Castlevania: The Adventure

I'm amazed I got through this piece of shit. I'm not even 100% sure if this game is "bad" but It's definitely not fun in the original meaning of the word. I see this game more as a test of your patience then anything else. It works and it's beatable but in the most tedious way possible.

It's interesting to see that after Castlevania 2 we're back to the linear level design and game structure. The focus lies on challenging gauntlets of "combat" and oddly enough: platforming. When I encountered the first jumping challenge in the first stage I almost stopped playing this game entirely. Here is where I fully comprehended how the handling of Simon (I guess?) is complete garbage.

Compared to SImons Quest, The Adventure plays like you're an alcoholic on ketamine trying to find his way home. By that I mean: It's slow. So slow in fact that I truly believe this game is never running at full speed. It's playable but it just feels awkward as hell. The whip comes out as expected but the jumping; oh boy the jumping. Every jump is a commitment and not in a strategic good way more in a throwing a sandsack kinda way. Simon just feels soooo heavy and falls like the gravity is turned up to 11.

So the developers looked at this type of behaviour and said to themselves: "Simon handles like shit. Let's make every stage an endless gauntlet of jumps!". It's baffling. I kid you not, every level is 80% trying to mange getting some overly precise jumps correct and most of them lead to an instant death If you make a mistake. This game set me in a constant state of anxiety and the challenges get progressively more precise and stressful. There's a stage where you're being chased by a spikey wall and your forced to make these crazy parkour manoeuvres with the shittiest controls ever invented. It just doesn't add up.

Speaking of the stages: The first level is your typical forest level until the developers decide to turn the whole thing in endless arrays of floating or falling platforms that need to be crossed. It's pretty bad. This game does this crazy thing where you can only enter the next screen by climbing down a rope if you want to descend. If you fall down to the next screen 1 pixel next to the rope or you're jumping you die. It doesn't make any sense and honestly just exposes that the devs were either extremely lazy or just straight up incapable of thinking.

2nd stage takes you through a cave and is luckily not that heavy on the platforming but it's heavy on bullshit enemies that throw fireballs in completely unbearable pattern which come in awkward angels which most of the time are unreachable with your whip. It also does this thing where different exits lead you to different screens and some loop back into each other. The concept is in my opinion always a shitshow and it barely adds anything to the game. I gotta say though that there's this sickle throwing dude and he's generally very fun to fight against. Overall the enemies design is using the limited combat options very well even better than the original . A shame that Adventure doesn't elaborate on this and decides to go further down the platforming rabbit hole in the next stage witch is the moving wall level I mentioned earlier.

After you manged to perfect one of the most unboreable stages in videogaming history we reach the 4th and final stage: The castle. I think everyone who even got this far has already reached Christ consciousness or similar states of being otherwise it ain't possible to handle the frustration and anxiety caused by this steaming hot garbage. And believe me: this stage is even worse. There are this huge knights which are basically unbeatable without the whip upgrade. So in this game they went down the Mario route of how hitpoints work. You collect a whip upgrade and if you get hit you whip gets downgraded again. I wish they would've kept the permanent upgrade from the Original cause this ingle fact makes the last stretch of the game a nightmare. Basically you're going through unbelievably long platforming passages until you reach a hallway filled with 3 of the huge knights. If you got hit before reaching this part it's over for you. I almost threw my gameboy against the wall several times.

After this the game gives you enough shit to replenish all your health and then you face dracula in two phases again just like in the orignal. Luckily Dracule is not asoverbearing as the rest of the stage. You kill him and the castle crumbles. Seeing it from a far it kinda looks like shitty treehouse. Btw: Why does this game not have the cool map? I really liked the idea in the original game. It tied things together and made it more believable, here we're just teleported to the next stage.... boring. Also can somebody tell me why in the GBC version of this game all the enemies are green? Are they made out of slime? It really seems like it. Weird.

I gotta give the game credit for something though: It looks good especially in color and most important of it all it sounds insanely good. Even better than the first 2 games. I can't believe such a shitty gameboy game rocks such a beautiful and invigorating soundtrack.

What can I say to sum this up. It's bad but something deep inside me enjoyed perfecting this dumbass game. If done correctly it takes you less than half an hour to finish it, funny to know cause it took me waaay longer. My guess is that it took me around 8h to beat it which just shows how hard it is. I'd say you miss absolutely nothing if you skip this except for the killer OST. So just type that in on Youtube listen to it and play the original instead. Excited to see what's next for the series <3

It’s very rare that I outright regret persisting with a game even after I dislike it, since I expect to at least gain some insight into possible shortcomings and potential of the game, kinda theory crafting ways it could be a more engaging, fun experience. This mindset ends up being thrown out the window when being put up against a game this bad though, because while one could attribute some of the more limited aspects of the game to the hardware this was on, I have trouble really defending much of this game at all, yet also don’t have a whole lot to say about it due to the pitifully small amount of content this game actually has.

