The Haunted Hoard: Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)

There was a bit of an odd trend with sequels in the NES era where a hugely successful title would have a follow-up that broke away from the gameplay that made the original catch on. With certain games it was special circumstances that gave birth to these divergent sequels, with Super Mario Bros. 2 in America being a reskin of a different Japanese game and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link beginning its life as an unrelated project. There was a game that was deliberately a departure though, and that was the sequel to the horror-themed action platformer Castlevania.

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest takes place after the events of the initial game, Simon Belmont having successfully defeated Dracula but accidentally unleashing the vampire’s curse not just on the surrounding area, but on himself as well. After Dracula’s defeat though, pieces of the vampire’s body were locked away in five dangerous keeps, and to undo the curse placed upon him, Simon must reunite the body parts and dispatch with Dracula the proper way this time to truly rid the world of this evil being’s influence. Rather than being a straightforward adventure to an endpoint this time around, Castlevania II takes place in an interconnected world, the player guiding Simon between areas as he searches not just for the locations the remains of Dracula are being kept in, but searching for towns and secrets that can increase his power and give him new items. This is essentially a mild taste of the Metroidvania direction the Castlevania series would take many years down the line, but it probably has more in common with Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, where your destinations change in the interconnected world based on which items you have found.

This is sadly where Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest begins to run into its first issues. Finding where you are meant to go in Castlevania II isn’t always the easiest. When you begin it’s just a matter of heading out to areas you haven’t explored, but the items you get and the travel methods you take gradually get more and more obtuse, to the point it would be hard to glean any of them from in-game clues. Villagers in towns can offer some cryptic hints about what to do, but they might also spout unrelated nonsense or deliberate deception. People have chosen to blame translation for these problems, but even looking at a side by side comparison of a proper translation and what we got, there are still some huge leaps in logic required to get to certain portions of the game. Some old men with useful tools can only be found if you use items in odd spots, certain behaviors are required in otherwise mundane areas, and a boatman who only moves right and left can also take you to a different destination despite the areas looking the same, making it easy to think you are just retreading ground rather than making progress. Only a few cases like needing to kneel near a certain wall are completely absurd, but any playthrough of Simon’s Quest will inevitably rub up against these odd moments where progression requires less than intuitive leaps in logic to progress.

Despite the flaws with general traversal, there are some decent concepts here. Finding a new town often comes with new opportunities to buy upgrades or new items. Simon brings his trusty whip on this adventure to hold the skeletons, fishmen, mummies, and other monsters at bay, and over the course of the game you can collect hearts from defeating enemies that can then be used as currency. For some strange reason, many shops have their merchants hiding behind walls or under floors you need to break open first, but you can gradually increase your whip’s power, buy helpful weapons like throwing daggers and holy water, and even buy items that can briefly protect you from environmental damage. Most items have some purpose and are worth the buy, and even the pieces of Dracula you’re collecting provide special boons. Unfortunately, some item uses are incredibly situational and again obtuse since you might just have one poorly worded clue to go by, some of these clues even requiring you to know area names to execute properly despite none of the areas being labeled in the game itself.

The towns definitely serve a pivotal role since they contain many useful items and even the poorly worded tips, and on top of having one of the few reliable healing methods in the form of the churches, their usefulness can’t be understated. Sure, Simon’s Quest is happy to respawn you after a drop into a deadly pit right next to it and has other niceties to make dying less than devastating, but you still lose experience when you die, the game having a level up system that is a bit awkward to figure out but requires you to be at certain points in the game to even earn experience points. Thus, a town is always great to find… unless your curse makes things worse. An almost altogether detrimental mechanic exists in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest where the curse placed on Simon will cause day to shift to night at certain time intervals. At night, enemies are made twice as durable, meaning they just take longer to kill essentially, but more importantly, the towns all close for the night, some even getting overrun with zombies. Waiting out a night because you need to get something in town is slow, and the progression is often so linear that you can’t really do much if you need something from the town besides wait for the sun. The transition from day to night is also very slow, a text box appearing saying “What a horrible night to have a curse” and then slowly fading in and out, a similar one happening for the return of the dawn. An already long waiting period is just drawn out even more, and since the game endings are tied to the passage of the days, having an unlucky night crop up when you need something in town just makes certain endings harder to achieve.

