Castlevania Legends-A female Belmont?!?!
After the great Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Konami had a lot to live up to. They decided to try something different with this title. Was the change worth it?
Castlevania Legends on time of release was the earliest point in the Castlevania timeline (Until Lament of Innocence came out on PS2) and explains links between the Belmont family and Dracula through the supporting cast of Alucard, Dracula's son.
At first this game looks like any other Castlevania game, you jump, you whip candles, and you kill bosses. There is more than it looks like beneath the surface. For the first time in the Castlevania franchise, a female protagonist is the main character. Sonia Belmont comes to us as one of the more able Belmonts, being able to change directions whilst jumping, and also able to walk whilst crouching, something only done once before in Super Castlevania IV. And yet it still feels like she plays like a true Belmont, and fits into the game well.
The candles contain hearts and powerups again, except this time the whip powerups are not increased range, but more a fireball attack, as seen in Christopher Belmonts two games. Subweapons this time are not the classic knife, axe, cross, etc and are not found in candles. Instead, they are obtained and kept after beating bosses. And these differ from the other games as well, consisting of the souls of Bat, Flame, Ice, Saint, and Wind, each having their own magical effect.
Visually, the game looks heavily inferior to Belmont's Revenge, with repetitive and lacking backgrounds, and most characters have only a few frames of animation, and not as many shades of grey that could be used have been used. The graphics overall look lacking and unfinished. Some of the bosses are fleshed out however such as the dragon looking nice taking up nearly half the screen, but other than that it is not a nice game to look at which is disappointing considering how well the Castlevania series has been beforehand.
The level design in this game makes for unfair challenge. Enemies will come from cramped places making them undodgeable and a lot of jumps are a lot like the ones in Dracula X on SNES where the player has to do it from the furthest pixel of the platform or the jump won't land. It also becomes very dull going through the same rooms again and again in the developers attempt to extend the game in every way possible.
The game includes 'trap rooms' which are a dull diversion from the level just to make you stand at one side mashing the B button until everything dies. The trap rooms are not difficult or even slightly challenging and only serve to waste your time, which is becoming a running theme here. It's not just trap rooms being a pointless diversion, the levels have many branching pathways, most of which lead to dead ends but with some leading to the classic subweapons, which serve little purpose other than to be collected as they cannot be used.
This is an incredibly challenging game for the wrong reasons, mainly the bad AI and stage design, and in an attempt to try and balance this out Konami Nagoya included Light Mode and Burning Mode. Light mode gives Sonia a permanently powered up whip and makes the game generally easier. Burning mode can be activated any time during a stage and makes Sonia invincible until it runs out, also making her hit harder and run faster. It's the bar at the bottom of the screen with a B next to it. At first one would assume this is the boss health bar as many Castlevania games have used before, but no, bosses have no visible health bars of any sort, forcing the player to guess how much health the boss has. This was okay in Symphony of the Night. It is not okay here in a classic styled game.
For sound, the music is not exactly memorable nor will it stick in your head besides the first stage theme (Which is just a remix of Bloody Tears, the day theme from Castlevania II SImon's Quest) but is despite not being memorable high quality and at least fitting. The sound effects are nothing impressive either, consisting of not many sound effects used for not many enemies, with some being completely mute. The only interesting thing to say about the sound effects is that Sonia makes that classic Belmont grunt when she gets hit.
All in all, this is a game which is nowhere near as good as Symphony of the Night or Belmonts Revenge, but if one looks past comparing it to those two, one could find a somewhat enjoyable Castlevania experience, even if it has since been dumped from being part of the official series.
Graphics
5 Sound
9 Addictive
5 Depth
5 Story
8 Difficulty
9
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