Castlevania II: Simon's Quest Review by The Successor

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astlevania II: Simon's Quest is a love or hate game. Both viewpoints are understandable. Considering the experiments this game gambles, and the risks taken, it's expected. Despite the success of the original Castlevania, Simon's Quest casts aside the sanctioned and approved set-up of its NES forerunner and chooses to shape itself, rather than be shaped by past triumphs.
It's a courageous endeavor, indeed. The outcome has mixed results, but not because the core concept isn't up to snuff, but because of problematic composition.

Simon's Quest is a giant riddle. After the clear-cut arcade arrangement of Castlevania, this can throw players off.
Similar to Metroid, Simon's Quest drops the player in a seemingly random location and abandons them, causing the fledgling adventurer to fend for himself.

In role playing games, you talk to non playable characters that offer discernable hints about how to progress. Simon's Quest's townspeople utter the most baffling, even misleading clues or useless information in video game history, leaving players scratching their heads. Since the NPC's are rarely any help, blind luck is your best bet for making headway through Transylvania.

Such is the biggest problem of Simon's Quest, and a legitimate turn off. The adventure is nigh impossible to figure out lacking the aid of a guide.

Simon's Quest demands players perform the most idiosyncratic feats, which would never come to mind, in face of early defeat.
And it's all really stupid.

It is a phenomenon unique to Simon's Quest easily remedied by perceptible information.

Simon's Quest does not stop frustrating players. Should you actually manage to advance, cheap obstacles are thrown your way. Random invisible floors may set you back several steps and cause aggravating repetition through the stage.

The only solution the game allows is a strict battery of tests crashing Holy Water against the ground.
This, too, could have been avoided if Simon's Quest simply offered an item that identifies fake floors and walls.

But, it doesn't.
It's as if the game is having fun with you, seeing how much of this nonsense you can take before giving up. The real challenge of Simon's Quest.
For the big problems that plague this title, there are simple solutions. Why they weren't implemented is anybody's guess.

Aside from obvious peculiarities, Simon's Quest is known for being easy as far as surviving Transylvania. In stark contrast to Castlevania, bosses and enemies provide little challenge.

The adventure does become quite difficult if you don't keep up with current items to buy, or find. For example, the default whip becomes rather weak early on, prompting Simon to upgrade it. Money comes in the way of hearts that are dropped by monsters. Gathering enough hearts for needed items sometimes requires boring grinding by killing enemies over and over. It's not so bad, but can affect the game's pacing in a negative way.

The only sub-weapons that are familiar with those of the first game are the various Daggers and Holy Water. Simon has gotten a whole new array of vampire hunting trinkets at his disposal. Simon's Quest is notable in this series for including more traditional Vampire Hunting paraphernalia, namely the Oak Stake and Garlic.

Despite the free roaming world and all of these new conditions, it controls fairly the same as Castlevania. But, level structure and enemies are so different that it doesn't quite play the same. Emphasis isn't as strongly focused on fighting, reflexes, timing, and precision. The enemies may not be more passive than Castlevania's, but there aren't as many at once, and they don't deal as much damage. Death pits, while still present, are much less of a problem.

So, it has more or less the same controls as Castlevania, but stresses exploring its world, not so much fighting monsters in said world. That isn't a fault; it's just a different way of approaching things. This foreshadows the movement established by Symphony of the Night, centered on free roaming, not so much surviving against enemies and tricky terrain.

Another difference between Simon's Quest and Castlevania that has surprisingly gone unmentioned is that this game doesn't take place strictly inside Dracula's Castle.

Simon's adventure finds him roaming the plagued Carpathian Mountains, from village to village, in search of hard to find Mansions harboring the scattered remnants of Count Dracula. Between these besieged villages are stretches of wilderness. Monsters claim free reign.

The game takes advantage of a clever day and night system. Villagers lock their doors at night, because of terrors that rise when the sun sets. As such, Simon is not invited into any building and there is no sanctuary when there is no sun. Monsters freely wander village streets in hours of darkness. Empowered by the Night, they provide greater challenge.

