White is the first Pokémon game I’ve played in about a decade. Unfortunately, I think I’ve fallen out of Pokémon games. Maybe it’s because I’m comparing it too harshly against other JRPGs, but it felt like a slog to play through, especially with the leveling system. I hear it has one of the better stories of the title, and I can believe that. The cast was fun, and the bad guys actually made some sense. There also looks like there’s a ton of post-credits content. Too bad it was stuck behind Pokémon gameplay.

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The greatness that Castlevania 3 aimed for is found in this game. I never expected to enjoy a Bloodstained spin-off this much, especially since I didn't fall in love with the main game, mainly because of its inconsistent visuals. However, in Curse of the Moon, this isn't a problem; the much more restricted graphical style makes the game much more pleasing to the eyes. While it may not boast the best 8-bit graphics by today's standards, it certainly falls on the better side of the spectrum.

Aside from that, everything else is top-notch. The stages vary greatly and follow the style of traditional Castlevania games, with a consistent path that always connects until you reach the castle. You can feel that they tried to diversify them as best they could, even with only eight stages (in my opinion, a perfect length for a game like this).

What I really appreciated about this game is that the level and enemy design truly complement the idea of having multiple characters with drastically different abilities. You start to notice the game's meticulous design when even with only one character left, the stages still work, albeit much more difficult. Miriam can be a bit overpowered, but even that adds to the fun!

Speaking of difficulty, this game has an interesting way to encourage multiple replays, as you can dismiss, sacrifice, or recruit your partners, resulting in drastically different sets of abilities and resources, and possibly paths. To complete everything, at least six runs are necessary, which may be a bit too much, especially since the hardest one (with Zangetsu without any extra skills) can be frustrating due to how close you need to get to certain enemies, since his attack range is so short.

Complemented by an amazing soundtrack and great bosses, Curse of the Moon is a textbook example of a Castlevania-like game done right, and I'm excited to play its sequel after I give the main Bloodstained game another shot.

An experienced dev team's first foray into true 3D that, shockingly, gets it right all the way back in June 1996.

Absolutely rock-solid fundamentals which set the tone for the rest of the genre. Analog controls enable precise adjustment of angles which have huge downstream effects. A signature focus on momentum, combined with tricks both intentional and unintentional, birthed one of the most legendary and iconic speedrunning scenes of all time. Systems like this in a casual single player context, balanced to enhance rather than subvert challenges, are rare to find, and even the devs themselves never quite managed to recapture this particular flavor.

The level design here is emblematic of the early 3D era "golden age": enough detail and representation to evoke sense of place, but with the abstraction necessitated by the time's technology both facilitating dense layouts and imbuing the atmosphere with a surreal, dreamlike quality. No established formulas for success existed yet, so levels aren't overly concerned with providing the player a frictionless experience. Each expresses their own quirky character, something felt even more strongly than usual since gameplay is so contextualized by the precise placement of nearby geometry.

Shortcomings mainly occur in obtuse progression/secrets and a handful of stages (more concentrated in the latter half) that don't play to the game's strengths. Luckily, the huge modding scene has leveraged this fantastic foundation and learned from these mistakes to create a veritable cornucopia of visions, both vanilla-like and experimental, for you as a player to explore.

Yup, Quake is a pretty great game!

(Played via Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Nintendo Switch)

Castlevania is an absolutely classic game that I am fairly split on, largely because every fun moment feels like it is equalized by a frustrating one. Simon's Castlevania jump physics are wonky, sure, but you can adjust to them pretty fast. By the end of the first group of stages I had little trouble making jumps on platforms, for example. Far more trouble comes in the active game and level design which frequently does NOT feel designed with the slow mechanics in mind, most obvious with any number of small jumping or floating enemies that become infuriating to hit in a multitiude of positions. When the game begins to absolutely spam these, such as on Stage 17, the fun factor tanks and the frustration factor sets in.

This is unfortunate because when the game is more about slow and deliberate platforming with more "fair" enemies it is pretty fun! Or even ones where you can kind of out think them, such as Holy Water on the bats in Stage 16 (although boy that stage would SUCK without power-ups), or a fair amount of the earlier levels really. It feels like the game would do better to lean into this style more given the controls, rather than the more SMB1-ish platforming you'll see in stuff like the aforementioned Stage 17. The sub weapon balance is also all over the place to the point that avoiding accidentally picking up the many more useless weapons is an important part of playstyle. Garlic is very powerful, Holy Water is busted and the cross is good, avoid stuff like the dagger.

Difficulty in general is all over the place, leading to cases of "will it be incredibly tough or will you cheese it". Death without Holy Water is ridiculously challenging, Death with Holy Water just asks you to properly time jumping and attacking to stunlock him forever. Even the final boss' second form can be cheesed this way if you have at least one projectile upgrade, making 2/3rds of the final bosses able to be turned into total jokes, although I wasn't able to do that which led to a lot more pure tough attempts. Most of the other bosses are very easy, but the Level 4 boss gave me some real fits until I won almost effortlessly for reasons I don't understand, sometimes it feels like pure luck. It takes away that sweet difficulty game "YEAH, I BEAT THAT!" high at times.

As an extremely early NES platformer it doesn't exactly have a ton of story, but for what it does do it does well. Old NES games are often about working around the limitations of the hardware to allow the player's imagination to fill the gaps, which makes setpieces and the like more important. This is something Castlevania's an expert at! The stairway climb to Dracula is iconic to the point that soooo many Castlevania games use it and is well-done here, but there's also stuff like the intro with Simon arriving at Dracula's gates, the long vertical drop into the dungeons / catacombs, having a platform section start with just the night sky to the left and a little ledge you can walk to as if to gaze out at it, and my personal favorite: Simon's chugging walk every time you complete a section of stages, while Dracula's bat form flees.

This goes hand in hand with how well done this game's graphics and sound are for the NES. This game positively oozes aesthetic for a 1986 NES game with great spritework for the time, for example the crescent moon in the walk up to Dracula is a great look, and the entire game has a somewhat dark, gritty, gothic feel to it that makes you feel like you're playing out an old school vampire novel. The songs slap for the era with particular highlights of Vampire Killer (DOOT-DOOT-DO-DO-DO-DO), Poison Mind, Nothing to Lose and Black Knight. This game is up there with Kirby's Adventure and Super Mario Bros. 3 when it comes to graphics (though I'd definitely give it to SMB3 by a large margin) for NES graphics.

All in all, Castlevania is a game too flawed for me to feel comfortable calling good, yet with too many elements I enjoyed to call it back, giving it that coveted 5/10 "average" score. Masocore gamers will absolutely enjoy this more than most and it is a classic for anyone who enjoys that tough difficulty, people interested in Castlevania's roots or just plain good looking NES games will also enjoy checking it out if they can handle the uneven and frustrating difficulty. I'd say it's worth giving a look once, but I wouldn't exactly be jumping to come back to it.

holds up exceptionally well still if you're willing to adjust to the controls, and I genuinely quite like the simple but interesting story as it unravels, on a replay some of the missions take on a completely different light

fascinating seeing early AC retain some of the dungeon crawler elements of KF with some of the more labyrinthian levels, I genuinely like the more exploration centric levels and the art direction is minimalistic but still kinda nice

music kicks ass, some of the later levels are sadistic but funny as fuck, and the game is Unbelievably easy to snap in half once you find the right build and hidden parts