The biggest problem with this game by an enormous margin is the fact that the somewhat slow, rigid mobility of the player from previous Castlevania games was epitomised here, but rather than tying in really nicely to the core game and level design, it instead works as an unbearable hindrance as your character moves at an obscenely slow pace that’s stiff enough to make even the slightest platforming section feel near impossible to get past. This problem manages to be further exacerbated by the fact that the game’s attempts on making something somewhat graphically impressive for the Game Boy ended up causing the game to run in a constant state of lag, furthermore causing the backgrounds to be in a constant state of tearing, putting eye strain and headaches on top of the sheer frustration of trying to do anything. I also found that this lag cause the game to sometimes just not register my inputs, often causing me to completely miss a jump or something equally as punishing, which really sealed the game as being one of the least pleasant gaming experiences I remember having.

As for the level design itself, this is really what I think makes the game as terrible as it is, because at least with having some of the worst mobility I’ve experienced in gaming, there’s at least probably something that could be done in an attempt to compensate for this through at least displaying some potential. Issue is that these levels all utterly suck in their own ways, and there are only 4. The first level is some of the most generic stuff I’ve seen, with cookie cutter enemy placement and lame scenery making this only recognisable as a Castlevania game at all due to the fact that your weapon is a whip once again. Level 2 sharply ramps up in difficulty by exploiting the fact that you have almost no way of hitting anything that’s not a stationery target directly in front of you by filling a cave full of unpredictably moving bats that will almost certainly end up killing you due to the sheer number of them throughout. Level 3 boils down to an incredibly precise autoscrolling section with instakill spikes that lasts for over 6 solid minutes, full of platforming that is close enough to pixel perfect to be obnoxious to say the least. The final level is basically a culmination of everything bad about the game and then extended to twice the length, nothing really to say about it, just that it’s the worst level by far.

This is just one of those games where I don’t even really see a hint of potential beneath the mountains of flaws this has, and while I stand by my decision to play through this just to get some general perspective, my god was it difficult for reasons beyond the terrible difficulty this had. Would not recommend this at all unless it’s out of morbid curiosity.

Scattershot statements:

The music in this game is forgettable at best and mind numbing at worst, doesn’t help that the sound font of the game boy just sounded terrible in practically all cases as is.

The bosses just all utter jokes, some of them acting even more simple than those in Simon’s Quest.

The idea of downgrading the player’s whip upon taking damage is asinine at the very least, especially in a game as janky as this.

Collision is utter trash in this game, enemy projectiles have such a large hitbox that makes being able to accurately judge the right time to jump nearly impossible.

The game’s lack of subweapons makes approaches to obstacles incredibly limited, especially when combined with the shoddy way the player moves.

Castlevania: The Adventure was an extremely early title that released for the Game Boy in late 1989, and was the only game outside of the launch titles to release for the console that year. Although it does still feel and resemble the mainline series, the game suffers from a number of questionable design choices.

C:TA was shortened in length compared to the original trilogy and, if on a roll, can be completed in under an hour total, likely under 30 minutes. There is the same amount of ghoul-whipping as before, and the combat feels fluid. What does not feel fluid is the player character himself, who slugs along the ground, has a wonky directional jump that requires "takeoff room" to execute, only whips in one direction, and falls like a rock. You'd think Konami would try to remain cognizent of the game's shortcomings in the level design, but this game features more pure platforming challenges than the whole of the original trilogy. I really wish I was joking.

You're going to get a lot of Ninja Gaiden 3 bird jump moments, where you feel just totally incapable of making an already precise jump because of an enemy that is just as difficult to hit. Luckily, bottomless pits are in shorter supply and it really just necessitates a walk up to the platform to try it again, but with a time limit hanging over your head this feels like it's taunting you. Add in the fact that the toughest platforming sections come right between the final checkpoint in a stage and the boss fight and you'll be frustrated with the movement controls early and often.

A lot of these complaints apply just as well to the original Castlevania, so you may scoff at me and be able to breeze through this just fine. But those of us who prefer more fluid platforming mechanics will not find a lot of joy here.

Looks good, sounds good, and plays like Castlevania, but the controls are wonky and unresponsive, and the platforming needlessly punishing because of it.