Overall 8.8 Graphics 6.4 Sound 8 Addictive 4.6 Story 8.6 Depth 5.6 Difficulty 5
6.4
The Dark Age of Castlevania Foodperson
When the Nintendo 64 was released and revolutionized 3D gaming for eternity, people were excited for
Castlevania's transition from 2D to 3D...that is, until they actually had
Castlevania on the Nintendo 64 and played it. Suffice to say, it was not very fun and made their wallets cry in regret. The controls were awkward to use before
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time had to tell it how to have proper 3D controls; the 3D graphics were unattractive and had dull colors even for its time; and the game, itself, was so dull and repetitive that it was only worth a rental
at best.
Only a
few months later, Konami decided that it messed up so badly that they needed to make a Director's Cut version of this game that tries to make up for
Castlevania's mistakes. But paying $70 for the same game but different was already too much for gamers to handle, so
again,
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is worth only a rental, perhaps even skipping altogether even if it's free like on Vizzed.com. This time, though, you start the game as a werewolf named Cornell rather than Reinhardt or Carrie. Just imagine beating a new campaign only to unlock
older campaigns from an
older game, and that's
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for you! Heck, even the environments are the same for the most part!
Graphics: At least the graphics take advantage of the Expansion Pak for a higher 640 X 480 resolution this time, so the graphics look nowhere nearly as blurry as in
Castlevania. However, most of the game looks drab and dark to the point where the 2D
Castlevania games look like cakewalks in the park with the Care Bears, for better or worse. I would say it's for the better at first, because at least this lends to a haunting atmosphere, but it becomes dull and tedious to look at in a hurry! It's like the artists were skeletons rather than actual human beings! A little more color and style would have been appreciated, and the drab colors could have been used sparingly to make them seem even scarier later on.
Audio: Music: You hear the music?
Not much? That's because there is barely
any music in this game, and whatever music is in it, it's as repetitive as this game! Also, it's nowhere nearly as memorable as in older
Castlevania games, so there might as well be no music! Like the artists, the musician must have been a skeleton.
Effects: I can give much better praise for the rest of the audio, as they all lend to a scary atmosphere quite well. There were even times when I got scared from a loud sound effect or two! Okay, I guess the sound designer isn't such a skeleton after all...
Addictiveness: Well, it's hard to be addicted to a video game when it's
this repetitive in the level design. It's certainly makes it harder when its reward for clearing the first campaign...is an
older campaign! Seriously, couldn't Konami just let the game
start with the old campaign and
then give the newer ones? That would have been a better reward then what we got now with
Legacy of Darkness! As for the game itself, you would find yourself doing the same thing over and again just to get through the next level, or even just doing something really tedious to the point where you would rather
not finish the game in your rental period. Period. Once you beat this game, if you even
managed to slog yourself through this, you would
not want to play this game again unless you're someone like usedpizza on Twitch who just
loves to speedrun
Castlevania 64! For everybody else, even a little bit of this game is not really worth your time.
Story: To be honest with you, I never bothered to complete this game, but I can tell you right off the bat that this game features
four stories from four different perspectives. This is where the story of the
Castlevania series goes from being simple and endearing to being convoluted and uninteresting. Actually, I could not complain much about Cornell's story, which is a story of revenge and saving his sister, but then the stories include other characters that nobody cares about other than beating the blood out of them, and there are lots of twists and turns to the point where the player cannot find the entire story memorable. Pass.
Depth: Because the game has four campaigns, there is a lot more meat to this game's bones than the previous installment. However, the game loses almost all sense of depth when the player realizes that he has to trek through some of the
same locations as in
Castlevania 64, so this is just one big, repetitious game! Sure, Cornell's first level might be refreshing, but even
then, a first-time
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness player can easily tell that it's just tutorial filler that leads to the same old crap! Why couldn't Konami release
this version as
Castlevania 64 and
not after it's taken their poor fans' money first!? Those greedy pigs! Right after the release of this game, if it wasn't for
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on PlayStation, Konami would have been in
deep crap! (See what I did there?) But hey, at least this game offers more for your money this time...I guess.
Difficulty: I mentioned before that the controls in
Castlevania 64 were awkward, and this is no exception. I'm not talking about delayed attack animations, although that could have also been an issue. No, I'm talking about camera controls mostly. The only way to control it is with one button. This setup works well with
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, because the entire game is designed around it. It does
not work well with
Castlevania, because it's
not designed very well in the first place! You would go through sections where you would not know where to land simply because the camera fights against you at every turn. The secondary attack function is awkwardly placed at one of the C-buttons--and by the way, try playing this game with the Xbox 360 controller, whose Right Analog Stick is terrible for the C-buttons--which makes it difficult to use it!
