It Was The CURSED of Times
0Originally recorded: October 10, 2021
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I have no one to blame for this one but myself. I know that seems pretty dramatic for a game that ended up only taking me a single stream. But honestly, I'd been dragging my feet on playing through the entirety of Simon's Quest for a long time... and since the well is beginning to run dry when it comes to Castlevanias I've yet to play through -- and I couldn't use any of the longer nominations I had in mind, due to this year's schedule slip -- I bit the bullet and put up SQ as one of my choices, knowing well and good that I'd essentially made a mistake. Castlevania II won the poll, so here I am: streaming Simon's Quest.
The truth of the matter is that while the game had a bad reputation for many years, thanks in no small part to the efforts of one Angry Video Game Nerd, as of late, people have begun to "reexamine" it and have begun holding Simon's Quest up as being "overhated". But much like my good friend SNES Master KI's utter disdain for Majora's Mask (which underwent a similar reevaluation some years back), I never really bought into this. As far as I'm concerned, Simon's Quest will always be the worst of the NES Castlevania trilogy... and by a significant margin. While I normally try to give even the worst games credit if they experiment, Castlevania II's flaws are too fatal for me to give the game any quarter.
The main gameplay loop involves grinding for currency -- fittingly using "Hearts" as a stand-in for money -- which provides Simon with both money to buy items that are either necessary to progress... or just make the game bareable enough to continue. They also provide him with experience points, which are definitely helpful. But frankly, I wish experience was just tied to killing enemies, which is usually the case.
As for the other major flaws, well, I'm just going to copy-paste this next paragraph from a conversation with a friend who is a fan of the game (and one of the people who voted for me to stream it in the first place):
"The game's layout is incredibly confusing. The fact that half of the villagers lie to you is made worse by the game's typical English translation of the NES era. The day/night cycle is tedious. The main onus on the game is actually just grinding for hearts, both to level up your character and to buy items that are needed to progress. I have a vendetta against any exploratory platformers with a lives mechanic -- and the punishment for game overs are way too harsh. Oh... and why did they decide to put instant death traps in the towns anyway?"
He did inform me that my presumption that game overs resetting your experience points was incorrect, but every other criticism was spot-on. Having said that, I didn't end up hating the game as much as I assumed I would. There were definitely some interesting ideas here. I just feel like a lot of them were handled much better in other games. The original Shantae immediately jumps to mind, but even Zelda II and Faxanadu handled a lot of these mechanics and ideas better.
But Simon's Quest isn't an irredeemable game at its core... it's just incapable of overcoming its many flaws. Having said that, there are still other Castlevania games I dread playing even more than Castlevania II. ...and wouldn't you know it, one of them is actually on the docket for this year.