Konami had some major success making games in the 80's and 90's and this is another one of the classics that started major series. Considering that this is one of the earlier titles for the NES it was incredibly well done. It was so successful that it spawned 2 sequels on the NES alone not to mention the multiple other systems that have Castlevania games for them.

Graphics 8/10 - considering how old the game is and how early into the NES this game was it is very well designed graphically. The cut scenes (limited as they are) look great and then levels are all very well done. The monster design looks awesome as well. The overall look of the castle itself was great. Inside and out it looked like an old, dilapidated castle that was barely holding together in some places. The bosses also looked exactly as I expected them to when I saw them which is great. There was no guessing as to who I was fighting.

The only issue I had with the graphics is that they were glitchy at times. It was a fairly regular occurrence that the player, monsters or the environment would glitch a bit. It didn't happen so often that it made the game unplayable but often enough that it got annoying. Still, not enough to take away the high rating this game deserves. Oh, the other thing to mention - the very background of each level was quite often just a plain color like blue or black. Being able to have something back there that moved slower than the foreground would have been nice. Like a forest or something and maybe a small town. And depending on where you were in the castle it would be bigger or smaller as you progressed. That would have been cool.

Sound 10/10 – by far and away one of the best aspects of this game has to be the music and sound effects. The music alone for a lot of levels is unforgettable. I could play a few seconds of some of these tracks and know it was from Castlevania in an instant. And it did so much to add to the overall feel of the game. Without the music this game wouldn’t be nearly the game it is remembered as being. I feel this is true about a lot of the games from the 80’s. The music was a big way to overcome the generally average graphics that were available at the time and this game used music to its fullest potential.

Addictiveness 9/10 – this game will keep you coming back for more for sure. It has for me. To this day I have never been able to beat the game but I will continue to play through it trying to someday beat it. The gameplay is great in my opinion. The only real noticeable flaw is the jumping/falling. Otherwise it is fun and challenging to play.

Another great aspect of this game over some others of its time is that this game has secrets all over the place! I watched some videos that were made at Vizzed about all the secret food, treasure, weapons etc. that were available in the game and it was mind blowing. Multiple secrets per level. This is something that once I found out how often you could find stuff that it has had me searching for more. Some are nearly impossible to find without either getting ridiculously lucky or knowing exactly how to stand, walk, or crouch in order to trigger the secret. This is a great feature to keep people playing more and more in order to find all the secrets that were included.

Story 4/10 – the story for this game is pretty weak overall. It’s not a bad story in any way but it doesn’t have too much to it. The story is set in 1691 and the hero, Simon Belmont, is tasked with traveling to Dracula’s castle and defeating him. Beating Dracula will make his castle disappear for 100 years. That’s about it. The fun part is that you get to fight things like a giant bat, the Mummy, and Frankenstein’s monsters in order to work your way through the castle to eventually fight Dracula himself. Oh, and you can’t forget the Grim Reaper. Fighting Death itself is pretty awesome.

Depth 9/10 – I’ve really appreciated the number of levels and stages this game has. The game is divided up into 6 levels with 3 stages each. That’s 18 total areas to move through and fight monsters in. That’s pretty awesome for a game this old. Add on top of that all the secrets that I mentioned earlier and you’ve got a fun world to explore.

Then you have all the extra weapons that you use to fight Dracula and his demon horde. These are powered by hearts that you find and collect through each level. The hearts are different from your health in this game. You use hearts in order to use the extra weapon and you will need the extra weapons in order to beat the bosses at the end of each level. I haven’t been able to beat any bosses without some extra weapon helping me out.

Difficulty 10/10 – yet another Konami game that is incredibly hard to beat. With the amount of space on cartridges developers were obviously forced to make games either endlessly replay-able or so hard that you had to play it 30 times in order to figure out how to beat the game. This game definitely falls into the latter category. This game, like so many others of the era, punished you for a bad jump or getting knocked by an enemy into a pit. Include with that the sheer number of enemies in some areas of the map and you stood almost no chance getting through some areas on the first try.

If you managed to get through a stage and get to the final boss you had to do it without losing too much health on the way there. This was also sometimes too much of a challenge. Arriving at the boss with only half health was quite often enough to do you in, especially if you didn’t have enough hearts or the right extra weapon to fight that boss. You die and you end up going back to the beginning of the stage and if you run out of lives you start the game over completely. No save points, no passwords. Just a fresh new game from the beginning. This could be very frustrating sometimes when you made a bad jump or got knocked off something. That’s a big reason why I have the difficulty a 10.

Overall 8.3/10 – I’ve decided to start averaging my scores to get the overall rating. I know this isn’t exactly accurate because an easy game doesn’t make it “bad” or good and a weak story line can still make a for a great game but I felt it was the most fair thing to do doing forward. Still, I came up with an 8.3 for this game which I think is more than fair. It is one of the top NES games ever made and I doubt many people would disagree with that. It will give just about anyone a run for their money trying to beat the game in 1 sitting. It should take just about anyone multiple attempts at the game in order to beat it even using some sort of guide. The game is simply too hard to teach. You must play the levels in order to know when to jump and when not to jump or how early/late to start your swing in order to adjust for the weapon lag that Castlevania has. Still, this is a great game with minor problems in it. Anyone who wants to play one of the classic, super difficult retro games would be easily challenged with this one.

To call this game difficult is an understatement.
This is by far one of the hardest, if not THE hardest Castlevania game.

I don't recall if I ever finished this game, actually... but I remember how frustrating and controller throw inducing it was. xD

I mighta gave the story a bit higher rating but overall, I agree with your ratings for this game. :3

Vanelan : fair enough. Like I said, the story isn't a bad one but it just doesn't have much to it. There isn't a twist in the story or something really unexpected. No one you care about dies or anything like that. Most NES games have little to no story backing them yet they were successful without them. This is one of those games that did that.

Another great review by the Elder Slime, good job geeo. I also agree with the difficulty, really shows you what NES games were like back then

geeogree : Well, that's kinda why I felt that this deserved a bit more than a 4.
It actually had a story and it was coherent... most NES games didn't have that if there was a story.

I suppose it didn't have too complex of a story, but it was the first game in the series.
I don't think Konami expected it to be as popular as it was.

Another good review, man. I agree on the difficulty thing, though call me a wimp but that's one of the biggest turn offs of NES/SMS games to me. I don't like punishingly difficult games and most of them were a little overly difficult in some way. Still there were some real gems out there for the systems.

But yeah, you did a good job here. Keep it up!

Eirinn : I don't think this one is THAT bad. I played through the first 2 levels while doing the review and I ended up dying pretty quickly but it wasn't frustratingly hard. I could probably play the game 3 or 4 games in a row in an attempt to try and get further in the game. It's not battletoads hard where you almost don't stand a chance. Still, I can understand not loving games like this especially if you didn't grow up playing them a lot.