The Haunted Hoard: Castlevania Legends (Game Boy)

When Castlevania Legends was first released, it tried to tantalize players with an entry that claimed to be the starting point for the constant struggle between the vampire hunting Belmont clan and the immortal vampire Dracula. However, despite this supposedly being the origin point for that endless conflict, it actually didn’t seem to care for building up much of a plot, mostly just saying its young heroine Sonia Belmont was just the first who happened to face Dracula in battle. Perhaps that is why, many years after, as Castlevania became more interested in the stories it can tell using its characters and history, Sonia’s adventure was disregarded as something separate from the main series. However, this choice did perhaps make the name Castlevania Legends even more appropriate, because what is a legend but a tale of dubious authenticity?

The game’s manual is a bit sparse on details on why Sonia rises up to be the one to fight Dracula in the first place, seemingly just getting special powers and stepping up to face this villainous force that rose to prominence in Transylvania. Even when you get a bit more story through the game, it’s not like there is enough conversation to really make this feel like a feud that will carry on through the ages and across generations, although Dracula’s son Alucard is present and at least shows even from the start he opposed his father’s ways and was willing to do what it takes to try and end his dark reign. Its underwhelming nature makes it feel like it could have been easy to just tweak future stories to make this work since there’s not much going on, but like other early Castlevania titles, Castlevania Legends focuses most on the action platforming where the Belmont quest to kill Dracula is mostly there to set you up against a range of monsters from myths and folklore.

While being on the monochrome Game Boy system means Castlevania Legends can’t quite render Dracula’s castle with moody ambience, it does pick special moments to increase the detail and peppers in little elements so it doesn’t feel too plain. The approach to the castle has many gnarled trees, specific rooms can have huge imposing gates or backgrounds with complicated windows. Some halls and shafts you traverse feel generic to be sure, and the monsters you face can often be given a bump to their visual quality when they’re meant to be imposing. Ghosts are sort of silly shadows, bats are basic in design, and there is some sort of wisp that can be hard to glean what they’re even going for. Tougher foes like a knight are large to match their danger level though, the mermen that leap from the water are hunched but recognizable, and the skulls high in the air that rush towards you when your back is turned are certainly a bit menacing. Bosses are surprisingly not always a step up, something like the Dragon huge and detailed but then Dracula hardly looks like the fearsome despot ruling over such a cursed castle. Visual clarity is at least fairly consistent and even used to set up traps, some of the candles you whip for resources instead dynamite so being able to easily determine what’s what is certainly key to success.

Not that Castlevania Legends is a difficult game where being so canny is necessary to survive. Sonia uses a whip to attack enemies by default, but it also has the perhaps overly helpful feature that it launches a fireball whenever you attack. The fireball is weaker than the whip but also lets you stand even further from enemies to avoid their attacks, and the small stable of unique foes don’t feel designed to work around how easily you can fight from afar. There are cramped places meant to force you in close to the opposition, but other times you barely even need to engage with deadly threats since you can just pepper them with fireballs. Levels do have a timer that causes an instant loss if it runs out, and the traps can lead to that timer sometimes being strained. It’s not really enough to make the fireball less viable and Game Overs only lead to a stage restart, the game overall only having 6, none of them feeling too long and one of them is even a secret. It is a required secret to find if you wish to see the good ending, most levels featuring a hidden item you need to collect for a slightly better finale, although oddly enough the items you collect are the magic items future Belmonts use to attack while Sonia herself does not.

