Castlevania: The Adventure (GB)

(Review archived from January 20, 2016)

Wow, Castlevania’s first outing on the GameBoy is really something ain’t it? I mean, wow it’s just … wow. Look, truth be known I think I could be more forgiving towards this game if it wasn’t a Castlevania game. But it is a Castlevania game, and as such I feel that I need to make mention of how it fits in with the rest of the series, and as a Castlevania game it just feels exceedingly underwhelming to me. Especially at the time of this release, the games in the Castlevania series were not at all known for their mediocrity, so Castlevania: The Adventure stands in stark contrast due to the mediocrity at its core. I mean it’s OK, I guess. I just feel like the developers were handed a checklist of “things to put in a Castlevania game,” and they systematically went down the list adding those elements in. Whip? Check. Bats? Check. Dracula? Check. But in doing so they just didn’t capture the spirit of its predecessors, the charm, the Gothic romance of it all. It’s an empty robotic shell of a Castlevania game. But more than that, they added elements that made it feel distinctly unlike a Castlevania game. Vampire hunters don’t climb ropes! They use the stairs like any other civilized human being with slight BDSM tendencies. So yeah, this game almost feels like one of those games that was released as something entirely different in Japan, and then rebranded as a series release in the West (because C.R.E.A.M. yo). I mean taken on its own merits, it’s fine … I guess, but when this game serves to dilute the greatness of the series as a whole, well I have no problems telling it to go straight to hell. tl;dr It’s a mediocre game masquerading as a piss poor Castlevania game. Thank goodness better things were in store for Castlevania on the GameBoy …