If you play Castlevania 2, Simons Quest, you wont soon forget it. Konami did a master job of creating the perfect atmosphere for Transylvania. One thing that makes Castlevania so cool and unique from the others is that it takes place in the citys and villages around Castlevania, and only at the very, very end do you enter Castlevania itself. Very cool indeed.

BASIC IMPRESSIONS

You start out in the daytime, in a nice, pleasant, rural village. How quaint. Just wait till about 5 minutes later, and everyone in town goes inside as night falls and you are stuck out in the village to fight the evil demons that come out with nothing but your trusty whip. You must go from there to other towns and villages, finding and going through each of the 5 mansions surrounding Castlevania to retrieve Draculas bodyparts. The atmosphere of the towns and mansions is simply amazing.

GRAPHICS

The graphics in Simons Quest wont exactly floor you, but they are a considerable step up from Castlevania 1. Some enemies and bosses look quite detailed, but most of it is pretty basic sprites. Konami does a good job of creating a good atmosphere, but the background graphics are often repetitive and bland. Of course, a lot of the NES games from that era had graphics like that, but Konami could have done better. Pretty good graphics though, nothing that will make your eyes sore because it is so bad. Graphics rating: 75

STORYLINE

Simons Quest is the game that introduced a storyline to the Castlevania series. In the original, it was just some guy going through a castle fighting monsters for some reason. In Simons Quest, we find out that our heros name is Simon Belmont, and after defeating Dracula in the original Castlevania, Draculas spirit cast a curse on Transylvania just before he died, making a bunch of monsters be ressurected and roam the land around Transylvania. Now, the only way to break the curse, is for Simon to collect the body parts of Dracula scattered across the land, bring them to Castlevania and burn them, ressurecting Dracula and then defeat him again. Epic stuff here, the most compelling story in the series. Storyline rating: 95

GAMEPLAY

One word describes the gameplay: AWESOME! Its your basic addictive whip-cracking Castlevania gameplay, with role-playing elements! Build levels, collect money to buy new whips and get awesome vampire-fighting utilities like the diamond cutter (Coincidence) and the almighty golden knife. This game has a series of objectives to do in order, making it feel VERY much like a role playing game. This game is not split up into levels, like all other Castlevania games(Besides SotN), it is all one huge world, giving it more of a role-playing game feel. The action in Simons Quest is very easy. The game has 3 bosses, all are weenies. Dracula can be beaten the first time you fight him. Besides that, Simons Quest is a game that is hard as hell. Why do I say that? Because of the puzzles! It is sometimes mindwarpingly hard to figure out what to do next. You wont beat this game for a very long time unless you read an FAQ, it took me a solid year to beat this game (But thats when I was in elementary school). Gameplay rating: 96

SOUND

The sound in Simons Quest will absolutely floor you! If you've been to the music section of my site yet, you'll notice that Bloody Tears is number 1 on my list. Thats not the only awesome song in this game, vampire killer, the mansion music, and the nighttime music are also extreme tracks. The Castlevania music is very creepy. The music just... rocks! The Sound effects are fitting, I like the sound of Simon cracking his whip. All of the sound effects do a good job. Sound rating: 99

REPLAY VALUE

Once you beat Castlevania 2, what's left? Well, you can try to beat it faster, and get the 3 different endings, but they're all very similar. this game will take you a long time, without using an FAQ, so you wont have to worry about what to do when you beat it for a long time. I never really feel compelled to play after I beat it, though. Replay value: 81

Overall: 96

Castlevania 2: Simons Quest is among my favorite games of all time, and it is definately worth your time, especially when you can get it free using an emulator. This game seems almost more of a RPG than action, it is the game that planted the Role Playing seeds in me, so very long ago. I dont know why Konami switched back to the levels format in Castlevania 3, just imagine how cool CV4 could have been if it was in CV2 format! At least Konami listened to the Simons Quest fans, and released Symphony of the Night in action/RPG format but that does me no good, seeing as to how I dont own a Playstation.