Sonia Belmont isn’t without unique abilities though. Defeating bosses earns her Soul Weapons, although these would probably be better described as magic spells. The hearts you collect by breaking candles can be spent casting any of the Soul Weapons you collect, and their effects can be surprisingly strong. Flames damage all enemies on screen save bosses, Wind pauses the movement of any enemy that isn’t a boss, and Ice will fully heal you. Most candles will contain a heart and they are fairly abundant, but while Ice is appropriately set at a costly 20 when you are only allowed to carry a reserve of 99 hearts at most, other spells are 5 hearts or less. Not only does this mean you’re given some powerful tools to use for cheap, but you also have a full heal you can pull out if the going does get tough. Even more of the game’s difficulty is sapped by a concept called Burning Mode. When you press A+B together, Sonia becomes completely invincible and becomes stronger and faster, the player getting around 10 seconds to basically do whatever needs doing. This means most every boss can be invalidated should you have Burning Mode available, something she will have once per life per stage. While there could be moments like wanting to walk across spikes rather than riding moving chains where maybe you’ll be tempted to use it, Burning Mode is mostly a way to ensure there’s even less difficulty present in this fairly easy game.

The most dangerous thing in Castlevania Legends are pits and spikes though, pits being an instant kill despite the player sometimes needing to have Sonia navigate over ropes that are only really hard to cross because of some stiffness in her midair movement. Between instant death situations and the timer, you often find your greatest foe is area design, especially since some have branching paths but with no clear clue which way is useful to take and which might just have something like an extra life or piece of meat to heal with. It’s an interesting mix of difficulty then, its hardest pushes not really feeling interesting to engage with while its level design and monsters can be briskly handled without much fuss. When it musters something like scaling chains at the same time as monsters you can feel it pushing back in a way a little more potent than usual, but it feels like your tools are often made too strong for things that don’t need such powerful opposition while true annoyances like instant death pits have no recourse but to try again.

THE VERDICT: Castlevania Legends provides a heroine who is far too strong in most fights and yet trips up on little things like level timers and bottomless pits. However, by making her so capable against regular foes and bosses, the adventure overall can be speedily completed and without much hardship. Things like Burning Mode and powerful Soul Weapons do all but guarantee the moments that could have been challenging are robbed of their danger, but there is a somewhat decent sense for where to put enemies on platforms to lead to moments that demand some attention. A mostly forgettable romp because you can power through the moments with potential too easily, Castlevania Legends comes and goes without this encounter with Dracula feeling all that substantial.

And so, I give Castlevania Legends for Game Boy…

A BAD rating. Castlevania Legends offers a Light Mode difficulty that promises to make the game even easier, a pretty unnecessary touch when it has piled so many options onto Sonia that she won’t come up short very often. The fireballs from your whips, Burning Mode, and the Soul Weapons all being provided ends up feeling like too much. Burning Mode perhaps should have been relegated to Light Mode entirely, temporary invincibility too potent and the cost paid for it is not strong enough to discourage using it during the obvious moments like boss fights. Having the healing Ice Soul Weapon not immediately available and potentially only having four casts when at full hearts at least makes it feel a pay off to collecting resources and one you won’t want to squander. Regardless of which safety net is changed or altered though, some stronger platforming areas throughout could have helped, the fireball perhaps limiting ideas like blocking enemies that would have otherwise been unreachable until you’re truly in range. There’s a hunchback enemy that looks annoying with its erratic examples, but its area defense can’t hold up to you standing across the room hurling fire from your whip’s tip, so stages lose some of their bite under the current systems. Those odd shadowy souls at least can move around areas freely and arrive from difficult directions, but Castlevania Legends is often more likely to provide an unambitious and unexciting area than one that sees the enemies used to their full potential.

While disappointing as a potential origin point for the conflict between Dracula and the Belmont clan, the real disappointment is the mediocre application of the whip-swinging monster fighting formula of the Castlevania approach to action platformers. Far too much is in place to weaken the threat of whatever you face and yet true annoyances are left to stand, their inexplicable presence more bothersome than if they had appeared in a game that been more difficult elsewhere. There’s a mild understanding that opposed traversal is where these monsters can prove their power, but one of the last Soul Weapons in the game can be used with almost reckless abandon to clear rooms since the heart cost is so low. Avoiding the wealth of helpful powers granted to you won’t make the game much better, but embracing them as you play at least makes it unlikely you’ll find it truly distasteful.