Thread 12149907

What did people think about Castlevania 2 before James Rolfe told them what to think?

Read up on some old GameFAQs reviews.

>>12149907 (OP)
Whatever EGM told me what to think

I shared his frustration being his exact age and bad at that game. I mention exact age (45) for mutual childhood frustration. Also the discovery that not all games played like Atari games.

>>12149907 (OP)

It's always been my fav nes game

>>12149907 (OP)
You tell us.
You WERE alive at the time, right?

>>12149907 (OP)
>A sequel to a popular game changes genre
They hated it like every single time this has ever happened until Gen Z started claiming things were beloved because they can find shill mag reviews saying it's good but didn't actually live in the era to know how anyone felt who was actually playing it

It was considered a decent game on release but the ingame hints especially for the red crystal use to summon the whirlwind at the cliff were pretty bad. I think I just trial and errored it when I was 6 years old thinking maybe holding down to duck at the mentioned area would work, like how it did with the blue crystal to get to the mansion at the lake.

>>12149926
My first castlevania was IV and I dont remember anyone talking about 2 in the 90s at all

>>12149907 (OP)
loved it back in the day and it's still one my favorites. having the nintendo power maps helped

Good game except for the cryptic hints was my opinion

>>12149923
I too am 45 and I had a great time with this game when it was new. I played with friends and somebody knew what to do for the most part (friends' Nintendo Power was probably to blame I guess) so it wasn't frustrating. I guess you just had to play it the right way. That is, you had to cheat, and be young enough not to have any idea yet that cheating is lame. Or at least, that was one way to do it.

>>12149907 (OP)
I played it on NESticle first. My first impression was it was trying to be some kind of Metroid RPG and so I really didn't compare it to the first Castlevania. The music was good and the levels looked good enough. The dungeons were pretty boring, worse than 8-Eyes.

>>12150229
I like the atmosphere of the mansions. The lack of serious resistance from the forces of evil makes them feel truly lost and dead. It's unusual for such an old game to dare to just leave out the fighting. Unfortunately yeah it's not super fun to actually tramp through them. The little bit of puzzle solving you have to do in them is a good start, but it's too simple and tedious overall. But adding lots more puzzles would probably make them feel artificial and ruin the atmosphere... and adding more enemies would just turn them into Castlevania 1 stages, which would be better than what we got, but not as interesting. Oh well. They tried.

>>12149907 (OP)
They thought it was AAASSSSSS and then they did the iconic frown and took a shit on the game.

>>12149923
>>12150157
I three am 45, Class of '98 brothers, and enjoyed the game with my best friend, though I acknowledge that Nintendo Power enabled me to grok it.

>>12149907 (OP)
It was a 5/10 game with great music and atmosphere, performative hate didn't really exist back then.

>>12149907 (OP)
I liked it as a kid because it was easy enough to beat on a rental and I had Nintendo Power to tell me to crouch at that cliff

>>12150701
*I was also extremely interested in anything with any kind of rudimentary "action RPG" mechanics, e.g. Zelda 2 or Faxanadu. I was probably the only person that ever put more than one token into the Cadash machine at my arcade.

>>12149907 (OP)
"I don't get it, also this thing is unfun and retarded."

Simon's Quest was always a competent open world RPG will level ups and upgrades in freaking 1987, betrayed only by the awful Western translation
>exploring the forests, swamps, towns and mansions
>cool and sometimes hidden/optional gear like the diamond or shield
>multiple endings
>that satisfying ultimate upgrade to the whip that turns it into a flaming flail
It's a very fun adventure to journey through

>>12150705
You would've gotten along with me and my friend.

>>12150726
>open world RPG will level ups and upgrades in freaking 1987
As a Simon's Quest enjoyer, in no way do upgrades make a game an RPG. Blaster Master is not an RPG.

>>12149917
A 9, 8, 7, and a 2. Sounds like this game was pretty poppin prior to the bald bitch baggage.

>>12150693
Hell ya class of 98er. Missed all the post columbine paranoia

If you want to see a game that was fairly maligned by early nerd clones, see Spoony's review of Heroes of the Lance. God, that game was beyond awful if you were a Dragonlance/D&D fan.

>>12149907 (OP)
he sucks at games he just makes nice videos

>>12149907 (OP)
Castlevania wasn't as popular as it seemed until James Rolfe made that exact video. Symphony of the Night only sold 700K units in both Japan and the US. I think the series has mostly been reliant on Japanese sales. Castlevania 1 only sold 1 million units on the NES, maybe a little fewer, which are pitiful numbers for the NES.

