A Great Port, Of A Classic Platgormer (Castlevania Chronicles (PS))

Member Name: Guile176

Product:	Castlevania Chronicles (PS)
Date:	14/04/03 (126 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great, Classic gameplay

Disadvantages: May not be for those who can't appreciate classic style gameplay

Castlevania has been a long time favorite of gamers, since the
series first began in the mid 80s. The original had difficult, yet
fun gameplay and a really cool gothic theme which seemed to draw in
gamers. Over the years the series has evolved from a basic action
platformer, into the more RPG like play of Castlevania 2 and
Symphony of the Night. Now Konami is back with a new Castlevania
title called Castlevania Chronicles, which in reality is not that
new at all. Castlevania Chronicles is actually a remake of the very
first Castlevania which appeared back in the mid 80s. Although most
long time gamers will remember this game off the 8bit NES,
Chronicles is actually based off the Japanese X68000 PC version.

Ok, so what's Chronicles about? You assume the role of a legendary
vampire hunter called Simon Belmont. Simon's goal is to do none
other then kill the infamous Dracula. No real complex storylines or
plot twist here. Just plain and simple kill the evil vampire.

Now, killing the vampire is half the fun and not quite easy. Along
the way you'll encounter hoards of his mindless peons such as bone
tossing skeletons, bats, ghostly suits of armor and the ultra
annoying floating medusa heads. A nasty boss awaits after each of
the games levels as well. These are classic baddies such as a giant
bat, Frankenstein, the Grim Reaper and finally Dracula himself.

The overall gameplay is pretty simple. You walk from left to right
from point A to point B. Level design is pretty simplistic here.
Nothing nearly as deep or involved as the likes of Symphony Of the

Night or even the lame N64 Castlevania's. At most, things are simply
a matter of a little platform jumping and avoiding spikes. Like I
said, the enemies are pretty mindless. No complex attack patterns or
overly difficult enemies. Damn those Medusa Heads are still as
annoying as I remembered them like 15 years ago in the NES game. As
for the Grim Reaper, I never beat him in the NES original. He was
too damn hard for me at the time. Thankfully Konami seems to have
toned him down slightly. Either that or my gaming skills have gotten
better.

For weapons, Simon doesn't screw around. He's got a nice assortment
of medieval weaponry to dispose of Dracula and his cronies. His main
weapon being his vampire slaying morning star. If you don't know
what a morning star is, its pretty much a chain whip with a small
spiked ball on the end. Simon can upgrade this weapon up to 3 times.
Simon can also hold up to 1 secondary weapon at a time. These
weapons include throwing dagger, axes, holy water and the life
saving stop watch that freezes time and makes the stupid flying
medusa heads much easier to deal with.

Nothing really much here as far as game modes. You pretty much have
a choice of either a Classic or Arranged mode. Classic will give you
all the sites and sounds of the X68000 original while Arranged will
give you various graphic and sound enhancements. As you can imagine,
I doubt many will be going for the Classic mode. Still, its really
cool that Konami opted to include it here. Other then that the only
extras to be found here is a co
ol looking art gallery.


Graphics 6: Ok, why if Konami redid the graphics, does this look no
better then a 16bit SNES game? Honestly, even the SNES Castlevania 4
is graphically superior in every way to this game. This is a 32 bit
and not 16 you know Konami. Why do we still have stiff, choppy
animation on Simon and the rest of the bad guys?

On the positive side of things, the game at least looks solid.
Colors are decent for what it is and the levels look nice. I also
really like Simon's new look. Levels are all 2D and characters are
sprite based. No fancy 3D effects, motion capture or polygon pushing
to be found here. Overall a sort of shabby effort but acceptable
given the classic nature of the game.


Sound 9.5: Sound here is very impressive. While the sound effects
here are pretty basic and don't have all that much variety, the
music really shines. The music is sort of a gothic sounding rock mix
which has a very haunting style sound to it. Castlevania fans will
notice all the classic tunes here including classic songs like
Vampire Killer and Bloody Tears. This is one game i'd go and buy the
soundtrack to.


Control 8: No overly complex controls to master here. You have one
attack button and a jump button. Like I said, the game play is
pretty simple and the gameplay for the most part is simple left to
right walking with a little platform jumping. Simple and easy to
learn.


Overall I would only recommend this title to either die hard
Castlevania fans or fans of classic gaming. The $20 price tag make
s
it even nicer. The overly simple game play will most likely scare
away most gamers today. Especially if their too young to remember
the original and were raised on the likes of Symphony of the Night.
This title is also somewhat of a collectors item as well since
Konami has only released 20,000 copies in the US. That's a fairly
low distribution count for a game. Thanks for Konami for having the
sense to bring this classic to the States.

Summary: