... I said that before I played:
Castlevania: The Adventure
Oh boy, it really has been a while since the last game that made me feel very strongly, and not in a good way. But this game... this game's really done a number on me. The classic, linear Castlevania games have been known to be frustrating, sure. Their difficulty is legendary, even though I'd say there are far more difficult game series out there. These games are up there, sure, but they're all generally very manageable and can be conquered with a bit of patience, strategy, and sometimes luck.
But Castlevania: The Adventure on Game Boy is a completely different beast entirely.
It begins the moment you gain control of our new hero, Christopher Belmont. As soon as you begin walking, you know you're in for a bad time. Christopher moves ludicrously slow. I mean, you could argue the speed of the Belmonts in other games never goes beyond the speed of "leisurely stroll," but ol' Chris here may as well be taking baby steps with his movement speed. Even his jump feels awkward. I know Classicvanias are rather stiff with the exception of Super Castlevania IV, but for the most part the games are designed to complement this gameplay, and they feel responsive. Here, they're sluggish and often drop your inputs.
I know what you might be thinking. That the Game Boy hardware is limited. That it just doesn't have the horsepower of the NES. But that's no excuse when games like the Mario Land games, Wario Land, Link's Awakening, Metroid 2, and Pokemon all feel pretty solid. Okay, fine most of those were later on in the system's life, so let's just take Mario Land as an example. That game was far more responsive than this one, and had a decent capability for speedy gameplay as well. This game could have easily replicated at least the movement speed of the NES titles.
Oh, that's not even including the baffling handling of the whip. In most games, you find whip powerups in candles, one to upgrade your leather whip into a chain whip and increase its damage, the second to extend its range. You don't lose these upgrades until you die. In The Adventure... well, they're still in candles. They still come in two, one to upgrade to a chain whip, and the second to give you a nifty fireball. But you lose them if you merely take damage. This adds even more to the list of problems with this game, but I'll get back to that.
Now, poor gameplay or no, if the game had at least been designed around this, it would at minimum be a passable game. But it wasn't. In its four meager stages, it constantly asks you for precision platforming, from the moment it introduces you to one-tile-wide platforms spaced so far apart you need to jump from the very edge to make the next one. They're above solid ground, thankfully, but it's still both at odds with the horrible gameplay feel and is agonizingly bland game design at the same time.
This game is also a drag. It has its share of uninteresting level design that's pure padding, like the segment you're walking across several bridges, all on the same plane, for far too long, the only obstacle being these exploding rolling eyeballs (Castlevania games are weird) that can take out parts of the bridge. But it's hardly difficult and overstays its welcome. Like the entire game, if I'm honest.
The worst offender is stage fucking three. Now, I consider myself somewhat proud when it comes to video games. Cheat codes? Save states? Rewind features? Not my thing. Well, unless it's Megaman Legacy Collection and I legitimately need that rewind feature to save myself from a game-breaking bug. But this stage... this absolute disaster of a stage... okay you know what, it doesn't start so bad. There's a spike ceiling, a clear warning that shenanigans are afoot. It starts lowering and the floor rises. What can you do but keep going forward? Turns out there's a pillar pulling the floor and ceiling together you have to break. Tense, but manageable. Keep going, spike ceiling lowers itself in steps. Just past the lowest portion, there's a candle. Try to whip it. Ceiling and floor start moving again and I die. Annoying troll, but whatever, I move on.
Past that point... autoscroller. With a rising spike floor. And more precise platforming involving ropes to climb, jump off of at the right moment, and some incredibly annoying enemy placement. Oh, and said enemies are weird pillbug monstrosities that, if you don't have the chain whip, will curl into a ball upon taking damage and can easily knock you about, ruining your run. And it's very easy to not have the chain whip, either through dying and respawning at the start of the autoscroller or taking damage from the pillbugs because of their poor placement.
But don't worry... there's more! Oh yes, once you pass that autoscroller, there's another spike wall chasing you down! This segment isn't an autoscroller, but it is a race against time, through winding corridors, again with annoying enemies, precise platforming, and I'm pretty sure a special kind of programming that can siphon out your soul and your sanity. There's even a section where you have to climb and jump across several ropes in a row, like something out of a Mario or Donkey Kong Country game. That shit doesn't belong in a Castlevania platformer! Especially not one as grueling as this! Thus I beat this stage using save states liberally. My patience was shot and I was no longer giving it the time of day.
I watched a speedrun of this game. A perfect run of this stage takes six minutes. They're not doing anything but going through the stage normally.
At least the bosses in this game are a joke.
Stage four, the final stage, isn't much better. It doesn't have that much precise platforming, just enough to make you angry, but it throws the level one boss at you multiple times (thankfully weaker), drags on too long, and, you guessed it, has horrible enemy placement. Specifically this one type of enemy, a stationary turret that can launch bouncing projectiles diagonally up or down. There's one stationed right next to the rope you climb up from the room below. Depending on which direction it fires, it'll either harmlessly bounce back behind the turret, or come right down the rope and hit you. And there's nothing you can do to avoid it. Pure luck. Castlevania's known for cruel enemy placement but in most games it at least feels like you can do something about it if you know it's coming. Here? No chance at all.
Yes, I continued to save state. This game no longer deserved my patience at this point.
Then there's Dracula. Annoying at first, but once you figure out a pattern, he's easy, just a bit tedious. His second form... is probably easy to figure out too, I was just really done with the game and instead looked up a YouTube video, watched the ending, and called it a game. I could have probably done it, but at this point I was just really done with the game. Oh yeah, it's also not as nice as most games, putting a checkpoint right before Dracula when you game over. Well okay, 3 didn't do that for some reason, and I hate it there, but that stage is far more tolerable than this one. Really, like I said, the bosses in this game aren't a big deal, it's... everything else.
This is the worst Castlevania game I've ever played, an honor formerly belonging to Dracula X on SNES. A game that feels like a goddamn masterpiece in comparison. Hell, Castlevania: The Adventure is easily one of the worst games I've ever played, period. If you want to watch my experience suffering from this game, I streamed it last night and uploaded the "playthrough" to my YouTube channel. It's not a pretty sight. I can only pray the other two Game Boy Castlevania games are better.
I'll end this on a positive though. The music? Actually pretty fuckin' awesome. It's a shame this soundtrack doesn't get talked about more, but considering how poor the game is, I guess I'm not too surprised. Which, again, is a real shame, because Battle of the Holy is the most underrated song in this series and easily one of its best tracks.