Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
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 What a horrible night to have a curse!
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Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is a platform-adventure game developed by Konami. It was originally released in Japan in 1987 for the Famicom Disk System, and in North America in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, respectively. It serves as the sequel to Castlevania on the NES and serves as the second/penultimate installment of the Castlevania NES Trilogy.
Plot
Set in 1698, seven years after the events of the original game, the player once again assumes the role of vampire hunter Simon Belmont, who is on a journey to undo a curse placed on him by Dracula at the end of their previous encounter. Dracula's body was split into five parts, which Simon must find and bring to the ruins of Castle Dracula and defeat him.
Good Qualities
- Good graphics for its time.
- Great soundtrack, especially "Bloody Tears".
- New to the series are several RPG elements, such as an inventory and a leveling system which causes Simon's health to increase whenever he collects a specific amount of Hearts. Hearts also work as currency as you can buy items from merchants.
- A new addition is towns. Here, the townspeople can give the player hints as to what to do (mostly, read BQ#4), sell hearts to merchants in exchange for items, and heal at a church.
- The game has a day-and-night cycle, which is pretty innovative for its time. During the day, townspeople are out and about with everything open. During the night, however, the enemies are stronger, zombies invade towns, and the townspeople are nowhere to be seen as they are hiding in their houses from the monsters, but the amount of hearts you get is double, which makes it easier to unlock items, than in the day cycle.
- The game departs from the linear design of the original and opts for a more expansive open-ended world and items to collect and use. While the game would go back to the level-based style of the previous game for the next few titles, this game was the first tentative step into what would become known as the Metroidvania genre.
- If or when you lose a life, you start back where you lost a life, which is much more forgiving.
- The original Famicom version has a save system just like The Legend of Zelda.
- There are two new sub-weapons:
- The Diamond: Bounces on any surface it strikes, inflicting medium damage to enemies until it leaves the screen.
- The Laurel: Renders the player invincible for a certain period of time.
- The five relics that Simon must find can be used during gameplay:
- The Nail: Allows the player to destroy certain blocks with the whip.
- The Eyeball: Allows the player to see items hidden inside of breakable blocks.
- The Rib Bone: Grants a shield when standing still that repels most projectiles.
- The Ring: Opens the entrance to Dracula's Castle (along with the Cross).
- The Heart of Dracula: Allows the Ferryman at Dead River to take the player to Brahm's Mansion.
- There are three different endings depending on how fast you beat the game.
- Bad ending: If you complete the game in 15 days or more, neither Dracula nor Simon survive the battle.
- Neutral ending: If you complete the game in 8 to 14 days, Simon defeats Dracula but eventually succumbs to the curse anyways.
- Good ending: If you complete the game in 7 days or less, Simon defeats Dracula and is freed from the curse. A scene then shows Dracula's hand pushing through the dirt. This would later be confirmed to be the canon ending.
- The enemies are nowhere near as annoying to fight like in the original since there aren't a bunch of jumping enemies like the Hunchbacks and Medusas don't move in a wavy pattern this time.
Bad Qualities
- Unlike the original, only two bosses outside Dracula appear, (Death and Carmilla) and they are both easy by Castlevania standards (You don't even have to defeat them). Their only purpose in the game is to give you weapons (e.g Death gives you a golden knife if you defeat him.).
- The final fight with Dracula is also laughably easy because whenever you hit him he gets stunned for a good amount of time. You can use the fire subweapon to easily defeat him in only a few seconds.
- You still can't control your jumps while mid-air, health items are still rare, and there is still knockback.
- There are only four sub-weapons this time as oppose to the previous game's eight.
- If you get a Game Over, you lose all of your hearts. You do lose all of your experience points as well, however your level will not get reset.
- While the original Famicom version has a save system, the NES version doesn't for some reason.
- Just like the NES Zelda games, the game is a lot more cryptic as to what to do even with the help of the townspeople. There is also no map, which means the player can easily get lost since the game is more open this time. Not to mention the townspeople can tell lies at times, leading to the player having to guess if what they say is true or false.
- The enemy types are a lot more boring this time. While you do have enemies like werewolves, skeletons, and mermen, you'll be fighting more generic enemies more often than not like floating eyeballs and spiders.
- There are random beginner's traps as there are random places in platforms that cause you to fall through, causing you to have to retrace your steps or use holy water to see which platforms are normal and which are traps, just to get back where you need to go.
Reception
The game garnered positive reviews following its release, and received the reputation of a Nintendo classic over time. However much like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, it has become polarizing amongst fans with some considering it the weakest entry in the mainline Castlevania games. This was the very first game to be reviewed by The Angry Video Game Nerd, though it was meant to be a joke for his friends. The first actually bad game to be reviewed by James Rolfe was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
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