MadCap's Game Reviews - "Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge"

Another Game Boy port? Oh, c'mon! Before you start panicking, this isn't the same Castlevania II as Castlevania II, but I can see where you might think that.

Castlevania II is...well, I was gonna say much better, but...it's not. I mean, it is...but...well, you'll see.
Okay, I'm being unfair. Again, we have a Game Boy release much as we did with Castlevania The Adventure last week, although this is not just a Game Boy release but also a sequel to that game. So, perhaps Konami took their time more with this and developed a better game?

...sort of.

I mean, it's still not good.

Fifteen years after the previous game, Christopher Belmont is back in Transylvania with his son Soleil, who had just come of age. Soleil was to become the new Vampire Killer in the family, however Dracula decided to fudge things up and capture him, assuming human form once again. He then conjures not one but four castles that Christopher must navigate in order to rescue his son and defeat Dracula once and for all...again.

That's basically it, really. It's still a Game Boy release, and only a year later, so not that much has changed besides the addition of some new art assets. It certainly plays more like a traditional Castlevania game than the first one did. Many of the bugs had been worked out, and this one grants us an ability that I'm sure someone will correct me for saying hasn't happened in any other Castlevania game: the ability to hit things with your whip while climbing a rope.

Between that and the return of the fireball shooting whip (aka the only good thing about Castlevania The Adventure), this game is improved 110% over it's predecessor.

That said, there are still some control issues. Being that this is a Game Boy game, the scope is a little less limited over where it would be with a joystick, since we only have the D-Pad to work with. Once you adjust to that sort of logic, you're fine, but it does take a while for some of the younger gamers, I am sure.

"In Latin, Jehovah begins with an I..."

That's really all there is to say on the matter. It's a...passable Castlevania game. It's inclusion in the Anniversary Collection kind of mystifies me, as it does with The Adventure due to pretty much every other game on the list of available games - pretty much all of which are better (yes, even Simon's Quest). It's not bad, there are just far better versions of what you get here...and they're just a scroll on the menu away.

Next time, we're jumping ahead quite a bit in the timeline, to the turn of the 20th century. Bram Stoker's famous novel gets railroaded into canon...and we'll see the SNES come to life once again as we get into Castlevania Bloodlines.

Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge is originally made by Konami for Game Boy. It is now available on a variety of platforms including the PS4 and Xbox One.

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