This really came out of nowhere. I remember it being announced, but I didn’t expect it to come out today. Right when I saw this on Joystiq I downloaded it and played it through a few times. I love Castlevania games, and the linear games in the series are always loads of fun.

This game is based on the Game Boy game Castlevania Adventure, though it doesn’t seem to have many similarities other than the character, Christopher Belmont, and some returning enemies. Otherwise it’s a completely new Castlevania game for 10$.

Also not going to explain the story. Dracula is back, and a Belmont is there to stop him, that’s about as deep as the game goes in that aspect.

So read on and see if it’s worth your 10$!

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Date of Release: December 28 2009

Platforms: Wii WiiWare

Genre: Linear action platformer
Players: 1
Rated T for Teen

Looks and sound
The game looks like what you’d expect from a 16-bit Castlevania games. The animations are nice and smooth, the monster and character designs are really nice, the levels all look great with various locales to visit(sometimes multiples different-looking areas in the same level), the level design itself has some really interesting parts. Overall the game looks awesome. No complaint here whatsoever.

The music is really good. Some of the sounds used in them are a bit weird, but whatever. Each level music (and other music snippets) is remixed from previous Castlevania games. The weird thing is that only 1 track comes from Castlevania Adventure(on the Title Screen), despite the game being based on it. And Castlevania Adventure had a few good tracks too…  The rest of the sound effects are all classic Castlevania sound effects, nothing really strange or out of place here.

Gameplay
The game takes mostly from the more classic games in the series. No fancy things like whip dangling or multi-direction attacking. You can whip forward, jump and use sub-weapons(which uses up hearts). It’s as simplistic as they come. Whipping candles drops power-ups, hearts, sub-weapons or items that give points. Points are actually useful here as getting certain numbers of points gives you extra lives.

The whip power-ups are a bit different from other games. Here you start with the leather whip. Get a power-up and you get the chain whip, which is longer and stronger. Then, any other power-up you get enables you to shoot projectiles for a short time. Getting more while you already have that power-up resets the “timer” (a green bar under the HP). You can use this to strategically take out enemies from far away or score extra hits on bigger enemies.

There’s a few cool gameplay quirks though, mainly the jumping itself which is really awesome. Instead of only being allowed to jump a certain distance like in the other linear Castlevania games, here you have air control, so you’re really not as limited as in the NES Castlevania games. So if you realize halfway through a jump that you undershot it, you can move back and try again, instead of falling to your doom. This becomes incredibly helpful in segments that require precision jumps. Just a note here, when you complete the game once you have the option to have the game control like the NES Castlevania games, with the same kind of “limited” jumps, which can add to the challenge.

The levels are all quite nicely done. Each of them features alternate pathways you can take. Sometimes shortcuts, sometimes it gets you inside bonus rooms with a bunch of items that give points. Most of those alternate paths require finding a key inside a candle (which takes the place of your sub-weapon) and using it to open a door, leading either to said alternate path or a switch that opens up said path. Some levels have more than one of those alternate paths, making it possible to make each playthrough completely different. And each level takes around 10 minutes to complete, unless you die a lot.

Each level has 2 boss fights as well. There’s always a boss halfway through the level, and a level boss. Each boss battle is relatively unique, and really fun. Figuring out patterns and finding the best ways to take them out fast is really fun. The final battle against Dracula (it’s completely different than in Castlevania Adventure) is really fun too, reminiscent of previous fights with the man, but with a new final form after his first 2 forms which is quite cool to fight.

As for the difficulty… The game is a bit tough, but the difficulty is adjustable. For example, on Normal when you reach level 5, normal enemies take off a quarter of your health, which kills you really fast. But it can be pretty easy for various reasons. You can decide the number of lives you get, there’s a few difficulty levels to choose from, and you have infinite continues. The only drawback of continues is that you a have to replay a level from the start, whereas the game has a few checkpoints scattered around for when you just lose lives. They’re quite spread out though. Overall the game is actually a bit hard, but the infinite continues and high number of lives make it easy to manage for veteran gamers, and playable enough for less experienced gamers.

Overall
This game is really fun. Castlevania games that don’t use the Metroid formula are always really fun, and they’re getting quite rare. This one has some really fun gameplay, cool level design, the alternate paths keeps the game fresh, the challenge is pretty good despite the various things that can make it quite easy to finish.  I love having air control here too. It’s a bit on the short side though. But any Castlevania fan should check it out.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- It’s classic Castlevania
- Nice music
- Air control!
- Cool level designs with alternate paths
- Fun boss battles
- Adjustable difficulty makes the game very accessible

Cons
- A bit short
- Despite having lots of hard parts, the game can be made really easy just because of infinite continues
(Just a note here: The lack of a save function is NOT a con. Not when it’s a short game like this. The game takes around 40 minutes to finish, it’s really nothing to finish it in one sitting. And if you somehow can’t, getting back to where you were barely takes any time. Ah, reminds me of the days when barely any game had a save feature… awesome times those were)

The Save Factor
The game has a starting price of 1000 Wii Points ($10). To me it was well worth it, and any Castlevania fan should pick it up at that price. Otherwise, I’d say the Save Factor for this is 800 Wii Points($8), the same price as a SNES game on VC. But I have no idea if Nintendo reduces the price on WiiWare games sometimes, so you might as well get it full price anyways.

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