on screen, and that's something that affects your ability to play the game significantly at times. Much like the MSX game, there were many times where Christopher just wouldn't do a quick turn or a whip I needed him to do simply because the game was slowing down so badly.
That slowdown just compounds onto the game's already fairly mediocre design. This is a Castlevania game that is once again an action game (no adventure game aspects to find here), but it's a far more simple action game than even the first Famicom game. You have your upgradable whip, but other than that, you don't got nothin'. This game has no subweapons of any kind, and not even a fireball to whip out when you have your whip at max power. Then add in that your whip gets downgraded EVERY time you get hit, and you have the realization that you're gonna need to memorize these levels quite well if you want to have anything other than your base whip.
The level design isn't MSX Castlevania-levels of vindictive, but a lot of it is just really uninspired. Like Belmont's Revenge (the second GameBoy game) would later do as well, this game eschews stairs for ropes to climb, but that's really the only "special" thing about it, if you can even call it that. The downgraded whip and a fair amount of really precise jumping sections really make this entry an unforgiving time in a way that has a lot of trouble finding a fun-factor, even with save states (and I only used save states in this one right before Dracula since stage 4 was so difficult I didn't wanna have to go through the whole thing again XP). The way the game slows down and speeds up can those jumping puzzles and dealing with enemies, particularly tougher ones, feel far more frustrating than it should be, and it makes the whole game feel like a slog. It's far from the toughest Castlevania game, with even the bosses not being terribly difficult (save for Dracula who's pretty tough but very learnable after a few tries), but that just never gets around the fact that this game just isn't terribly fun to play.
Verdict: Not Recommended. If you ABSOLUTELY MUST have more Castlevania in your life, I can certainly recommend this game more than I can the MSX game, but I still think your time is better spent playing or replaying one of the other classic Castlevanias instead. It's more frustrating than fun, and on the whole pretty unmemorable outside of those most frustrating sections. I didn't despise the few hours I spent with this, but I certainly feel no need to ever repeat them again, and "I didn't totally hate it" is a pretty difficult watermark to recommend a game at in any regard XP