The crappiness of the controls are amplified by stiff platforming where anybody can make a mistake at any moment. It's as if the designers played way too much
Super Mario 64 and decided that this was how they wanted to design the levels in
Castlevania 64, but without realizing that camera controls are severely limited. Again,
Zelda was designed
around this limitation, while
Castlevania clearly was not thought out.
At least it functions during more open areas where there is no platforming to be had. But with no Z-targeting from the
Zelda series, combat is rather awkward when the camera fights against the player in a similar fashion to the platforming. Again, the designers copied
Mario too much and didn't do much else. Hell, try fighting enemies
while platforming! You will know the meaning of pain soon.
Overall: As a Castlevania player, you should avoid this game. Now, it's not a BAD game, and with a bottle of beer or with a bunch of friends, you can easily laugh at this game and get
some enjoyment out of it. I mean, just watch JonTron's review of the game for goodness' sake! However, as a game in a long-standing series, it sticks out like a sore thumb and has the word "crap" written
all over it! However, the game does last you a while and could potentially take you 20+ hours to complete, which isn't something you would find in many modern games that cost you $60. Was this game worth $60 at around the 90's? Probably not. In fact, people who already played
Castlevania 64 either skipped
Legacy of Darkness or just rented it from the nearest video store. Bottom line: what a horrible night to play an inferior Castlevania game!
Graphics 7 Sound 7 Addictive 4 Story 5 Depth 7 Difficulty 9
Review Rating: 4.5/5
Submitted: 12-22-13
Review Replies: 0
10
Castlevania - Legacy of darkness jhanaway21
Ok, this game is awesome. If you beat it and you can do other characters stories, with other equipment and some other areas. I love these games anyways but I like this game. A game where you can be a werewolf, come on, not many games let you do that.
Graphics 8 Sound 8 Addictive 6 Story 8 Depth 9 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 3.7/5
Submitted: 06-06-11
Review Replies: 0
0.3
ugh Castlevania 64 dekker101
Castlevania 64 this game to me sucks i am sorry if you like this game but Castlevania 2 was better, why was game so bad, lets get into it. 1 graphics, i know it was at a new age of game were they became 3d for the first and led on with 3d games but 3d kinda looked bad i know its old but woulds SNES had better graphics i would stick to that mainly but the plus side is that later on they would have better 3d game systems like what we know now wii xbox360 and ps3 but i did not like the look for this game. 2 sound, sound for game was OK the music for game OK but the remix of the songs were not that good except for "Vampire Killer". 3 Addictiveness, why would want to play this game again i mean there not that much fun things about this game jumps were annoying monsters were stupid and were easy(i think its in the other 64 game where there are skeletons on motorcycles lol) and there was stupid puzzles and a bad camera so theres no way i am playing this game again. 4 Story, the story is epic fleshed out and awesome i did not wright it down but check this link out on story [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania_(Nintendo_64)[/url] it tells you a lot. 5 Depth, level are short but stuff always takes long but there are a lot of levels but there lifeless and boring. 6 Difficulty, this game was easy all just have too do is just hit the them till they fall but the big factor thats part of it is the game its self or you could say camera always goes in back rocks etc and one time but i don't think it will again but it got stuck in a wall camera just ruined the game for me. Over all this game is a mess but can try it out and see what i am saying you wont like because i am sorry but all of these kinda personal so try it but saying i don't like and i have no P.S for this one.
Graphics 3 Sound 5 Addictive 1 Story 10 Depth 4 Difficulty 1
Review Rating: 3.5/5
Submitted: 04-27-11
Review Replies: 2
9
Castlevania Legacy of Darkness kykiske
Well this game was by far better than the original "Castlevania 64" better graphics, characters looks better, story was great, two new characters to complete the story, and was a good game, but this game was quite easy, yeah there are some parts of the game that appears to be hard or at least you have to be careful not to fall in the gears of the castle keep, or being careful not to jump or get hit while carrying the magical intro in the castle center, another example is helping Henry or following Mali's to get out of the maze while fleeing from a couple of dogs and a man with a chainsaw instead of his hand, the bad stuff about the game is that it was way too short compared to other castlevanias game series, also it has the classic most loyalt and trustful servant of Dracula, Death, you fight against it almost at the end of the game as usual of the castlevania series.
I would recommend this game to every castlevania fan, but i wouldn't labeled it as the best castlevania game.
Graphics 7 Sound 10 Addictive 6 Story 10 Depth 4 Difficulty 4
Review Rating: 3.5/5
Submitted: 07-12-12
Review Replies: 0
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