Ending #72
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
ドラキュラII 呪いの封印
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Komani
Nintendo
1987
Not all sequels are bad and if done correctly, many can be produced and a loyal fanbase will follow every twist and plot turn as a creator’s world is brought to life and realized through the passion of fans. It can be a wonderful thing, and anyone who is human geeks on something.
Some titles can break even with fun gameplay and good mechanics and will limp along until another sequel can redeem the mistakes of its predecessor. Despite all of this, some franchises have the “too big to fail” corporate mentality. Regardless of all the academic rhetoric you throw at them, ravenous fans will still purchase a title simply because it is said title.
It’s hard to determine if Castlevania was meant to be a one time game or if it was meant to be a series. The timeline that was created by Koji Igarashi leaves out several titles like Legends, Legacy of Darkness and Castlevania 64, giving no apparent reason to their removal beyond the convenient excuse of them not fitting in correctly in the timeline. Several years later, Konami released an updated timeline with the games Igarashi removed, putting them back in as side stories.
Both timelines are created after the fact and it is used more as a tool to try and link the games together in a consistent universe then to show that the games were actually created this way from the start. Simon’s Quest is put in the timeline at 1698, but the dates on Dracula’s Tombstone are 1431-76 - a reference to Vlad the Impaler and inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Regardless if subsequent titles in the series were meant to be part of a cohesive timeline, the first two at the least are directly linked, taking place only years apart.
It’s hard to tell if any of the top Executives at Konami were meddling in any of the games being developed at the time. Corporate manipulation really only became a thing when video games became a mainstream medium of entertainment. In-house programming jobs were the norm at that time as many games during that generation were both produced and developed by one company.
What made this game so obtuse for its time? Given the popularity of the first title, Konami probably gave the development team a long leash to realise a sequel. The game had grand ideas and capitalized on several emerging trends in the industry - Open world exploration similar to Metroid, RPG light elements and action like Zelda II, and time-based day/night cycles. It was a lofty endeavor that set out to redefine side scrolling adventure titles, and to mainstream and economize RPG elements, but the system limitations at the time posed a monumental hurdle and the Simon’s Quest team ended up with a title that was clumsy and awkward.
Taken as is, the game is enjoyable, the music and sound really pop in that famous Konami fashion, and the controls are more user friendly than the first. What kills the game ultimately for many is the localization.
The entire game, from the opening story screen to the ending dialogue is a failure on a scale that almost makes it an academic study in itself. The intent of the developer was perhaps to leave subtle clues through Japanese wordplay, inferences, and references. This got horribly perverted and ended up with only about 10% of the clues being useful, the rest being downright misleading.
An unfortunate reality of this poor translation was the difficulty. The game inherently was not that hard. When it came to gameplay, this is the easiest of the Nintendo trilogy. You gained levels by killing enemies and grew stronger by leveling and upgrading your whip. The challenge never really ramped up, but would remain a near constant. The only difficulty came in the form of dialogue.
Some will perceive length as difficulty, but with patience that is alleviated. The game also introduced a grind mechanism whereby you gather the next item for strength or progress you needed you obtain hearts. Hearts are a currency in this one Castlevania. No other game in the series incorporated still beating cardiac muscles as a currency for trading. It wasn’t just a black market job either. You wanted to upgrade your whip you needed 250 of these things. Garlic? sure that will only cost you fifty. Also on side, was a crystal trading scheme going around.
There are many reasons to hate this game and only a few reasons to like it. Whether the developers were underestimating their audience or overestimating their ambition, something got lost in the translation and North American gamers paid the price. What could have been a great sequel, one that would elevate the series to the next level, turned out to be a much debated, much talked about blip in game history.
6 фев 2015
