The fact that a port, sequel, remaster, or remake does not exist is a terrible tragedy.

I love the narrative structure of the story. Centering around Alexandra Roivas in her grandfather's puzzle-filled, Metroidvania-style mansion, you gradually unlock new parts of the building and new chapters to play.

There's only 4-5 settings, but multiple revisits with different protagonists. They cleverly wrap around eachother throughout time, even encountering previous characters. The puzzle-solving works in tandem with your spellcraft a lot of the time, doubling up as tutorial. Discovering new spells is almost always useful and sequence-breaking to find more early is immensely satisfying.

Of course what everyone remembers is the sanity meter. It's such a brilliant idea that I wish had freer copyright limitations so I could see it implemented in new titles. The hallucinations, feints, and red herrings you and your hero encounter are always entertaining and baffling. My favorite is when a fly starts crawling across your HUD.

There are some shortcomings. The hacking combat and simplistic shooting wears a little thin. I also hate that they added a mechanic where your character runs out of breath after jogging for a while. The fatter characters run out nearly immediately and it really taxes the patience.

Fantastic voice-acting, sound design, and writing. It's not afraid to take bold twists and seep crawling, ancient, arcane fear into your psyche. It's not perfect, but I do love it.

Veritable classic. You know this because you can still play it in 2024 and still find things to be impressed about. I seriously doubt that I'm about to write anything that nobody knows, but hell with it. Enemy design and variety, environments, muuuusic, the sprites, weapon options, armor options, the obtuse arcane, all of these things are peak video games. The voice acting is terrible, but God, that only makes it better. If you've never played this and have misgivings, set them aside. 2D doesn't age like 3D.

If I had to complain a little, I would agree with the general assessment that the Inverted Castle only served to pad the game out another few hours, but on the flip side, there are SO many new enemies that they added. SO many more boss fights. A real Misfits album worth of Universal Monsters to destroy, plus a few really good optional fights. See? Even my complaints turn into compliments. Some of the enemy placement is really stupid and frustrated me a lot. There. Also I wish bosses required a bit more strategy. Face-tanked most of 'em.

If there are any hardcore Castlevania fans reading this, please suggest the next one I should play! I had a harder time getting into the ones that came out before this and the 3D after. I know there are some good GBA ones, I just don't know what they are.

Also, does anyone else get the feeling that Fromsoft took HEAVY inspiration from this? There were so many areas comparable to the Moonlit Gardens, Catacombs, Lost Izalith, Undead Burg, etc. So many similar swords and enemies. There was an armored bull! It really felt like I was playing 2D progenitor Dark Souls.

Really wish the game tried harder to establish its own identity. Everyone talks about how much it takes influence from Resident Evil and Silent Hill and it's all justified. Level design, puzzles, combat, all feel familiar. Those first two aspects are honestly incredibly well done. It has similar level design to RE1 with the interconnected layout and tight corridors. The puzzles are also very intricate and complex, but sometimes a bit too much, at least for me. Combat though was one of the weakest parts of the game for me. It rarely felt possible to ignore enemies and conserve ammo, so the vast majority of the time, you have to actually kill the enemies and waste your resources, which can be quite scarce. Enemy design was very annoying, lots of attacks that come out instantly and melee weapons felt completely useless since they very rarely stun enemies. I was quite mixed on the story as well. It had some decent elements in the beginning and actually made me fairly interested, but the plot twists were so predictable, it's like they didn't even try. Ended up being very underwhelming. And oh god that voice acting! I guess it took that from RE1 as well (OG, not the remake).

This game was a huge disappointment for me, even though my expectations were already low.

At the beginning, the game hooks you with the feeling of novelty and it becomes fun to explore the possibilities it offers. The problem is that it only lasts until the third chapter. After that, the game's biggest issue becomes evident: it's too simple and not well-executed.

What bothered me the most was how they tried to use the name of such a good and famous franchise in the JRPG world to create something mediocre, even using the storyline's base to do so. It's as if they bet that just having the name or a few dialogue references here and there would make the game good. This annoyed me greatly during the gameplay because the game itself has no identity; it's just a poorly done reboot.

The storyline is extremely simplistic, following basically the same narrative style for eight chapters. Now, imagine having a mediocre to bad story with long chapters where you take 10 steps and encounter 5 enemies with no major differences between them, in nothing but hallways with no challenges? In the last few chapters, this became much more evident, and I could barely stand it.

I really wanted to like it; I started liking it, but the game gave me the impression that it was made like any other game and that it reached a point where it didn't progress in any way; it just repeated itself. Even the soundtrack by Sakuraba, which is usually outstanding, is just average in this game, like everything else.

I really wanted to like this. Sci-fi horror is my jam, and I really dig the art style. Unfortunately, the gameplay is pretty meh, and the combat just isn't fun or engaging. Yes, it's supposed to be emulating games like the PS1 Resident Evil games, but it just doesn't feel as fun to play as those did. My real sticking point is the story, though. I don't think it's asking much that by the time I'm two hours into a game that HLTB says is eight hours long, I should have some idea of what's happening. Unfortunately, I didn't. The whole thing felt like random spooky events rather than a plot. It's an intriguing game, I just couldn't be motivated to care about the mystery.

man...i have a lot of things to say about this game. i decided to actually play it after hearing a lot of praise and honestly i expected way more than it delivered. this game felt like a weird mashup of nier automata, silent hill and resident evil. the vibes were there but the storytelling is too cryptic and unclear for my taste. also the endgame is very frustrating because you don't have a map and enough inventory space so most of the time you're just backtracking and the enemies are pretty annoying so that left a bad taste in my mouth. i respect what the devs wanted to do and i love the idea and concept but i think it's not executed THAT well as everyone claims it is. would enjoy it probably more if i didn't know german and japanese but oh well. i really wish i could like it as much as everyone did :/