3/5 ★ – SingleActionArmy's review of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge.

Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge Part 5 of my Castlevania Series Review (At the time of writing this review, a few weeks had passed since I had played. So this review might not be as detailed/in-depth as most of my reviews. I apologize for this, I have been busy with work, life, and Circle of the Moon!) Castlevania: The Adventure (CTA) will forever live in infamy as a terrible game. How bad it is is a matter of debate, as is what makes it bad. But without a doubt, the game is not good. Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (CBR) is the sequel to this game, and CBR makes big improvements on its predecessor. I will be drawing a lot from CTA, so if you haven’t done so yet, I’d recommend reading part 4 of my series review where I review CTA. In this review, I will discuss what CBR does well, where it falls, and how it improves from CTA. One can easily tell this game learned from its prequels mistakes immediately when you start playing. The UI, for one, is much better. Your hearts, time, health, and subweapon are neatly placed at the bottom of your screen separate from the gameplay. CTA has only your health and score placed over the in-game level at the bottom, and the time at the top. Next, Christopher moves much, much faster. This one change alone drastically improves this game. Moving, jumping, and attacking are much more fluid and tight in this game, and it feels like a real, classicvania game. Also, CBR finally added subweapons, which means a lot given the difficulty of certain enemies and bosses. There are only two of them, which is a little upsetting, but even just having two adds another layer to this game that was missing in CTA. CBR adds a password save system as well, which is a life saver. This was one of the biggest quality of life changes as you don’t have to choose between replaying the game, or leaving your system on when you’re not playing. All of these changes alone elevate CBR to another level. Now, what are the highlights of CBR? Well, for me it was the level design. The level design was one of my favorite parts of CTA, and CBR took its predecessor's formula and improved upon it. The levels are designed to be just as challenging as CTA, however CBR removes a lot of the excess insta-kill potential from the game. It also removes a lot of the excess fall-to-your-death platforming. These were two things holding CTA’s levels back a lot. The game feels much more fair, and these levels are much more fun to play. However, the levels are still plenty challenging, you just won’t die off of one mistake. Levels are designed with multiple paths to take, ropes are used and integrated very well, platform spikes are used well, and platforming is very tight but fair. This game is challenging, but probably the easiest classicvania game. Not only because of the short length, but also because it is one of the most forgiving games. 1ups and pork chops are easier to find. While I’m happy that this game took out a lot of the instakill potential of its predecessor, it can feel a bit basic/easy at times. I know this seems contradictory, but the classicvania games aren’t hard just hard because they instakill you, but enemies also have tough patterns, platforms have tight, narrow windows to reach, and you usually have a combination of both of these at all times. When I played, levels and enemies didn’t feel to require tight, difficult windows to overcome. I understand where someone would enjoy this, I just personally was left wanting a little more challenge. This game only has a couple big flaws, but IMO these flaws impact the game in big ways. For one, this game is a little short. I understand it is a gameboy game, but Super Mario Land 2 (released a little over a year after) and Metroid 2: Return of Samus (released the same year) are both bigger games than CBR. The other big flaw of this game, for me, is Soleil. The difficulty increases a lot, almost instantly, with the bone dragon, your son, and Dracula. Which is fine, this is par for the course with classicvania. The bone dragon was fine, he was hard but fun to fight. I can’t comment on Dracula because I actually didn’t get to him. I actually didn’t beat this game. I spent hours on Soleil and stopped playing, which I also did for CTA. If I spent long enough on it I think I could’ve beat it, but I just didn’t want to. Soleils just wasn’t enjoyable, I can’t really describe it. For example, grinding against Dracula’s 3 forms in Dracula’s Curse was very fun for me, despite how damn hard he was. I just didn’t feel this way with Soleil, grinding against him just wasn’t fun. I can’t really put my finger on it. The bone dragon was hard, but grinding against him was fun. After an hour or so I just didn’t want to go on anymore against Soleil. Was this lazy? Maybe. But I grinded for longer at certain parts in Castlevania 1, 3, and 4, and really enjoyed those difficult parts. Hell, I enjoyed grinding in Simon’s Quest more than Soleil. This fight killed the game for me. Overall, this game is a great GBC game and a vast improvement over its predecessor. Despite the short length and Soleil fight, I still hold this game in good regard. I don’t think of it in the same light as 1, 3, 4, or bloodlines, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. I give this game a ⅗.