Its entire franchise sales were apparently 20 million by 2010, but far fewer selling franchises seemed much more prominent here in the US.

>>12149907 (OP)
Castlevania wasn't as popular as it seemed until James Rolfe made that exact video. Symphony of the Night only sold 700K units in both Japan and the US. I think the series has mostly been reliant on Japanese sales. Castlevania 1 only sold 1 million units on the NES, maybe a little fewer, which are extremely underwhelming, if merely average numbers for the NES.

Its entire franchise sales were apparently 20 million by 2010, but far fewer selling franchises seemed much more prominent here in the US.

>>12150886
shut up zoomer idiot

>>12150886
Yeah, no. Every kid had Castlevania.

>>12149907 (OP)
People thought Castlevania was classic, but at this time retro gaming was not cool by any means. In the early 2000s most people laughed if you were playing Sega Genesis or super Nintendo. I remember being like that for a few years in like 04-05. Castlevania was still being churned out on ds when James made his cvii video. Right before YouTube, Castlevania was brewing on forums, aos and com were cult classics basically a few years after they released. As for cvii, no body really cared. it was a novelty, not some game to be harassed by the community at large. Some people liked it but most thought it too old and obtuse by then.

>>12150886
kill yourself zoomer

>>12150737
>in no way do upgrades make a game an RPG
He didn't say they did

>>12149931
>Mario 2 was disliked
Looks like you are the one who didn't live the era

>>12150886
People mostly rented games back then

>>12150886
>average numbers
>which are extremely underwhelming
Fuck off

Also, fuck off zoomer.

>>12150886
1 million units was a massive success back then.

>taking AVGN seriously
>claiming he ruined a game's reputation
Castlevania 2 was always a frustrating and confusing game, sorry.

>>12149907 (OP)
I didn't like it when I first tried it because this game really needs the supplemental material to ease you into it. I could tell it was a larger world and that there was much to do but I didn't know where to even begin. Playing it with a FAQ later I thought it was okay.

>>12150886
>Symphony of the Night only sold 700K units in both Japan and the US.
You made a good effort but you buggered up here. SotN sold about 700k units in the US and a little over 1.25 million globally. Not exact figures but those are rough numbers.

Some education for those that are unaware, this anon is mostly correct in the statement about Castlevania not being very popular, in sales that is. For whatever reason most of the castlevania titles sell like shit on release and then only later in life pick up steam again through second hand sales (or they die a miserable sad death like Dracula X or Bloodlines). The influence of Rolfe or anyone else on the series is minimal at best.

>>12150726
>open world RPG
Action adventure.

>>12151254
Well, I can't parse his post then, because Simon's Quest is in no way an RPG.

>>12150726
The translation is fine. It's the original script that has the villagers lie to you.

https://legendsoflocalization.com/articles/castlevania-ii-graveyard-duck/

>>12150886
>this enrages the castlevania autist

>>12151779
No, Symphony of the Night sold 225,862 units in Japan, while the PlayStation version sold 477,304 units in the United States.

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/Ps1ussales.htm

>>12151759
On the NES? It was highly successful, but a pittance compared to the console as a whole. The best selling NES games, not including games sold with the console, all cleared 3 million units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_video_games

On the official list of best selling NES games, Castlevania doesn't even meet the mark, at 80 titles.

>>12151759
On the NES? It was highly successful, but a pittance compared to the console as a whole. The top 10 best-selling NES games, not including games sold with the console, all cleared 3 million units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_video_games

On the official list of best-selling NES games, Castlevania doesn't even meet the mark, at 80 titles.

>>12149931
This, but we know know them all to be hidden gems, the FE2s, FF2s, Zelda2s, all of them.
Hated for being different but actually good because they were different.

>>12151912
Crazy, the series really did peak with the OG NES game and just never sold better until it cheated with Lords of Shadow or whatever it was called.

>>12150886
my story as a secondary was organically coming upon the portable games
>spooky metroid neat
and then absorbing worship and lore of the legacy series from 1up and old blogpost and forum sites linked from there.

I remember hate-clearing it. The enemy AI/attacks was such a downgrade to 1 and needing to buy whip upgrades to wade through the tedious combat pissed me off even more. The idea of a Castlevania game where you go around talking to NPCs was pretty neat though.

I think something that confuses younger people who exist in the digital age is that people knew and played games they didn't buy. We had friends, we went to each other's houses, we didn't buy every game our friends had from content creator induced FOMO . Everyone in my age group knew who Simon Belmont was.

>>12149907 (OP)
I had no idea what the fuck to do