This is largely known as one of the best of the classic Casltevanias, and it's honestly one of the biggest reasons I got my PCE Classic. I played through it for our Birds are Jerks Together Retro, and at Maru's pushing I then went and 100%'d the game, rescuing all the maidens and finishing all the stages. I'm gald he did, because it was really worthwhile! It's not the longest game in the world, nor is it the hardest Castlevania game out there, but it's still well worth going through.
The story is pretty bog-standard for a Castlevania game, Dracula's back and you gotta go give him his lumps again, but this game does spice things up a bit by adding some animated cutscenes with spoken dialogue using the POWER of the PC Engine's CD add on. An intro in German (with Japanese subtitles) as well as cutscenes and voicelines throughout the game help bring the story to life in a more entertaining way than prior Casltevania games. A lot of them are especially entertaining because the VA (when you can hear it, as it's very quiet due to PCE CD voice clips just not really emulating properly on modern televisions) is quite campy and silly (like how all the maidens Richter rescues are SO thirsty for him XD) and the animations used in them is often uncanny and unintentionally funny as well. It's a story that does the job of adding the set dressing, and it was fun to indulge in as someone who knows enough Japanese to know what they're saying.
This is a PC Engine game, so sadly the ability to throw a subweapon with a shoulder button is lost due to there only being 4 face buttons (including "run" and "select"), and the ability to whip in 8 directions is also scrapped from Castlevania 4, but the game plays great. It's still the case that there were a lot of times I ended up throwing weapons when I didn't mean to due to how the PCE's controller is a bit fiddly, but Richter always controlled well. This game even adds a second playable character, Maria, and once unlocked, she's basically an easy mode. She can double jump, has a weapon that does way more DPS, and has a sliding dash she can do. While it's a shame you need to unlock it, it's really awesome to have accessibility options, of a sort, in an old action game like this. And as an added cherry on top, Maria even gets her own versions of all the cutscenes for rescuing the other three maidens and beating Dracula.
The level design is top notch, and you never feel like you're getting horribly dicked over like so many of the earlier Castlevania games can feel like. Checkpoints feel fair as do bosses, and there was never a point I was frustrated to the point of wanting to just give up. After beating the game with Maria, I even went back to play most of the stages as Richter and had a lot more fun than I thought I would. There are a total of 13 stages (if you wanna count the prologue and the one that's just the Dracula fight as "stages") and they're all totally worth playing. Four of those are even hidden stages that you need to do certain requirements in each stage to find your way to, and the bosses guarding the secret stages are different from those guarding the normal stages. The hidden paths and cutscenes give the game a feeling of of being this sort of missing link between games like Castlevania 4 and later Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night, and that's really neat~.
What also makes this game feel like a missing link is the presentation. For the music, it's a greatest hits of the best of the old tracks as well as a bunch of new great ones. The soundtrack is heckin' excellent, and easily one of the highlights of the game. Looking towards the future, the graphics in this game are excellent pixel art, and it's art so excellent Konami would keep on using a LOT of them for as long as Igarashi was making Castlevania games. It was really uncanny seeing so many familiar sprites, from bosses to the simple medusa heads, that I knew so well from games that came out well over a decade after this one, and it just goes to show how well the presentation holds up (and how well asset reuse can serve those who wish to indulge in it, I suppose ;b).
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a game that I can easily say deserves its reputation as the height of classic Castlevanias, even dethroning my old favorite of Castlevania IV. Konami really outdid themselves with this one, and this is absolutely a must-play if you've already got a PC Engine Mini in some form, and if you don't have one of those already, then this is a pretty darn good reason to think about picking one up.
The story is pretty bog-standard for a Castlevania game, Dracula's back and you gotta go give him his lumps again, but this game does spice things up a bit by adding some animated cutscenes with spoken dialogue using the POWER of the PC Engine's CD add on. An intro in German (with Japanese subtitles) as well as cutscenes and voicelines throughout the game help bring the story to life in a more entertaining way than prior Casltevania games. A lot of them are especially entertaining because the VA (when you can hear it, as it's very quiet due to PCE CD voice clips just not really emulating properly on modern televisions) is quite campy and silly (like how all the maidens Richter rescues are SO thirsty for him XD) and the animations used in them is often uncanny and unintentionally funny as well. It's a story that does the job of adding the set dressing, and it was fun to indulge in as someone who knows enough Japanese to know what they're saying.
This is a PC Engine game, so sadly the ability to throw a subweapon with a shoulder button is lost due to there only being 4 face buttons (including "run" and "select"), and the ability to whip in 8 directions is also scrapped from Castlevania 4, but the game plays great. It's still the case that there were a lot of times I ended up throwing weapons when I didn't mean to due to how the PCE's controller is a bit fiddly, but Richter always controlled well. This game even adds a second playable character, Maria, and once unlocked, she's basically an easy mode. She can double jump, has a weapon that does way more DPS, and has a sliding dash she can do. While it's a shame you need to unlock it, it's really awesome to have accessibility options, of a sort, in an old action game like this. And as an added cherry on top, Maria even gets her own versions of all the cutscenes for rescuing the other three maidens and beating Dracula.
The level design is top notch, and you never feel like you're getting horribly dicked over like so many of the earlier Castlevania games can feel like. Checkpoints feel fair as do bosses, and there was never a point I was frustrated to the point of wanting to just give up. After beating the game with Maria, I even went back to play most of the stages as Richter and had a lot more fun than I thought I would. There are a total of 13 stages (if you wanna count the prologue and the one that's just the Dracula fight as "stages") and they're all totally worth playing. Four of those are even hidden stages that you need to do certain requirements in each stage to find your way to, and the bosses guarding the secret stages are different from those guarding the normal stages. The hidden paths and cutscenes give the game a feeling of of being this sort of missing link between games like Castlevania 4 and later Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night, and that's really neat~.
What also makes this game feel like a missing link is the presentation. For the music, it's a greatest hits of the best of the old tracks as well as a bunch of new great ones. The soundtrack is heckin' excellent, and easily one of the highlights of the game. Looking towards the future, the graphics in this game are excellent pixel art, and it's art so excellent Konami would keep on using a LOT of them for as long as Igarashi was making Castlevania games. It was really uncanny seeing so many familiar sprites, from bosses to the simple medusa heads, that I knew so well from games that came out well over a decade after this one, and it just goes to show how well the presentation holds up (and how well asset reuse can serve those who wish to indulge in it, I suppose ;b).
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a game that I can easily say deserves its reputation as the height of classic Castlevanias, even dethroning my old favorite of Castlevania IV. Konami really outdid themselves with this one, and this is absolutely a must-play if you've already got a PC Engine Mini in some form, and if you don't have one of those already, then this is a pretty darn good reason to think about picking one up.