Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - Thoughts
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest released in 1987 in Japan and 1988 in the United States and 1990 in PAL regions. It is the second entry in the Castlevania series and follows Simon once again. Simon was cursed by Dracula in the first game and Simon’s Quest is the story of Simon, uhm, questing to undo the curse which of course involves defeating Dracula once again after collecting all of his body parts that have mysteriously scattered across the region, naturally.
This game is considered a NES classic and received positive reviews from virtually every review outlet. Does this game still deserve that kind of praise?
What I liked
RPG Elements
Simon’s Quest was the first Castlevania game to really shoot for the moon and add in some ambitious game mechanics.
The game has an inventory system. There are several items (some are required) that you can purchase from vendors in towns. Everything costs hearts which I presume are the currency in this world (kind of morbid, don’t you think?). If you know what to buy and where to buy it from, you can spend those hard-earned hearts. From daggers to white crystals to chain whips, there are several items available for purchase.
This is also the first Castlevania game in which there isn’t necessarily a linear path. Simon can roam the countryside and visit several villages on his quest to find Dracula’s body parts. There will be backtracking, which was not a concept in the original Castlevania.
As useless as they are, there are towns populated with villagers to include yet another RPG-esque element to the game. Simon can talk to every villager to get their input which adds another layer of world building into the game.
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The Music
This is the area where Simon’s Quest excels. Nearly every single track in the game is fantastic. I would argue the music is even better than original Castlevania, albeit the number of tracks is not as vast. The same three to four music tracks are recycled throughout the game. Similar to my comment about Castlevania, it almost makes the other weaknesses of the game bearable… almost.
Here’s a snippet of “The Silence of Daylight” which is played during the daytime when in towns. It’s really catchy.
What I didn’t like
Grab Your Walkthrough
I would be very interested to know exactly how many people who played Simon’s Quest all the way through did it without a walkthrough. My gut feeling is that the number is very small compared to all of the players who have tried the game. The reason for that is because the game does not hold your hand and even appears to actively prevent you from progressing.
Here’s a list of oddities in the game that prevents the player from progressing:
The townspeople will lie to you and feed Simon misinformation. Don’t believe me? Here’s an interview with the creator, Koji Igarashi in which he states the “villagers were all liars”.
Key items and/or locations will be unknown how to obtain or locate. Example, the infamous “press down against a certain wall and wait for a tornado to appear” moment.
False walls and floors exist throughout the game either to confuse the player or cause cheap deaths. The only way to know they are there is to spam holy water everywhere or by trial and error, aka be a human mine detector and fall to your death in order to memorize where the pitfalls are.
Knowing that you need an oak stake to puncture the Orb at the end of each castle AND knowing that you can buy it from a person inside the castle.
It boggles the mind as to why the game developers would decide to be so devious. I’m all for a challenge, but a fair challenge. This game could have been so much fun had a few different decisions been made.
Day/Night Cycle
This is yet another concept that prohibits the progression of the game, but I have more to say about it, so it got its own section.
Within the game, after a set amount of time, the game pauses and a message will appear: “What a horrible night to have a curse“, insinuating A) that there’s a good time to have a curse and B) that nighttime has arrived, and Simon’s curse is in full effect. Following this, the game fades out and back in and it becomes nighttime. At night, enemies become stronger which is fine. That is a common concept in video games. Monsters are stronger at night, no problem. But on top of this, when entering a town, there are no townsfolk. They’ve all battened down the hatches. In their place are enemies. This means you cannot buy items, you cannot talk to villagers, and you cannot heal. The game effectively grinds to a halt. Clearly, this is a great time to grind (more on that later) and that is all you are meant to do.
There’s no way to toggle night and day on your own. And nighttime lasts for three minutes in-game. Daytime lasts for three minutes as well. So, after EVERY single three-minute day cycle, you MUST play three minutes of nighttime. It’s not a great gameplay loop and I found myself wishing every single time that I could be doing something else or be able to toggle from night to daytime on my own.
Grindfest
The nighttime cycle becomes crucial in this game because Simon is going to be doing a lot of grinding. This is because, as stated, the in-game currency are hearts and hearts drop by killing enemies. At night, each enemy drops more hearts than they would in the daytime. There are a lot of items in the game that are required such as the Oak Stake and White Crystal. If you as the player wish to proceed with the game, you must obtain these items and, unfortunately, just playing normally through the game probably won’t net you enough hearts for this to be possible.
As I’ve gotten older, games that require grinding become less and less appealing. It seems like some arbitrary way to extend a game’s length and only results in frustration.
Boss Light
There are three bosses in Simon’s Quest including Dracula. In a series that is known for its larger than life, super detailed and sometimes super challenging bosses, for Simon’s Quest to only have three bosses seems like an insult. Or, at the very least, that something was left out. On top of this, the three bosses aren’t that interesting. Death and Dracula are staples of the series, and they look how one would expect. Then there’s Camilla who is just a large porcelain mask… Excuse me? Large porcelain mask?? Yep. Maybe it’s some kind of ghostly apparition, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?
Anyway, when most Castlevania games have eight, ten or even more bosses, it is pretty disappointing to reach the end of a castle and shove a stake through a glowing orb to find a piece of a dead vampire, I’m just sayin’.
What would I change?
Include actual instructions or clues about how to move forward in the game. I think we take for granted nowadays how cryptic retro video games were.
Tweak the day/night cycle so that it could be automatically triggered. That way you don’t have to wait for night to end to buy stuff or talk to villagers at the town.