not gonna lie I thought this was pretty alright
I like the idea of searching throughout the castle to find the key to access locked doors and move on to the rest of the stage, though 1986 was a little too early to be this ambitious. there's also these merchants lying around the castle who have possibly the weirdest way to interact with them. if you want to buy the item that have on them, you have to repeatedly hit them with the whip for some reason. what's with them are they into BDSM and only do business when they start getting down bad??? on top of that after you get the item you can continue to attack the merchants and even KILL THEM for extra points. this would be very awkward if this was canon, imagine a later Belmont researching Simon's history and finding out that he regularly murdered random merchants for fun or something.
interesting enough I feel like I had an easier time beating this than the NES Castlevania, but that's probably because enemies barely do any damage to you, not that I'm complaining I think my views on this game would be very different if that wasn't the case. the first half of the final stage sucks though, if you don't end up finding a key, there will be a point where you can't backtrack to get it and you're basically forced to fall in a pit and die, falling in pits is pretty painful by the way most people usually don't survive. I guess the final Dracula fight kinda makes up for it, the first form is pretty easy albeit padded out way too long and the second form is really easy if you kneel down right next to the block since it lets you easily avoid his only attack. unfortunately, instead of seeing the castle crumble in the end like most of the other Castlevanias, your reward for completing the game is TEXT IN A BLACK VOID. they had ONE job I hope whoever made that ending got fired from making video games forever and is now spending their time contemplating the mistake they made by not giving Vampire Killer a proper ending back in the old days of 1986. but yeah this was fine, NES Castlevania did it better but I can see some good ideas in here, and Konami did too which is why we got Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night, so pour one out for the OG and pay some respects, and maybe check it out if you want to see an interesting interpretation of Castlevania 1. make sure you get the SCC music patch for it because the SCC music goes pretty hard, just as good as the NES music and it'll help motivate you more :^)
Simon can kill random merchants hiding inside walls I still can't get over this
I like the idea of searching throughout the castle to find the key to access locked doors and move on to the rest of the stage, though 1986 was a little too early to be this ambitious. there's also these merchants lying around the castle who have possibly the weirdest way to interact with them. if you want to buy the item that have on them, you have to repeatedly hit them with the whip for some reason. what's with them are they into BDSM and only do business when they start getting down bad??? on top of that after you get the item you can continue to attack the merchants and even KILL THEM for extra points. this would be very awkward if this was canon, imagine a later Belmont researching Simon's history and finding out that he regularly murdered random merchants for fun or something.
interesting enough I feel like I had an easier time beating this than the NES Castlevania, but that's probably because enemies barely do any damage to you, not that I'm complaining I think my views on this game would be very different if that wasn't the case. the first half of the final stage sucks though, if you don't end up finding a key, there will be a point where you can't backtrack to get it and you're basically forced to fall in a pit and die, falling in pits is pretty painful by the way most people usually don't survive. I guess the final Dracula fight kinda makes up for it, the first form is pretty easy albeit padded out way too long and the second form is really easy if you kneel down right next to the block since it lets you easily avoid his only attack. unfortunately, instead of seeing the castle crumble in the end like most of the other Castlevanias, your reward for completing the game is TEXT IN A BLACK VOID. they had ONE job I hope whoever made that ending got fired from making video games forever and is now spending their time contemplating the mistake they made by not giving Vampire Killer a proper ending back in the old days of 1986. but yeah this was fine, NES Castlevania did it better but I can see some good ideas in here, and Konami did too which is why we got Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night, so pour one out for the OG and pay some respects, and maybe check it out if you want to see an interesting interpretation of Castlevania 1. make sure you get the SCC music patch for it because the SCC music goes pretty hard, just as good as the NES music and it'll help motivate you more :^)
Simon can kill random merchants hiding inside walls I still can't get over this