So a friend shared his PSN account with me to let me download some games and I downloaded Castlevania Dominus collection. I'll own the game in late February at the earliest, but nice that I can atleast play it now. I don't emulate a lot and when I do I don't put a lot of effort jumping through hoops to play certain games, so I've never played Haunted Castle. Here are my impressions of Haunted Castle and Haunted Castle Revisited.
Haunted Castle is a bad game. There are some good mechanics to it, the whipping is a lot faster, but there will be a bit of shit detection iif you whip fast as sometimes things you hit when you repeatedly whip don't get damaged triggered, so it's best to whip slower at some points. The game is very trial and error, I don't think there is any wall meat but if there is I haven't found any. I've only got to the third stage becuase you only get three continues, and by continues it means three lives. There is an option to change it to unlimited, but I didnt' know this until I quit playing. I can beat the first stage without dying and I can get through most of the second stage but I can't beat it without dying, especially since the boss just homes in on you, you can only sometimes avoid it. You can get another whip in the second stage, this whip doubles the damage of each attack, but after getting it once I never got it again, not sure how I actually got it.
Haunt Castlevania Revisited looks just amazing, very beautiful game, but can you believe the game is even more jank than the original Haunted Castle? I know this game has been getting a lot of praise from the community because it's the first new Castlevania game in a long time, but Haunted Castle Revisited also isn't a good game. Now granted I did play the game on hard difficulty, so if playing the game on normal at some point later on changes my opinion of the game drastically I'll give an update.
As I said though, Haunted Castle Revisited is even more jank than the original Haunted Castle when it comes to jumping and attacking but you do have a bit better manueverability. You get whip upgrades throughout the level but they only last a few swings, there's so much shit coming at you at all times, more so than the original Haunted Castle and even though you have atleast better manueverability, you can't whip as fast and it just sometimes feels impossible to dodge some things. Despite not dying on the first stage on Haunted Castle, on Revisited I wasn't able to do that.
Castlevania Dracula X on SNES is a better game. Haunted Castle Revisited is an amazing looking game, but it's a very poorly designed novelty. I'm certain most of the audience Castlevania fan and non Castlevania fan just throw praise at it simply because it's a bonus add on to an already amazing package and only the most hardcore Castlevania fan, you know the ones, the ones that play little outside the same shit repeatedly to the point that they can do world record gitched speedruns flawlessly and likely already have 1800 hours playtime on Haunted Castle Revisisted.
*edit*
I just finished on normal twice, it's a bit more forgiving than hard but I'd say it has a few of the same complaints. Maybe saying it was worse than Dracula X was a bit much, on hard difficulty, absolutely, but playing on what's considered the normal difficulty with an extra difficulty for those that want to play it sure.
*edit again*
So I just finished Haunted Castle Revisited on hard mode, it took me five continues. I did complete the second level without dying. Three of those continues were on the sixth stage, just the bridge, one continue was at Dracula because that was my last life, the other continue was probably at the fourth or fifth stage. I'm still not sure if I like this better than Dracula X or not.
Then again seven continues, let's just put as much shit on the screen as possible without it lagging and call it a hard game. That's not hard, that's bad design. But whatever, they did put a lot of effort into it because the level design itself is actually good and again, a pretty amazing looking game, just not a very good one.
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