Going along with the day and night theme, the game records how many days have transpired. How quickly you can dispel Dracula's Curse determines your ending. Simon is cursed himself, and decays more and more as time goes on. If you take too long, he will not survive this quest.

The game forces you to tackle this adventure strategically. There are items necessary for advancement in villages, but you cannot acquire them at night when everyone is indoors. This means that you may have to waste time waiting for the sun to rise, and time is not something you can spare if you want a good ending. This feature keeps players on the move and thinking about where they will go, when they will go, and where and when to grind for needed hearts.

Ultimately, Simon's Quest is like a two sided coin. While there are grave flaws with this game, there are also flashes of brilliance in spite of them.

One aspect that is hard to deny is the soundtrack. It is small, but fantastic. There is a sizable leap in sound quality when compared to Castlevania. Obvious steps up are heard in bass and drums, which come out way heavier than before. The arrangements, though more intricate, are attractive, accessible, and somehow familiar, due to the ideal order of notes. The music packs more of a punch, not just due to the bigger sound, but because of the pace, and dire, haunting attributes heard in it.
It's all dripping with unique emotion.

That is the game's greatest strength – feelings. It's able to stir powerful emotions with everything it does.

As misleading as the dialogue can be, it has given us timeless quotes, such as "I'll give you a silver knife to save your neck." Sayings like that and "Garlic in the graveyard summons a stranger," are poetic in a macabre and mystifying fashion that is perfectly suited to this game.

"What a horrible night to have a curse."

Combine this with the downtrodden, horrifying music, and glum visuals and you come out with a weighty presentation that says more than the other two NES Castlevania games can.
It doesn't end there. Other anomalous aspects of the game deeply add to this experience.

Certain hooded men only appear in graveyards if you curiously lay down a piece of garlic.

Lakes reveal themselves to be illusions if you crouch and wait for a few seconds at their banks while holding a colored crystal.

Merchants pace the halls of haunted mansions, waiting to sell passersby Oak Stakes.

It all goes together so well, it's almost genius, partially because it's so out there but strengthens the overall presentation of the game because these things feel so linked, and make this world so weird.
Even the game's story is remarkably bizarre. As Simon, we strive to gather Dracula's body parts, take them to the ruins of Castlevania, and use them in a ritual to resurrect Dracula just to kill him again, because that is the only way to undo his Curse. While all of this other eeriness is going on, the player character is journeying across the Transylvanian countryside, carrying the body parts of his mortal foe, and doing the most peculiar deeds to further the adventure.

It's all weird and slightly disturbing. Those are two adjectives that continually pop up when describing the attributes of this arcane Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge.
It's true that there are things to hate, and things done wrong. But there's also a lot to love about this uncanny game.

Fans have always been clamoring for remakes of their favorite Castlevania titles. With the arrival of The Dracula X Chronicles, those dreams are closer to reality than ever before.

Simon's Quest is a game that you may continually hear about when fans voice their picks for a remake.
But… perhaps something like this should be left alone. Can you really recreate it? Can another game do justice to the oddities that make fans adore it? Would the development team run away from them, clean up and change everything that is perceived as a flaw and make it… normal?

The most fascinating games are those with hard to place attributes that make them stand out from the pack. The games that make us wonder. The games that say a lot with how much they leave unsaid and unexplained.
Their quirkiness makes them controversial, but it also makes them adored. Simon's Quest is one of those games. It is flawed, but in light of those flaws are style, virtuosity, and one of the most affecting presentations to be seen in the entire Castlevania series. Not many other games evoke the curious, wondrous, disturbing, and worrisome feelings present in Simon's Quest.

Whether you like it, love it, hate it, or are indifferent is all up to chance. None of those reactions would be at all surprising. But, this is an experience that shouldn't be passed by.

Once again – Step into the shadows of the Hell House. You've arrived back here at Transylvania on business: to destroy forever the Curse of the evil Count Dracula.