Almost every new idea Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest added to the Castlevania gameplay fails in some way. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the stuff it does carry over from the first game is perhaps the best off. The little issues are there of course; jumping is still the rigid design from the original game, requiring a walking start to get a jump of good distance and being a commitment once you leave the ground, and enemies do still knock Simon back a bit when he’s hit, making enemies near deadly drops especially dangerous. However, there are still areas in the game where you can just enjoy a little whip-cracking monster-killing action. The areas Dracula’s remains are kept are especially decent since they are large areas where only the bottom floor has instant death drops and the rest of the area has to make itself difficult with strong enemies or devious monster placement. Flying Medusa Heads, web firing spiders, and fireball spitting gargoyles can still be tough foes, but decent movement and item use can overcome these enemies, so it’s a bit of a shame when even these interior areas throw in a few ill-conceived new ideas. Perhaps the worst one is the presence of false walls and floors. There are areas where there are no obvious clues or ways to tell if the floor ahead might be fake, meaning you might drop to your doom learning the hard way. Since these are big vertical areas quite often too, dropping down to your doom will reset your progress inside, but one wall you need to just leap towards because it’s not real is even worse since it would be fatal if it was real and there’s no reason to leap towards it unless you know its an illusion. A few more regular cases of platforming woes appear though, such as staircases that you can’t jump off of once you’re climbing up them and enemies who will stand at the top where you can’t hit them, necessitating some damage to get up there and deal with them, and a few moments of enemies right next to a screen transition leads to other instances of annoying damage ambushes.

The moments where Simon’s Quest plays more like its predecessor save it from being an absolute mess of a game, but problems still do crop up to ruin those moments. It takes a while for the game to roll out its bosses too, and all of them are rather wimpy, even the final rematch with Dracula. This is partially because you’ll likely have some good items just to deal with the regular problems of Castlevania II before you even encounter them, but not only can you just pass most bosses by if you like, but they don’t really have many dangerous attacks. The skeletons that throw bones are probably more challenging than them since if they get going you’re often not in a good spot to dodge their attacks and approach, whereas bosses are in big rooms they don’t do much to fill. Like most things in Simon’s Quest, bosses weren’t a bad idea at all, but they were executed in a way that just doesn’t work, but here at least they’re negligible rather than annoying or fundamentally terrible.

THE VERDICT: Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest has some decent action platforming, especially when you’re inside a building looking for part of Dracula’s Remains, but these are but brief respites from the clunky configuration of most everything else it tries. Figuring out where to go and what to do is an aggravating task thanks to cryptic clues, a pointless day/night cycle occasionally barring vital towns from access, and off-the-wall item uses that a player would never intuit. Even the mild fun of whipping deadly monsters ends up with issues like the fake floors and odd enemy placement, but those moments are nearly competent compared to a game that otherwise attempts ambitious new ideas for the Castlevania franchise but fails in the implementation in ways that lead to confusion, pace-breaking slowness, or full on frustration.

And so, I give Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

A TERRIBLE rating. The moments of acceptable action platforming only lightly hampered by poor decisions with unknowable traps and unreachable enemies buoy what is otherwise a cavalcade of decent ideas done poorly. There is conceptually a version of this game that could be downright good, but it would require every important system in the game to undergo some important tweaks. Exploring the interconnected areas, upgrading items, and even some of the weird solutions like tossing down garlic to reveal hidden old men could work if the game communicated well with the player, providing them the proper guidance or explanations they need. While the translation is certainly to blame for things like the game saying you “PROSSESS” Dracula’s eyeball instead of possess it, even with better translation there would still be too many moments hinging on a single villager’s odd wording to figure out. The day/night cycle could be an acceptable addition if it just made enemies stronger at times, but when it impedes progress by locking you out of talking with villagers you need to talk to like the ones you swap magical jewels with, you’re left standing around or at best busying yourself with slowly collecting hearts and experience points, provided the area you’re in still provides experience even. Everything in Simon’s Quest comes with a tacked on condition, and just removing a few of those would be a huge step towards making Simon Belmont’s second adventure much more palatable.

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest was an unfortunate case of trying to integrate new ideas on top of a working formula without thinking of the consequences. When you play the action segments of Simon’s Quest it is aching to be in a game where enemies and platforms are placed to challenge the player, but the challenges mostly come from mechanical or conceptual flaws with the new ideas. The energetic but appropriate music, horror trappings, and whip action help it from being an irredeemable failure, but much of what ties into the idea of the quest, like the interaction with characters and uncovering of secrets, makes a night spent with this game its own horrible curse.