Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge

Voices of: N/A
Developer: Konami
Designer: Toru Hagihara, Yukari Hayano
Rating: T
Genre: Action-Adventure Platformer
System: Game Boy
1991

Times Completed:
Tim: 1

Summary: Christopher Belmont must rescue his son from Dracula's clutches.

Review:
Tim: I've enjoyed playing through the Castlevania games, although I've been very upfront about my approach- I'm just save scumming. This may be viewed as a derogatory term by some, but I see it differently. To clarify, I repeatedly created save points every time I made it past a screen unharmed. I'm still performing all the actions the game requires, but when I mess up and get hurt, I'm redoing just that portion. Is it the "legitimate" way to play this (or any) game? No. Does it matter in the end? Absolutely not. I'm interested in playing this game for the story and the experience, not to spend a month of my life battling against aged mechanics and unnecessary frustrations. Truth be told, I beat Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge in a single day. It's a short game and much of it isn't very tough. The repeated saves helped save time, although I still had to perform all the actions the game required of me to advance through the levels.

This Game Boy game is fairly short. There's four initial levels, which you can play in any order. Each one has slightly different challenges and a final boss to defeat before moving on. From there, you go through three (I think) levels of Dracula's castle before finally combating the famous vampire. The levels throw a few interesting challenges at you, but anyone who has played through previous games with be quite familiar with most everything in this game. The mechanics are the same. I will state that the game play is much better than the previous game, Castlevania: The Adventure. Even two years later, the game offers much improved gameplay. As you might expect, the graphics are limited because of the cartridges in the handheld device. That being said, what the game designers were able to deliver based on those limitations is still quite stunning. The game looks very old by today's standards, but there is no question of what you are looking at while you play. There's not much in terms of details, but the visuals work sufficiently enough.

For a short game, it does offer up some interesting bosses. The Angel Mummy offered a nice, unique challenge. Kumulo and Nimbler were fun. The others aren't especially challenging, although I did love when you fight against Soleil. You become so used to the big monsters that it's almost jarring to fight someone in human form. None of these bosses are especially difficult- I think I played the most on the Angel Mummy, just getting the timing down right. Most of the others I beat on my first or second attempt, no saving in between.

I do want to talk about Dracula. I was not prepared for how difficult a final boss he would be. The difficulty level jumps substantially from everything that came before it. Dracula is usually pretty tough in these games, but this one really frustrated me. He has these glowing orbs that circle around him and devastate you as they spiral out. He was crushing me over and over and I was trying to pick up the patterns- best I could discern, there were very few safe places, where you had to move and jump at exactly the right time. I was still getting wiped out every playthrough. I did look online to see if I was missing something and basically, no. You had to play repeatedly to identify the patterns and where to stand based on the movements of Dracula across the screen. That's a bit ridiculous and again, I wasn't going to spend a week mastering the formula to defeat Dracula in a Game Boy game. I broke it down into segments- if I could hurt him and move appropriately through the first two movements, I created a save point. It took me a while to do that, but I accomplished it without getting hurt. Next were the following two movements, not easy at all. By this point, I'd hit him for roughly 30% of his lives and I hadn't been touched (so tough and it took repeated attempts). I figured this was good enough and they battled him fairly the rest of the way. I did finally defeat him, but wow- people who beat this game the way it was originally intended, my hat is off to you. Such a challenging, time-consuming final boss. I finished the game with a score of 177,270.

This is the 5th Castlevania game that I've beat. It's not nearly as good as the NES, mainline games that have come out, but it's still a ton of fun. Castlevania will never be my favorite video game franchise, but I'm still a big fan. There's something so fun about the atmospheric games, the myriad dark creatures, the pitting of various Belmonts verses Dracula. This game does show marked improvement over the previous Game Boy game and it further solidifies this franchise as one of the video game cornerstones. Yes, I beat the game in one day and yes, I saved far too frequently. However, I still did what the game needed me to do and best of all, I experienced the story and some of the challenge. Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge has flaws, but it's worth experiencing.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Game, We Recommend: Castlevania, Castlevania: The Adventure