Castlevania is probably one of the most cherished franchises ever made. Basically after starting its life on the NES in 1987, it became a classic which was somewhat notorious for difficulty and buggering control issues. After Dracula had been beaten too many times by a long haired, leather wearing man with a whip (or his buddies) it kept going on and on until today animé characters are whipping the shit out of Dracula in the current CV games.

For some reason, Castlevania fans seem to have some sort of general consensus that CV on N64 is unborn bastard child that spawned somewhere in dark corners of the world. After borrowing a N64 from a guy I know and a few games with it - and after finishing the game twice - I found it quite a pleasant surprise and decent. 'Tis blasphemy!

I swear she was 16

After popping the cartridge in and waiting several eternities to get past all the logos and Transylvania tourist ads, I was finally in the main menu and I found myself hypnotized. The game probably has the best menu music I have ever heard in a game - and it's all by a solo violin. It took me more effort to go beyond that screen than to fiddle with exploding items later in the game.

The game's back-story is quite lame: Dracula has awakened in 1852, planning to enslave all the world and drink all the virgin blood (or maybe just shag them, who knows) of the ladies and so on. The main characters - Reinhardt and Carrie - sense his return and plan to stop him before it's too late. Reinhardt is a heir to the Belmont family (which whipped Drac's arse in the original games) while Carrie is a girl with magical powers who looks like she's at least 16. After trying to find some info regarding the manual I found out that she is actually 12. The irony is quite baffling, considering what sort of monsters and enemies you see through the game. You also meet several other character throughout the game that don't want you dead the nanosecond you see them.

Basically the game is like 3D action adventure RPG without any RPG elements - move around, kill enemies, find objects and break them, find roasted chicken, find useful items, solve puzzles, beat bosses, repeat - and for some reason I like to call it Residentvania. Probably because it involves some weird dialogue, puzzles and entire gameplay area that looks like someone was fancying the original Resident Evil a bit too much. It does also have two different endings for both characters, depending on certain factors.

Party hard, Transylvania

After getting started, you'll find yourself in a forest in the middle of the night with thunder clapping and striking down few trees while you're at it. Visually the game looks actually nice. It's no Crysis by any means but I find it unfair to compare something that came out a decade ago to something that's still quite new, what do you expect?

After you get past the first few minutes of actual gameplay you'll start encountering enemies, mini bosses, enemies, real bosses and it basically loops as you keep going with different pacing, depending on each area. You'll find all sorts of enemies you would expect a horror themed action game to have: skeletons, giant skeletons, bats, werewolves, vampires, death himself, zombie dragons, skeletons riding motorcycles, Frankenstein monsters with chainsaws, lizardmen who looks like rejected TMNT characters and so on. Actually the last three enemies mentioned are for real. I am not sure should I call it anachronism, a joke, pure genius design or what but I sure laughed my ass off the first time I saw skeletons riding motorcycles like Hell's Angels. Even more so when at one point of the game it was like this: A small schoolgirl is running away from two hell-hounds which were made out of stone and a Frankenstein monster wielding a chainsaw... all that in confusing garden maze. What can I say? It just begs for an inappropriate joke.

Actually I could just say she's quite hot stuff especially once you're carrying an object that blows up the very first moment you jump or take a hit - and at the same time you're being harassed by vampires.

Vampire of the Opera

Talking about the characters, Reinhardt uses a whip as his main weapon and carries a quite long dagger as his secondary weapon, while Carrie uses magic projectiles as her main weapon and I am not sure of her secondary weapon, but it is melee all right. She is also a bit faster while running, easier to play but being weaker than Reinhardt in terms of attack power and possibly health as well; don't take the last one for granted, but it seems to be so. They do have also a bit different plots, so they are not entirely an identical play through as well. Other weapons or usable items you can find for them are power-ups (increases damage?) and special items: throwing dagger, throwing axe, holy water or sort of a cross. They all cost red jewels to use as their ammunition. The dagger and axe are both quite weak and lame, holy water is area denial Super Soaker which is quite efficient here and there while the cross is an apparently throwable version of Lancea Longini based on how well it can kill basic enemies. All of them do have their uses though.

As for puzzles and some other gameplay related things, they are quite neat and clever most of the time while being sometimes way too obvious. I was stuck in one part for some time just because I decided to ignore the obvious, and after many dead ends and running in circles, I went to call Captain Obvious for help and then I saw the light. To my surprise as well, the game is a bit confusing to navigate with and sometimes resembles a maze and begs for a map and you're constantly asking where the fuck you are going. For some unknown reason, I found this highly amusing AND worst of all - a positive challenge. Sometimes you need to backtrack quite large areas after solving a puzzle to actually use some keys or objects you received. You can also buy some items from a demon who claims that even in hell you need gold these days. I guess Adam Smith found his true successor.

One quite interesting gameplay mechanic involved is the time of day: the clock moves on independently and in some places you might need it to be night before certain door can be opened or scene triggered, mostly they are quite obvious clues hinted by objects or character dialogue. Another one I am not 100% positive due to love-hate navigation is that the game does seem to have some non-linear paths as well, but that might be just my imagination.

The basic controls are quite... weird, the movement is quite responsive and depending how much you move the analogue stick you can walk, jog gently or run while everything else can be mildly stiff - even though you can jump backwards or sideways, you can slide given you run a bit first and getting used to using attack 1 and attack 2 in combo (for Reinhardt mainly) might be initially problematic. Targeting of enemies is mostly automatic and especially with Carrie you can just load a projectile while running away as it's homing missile that can pierce through multiple targets, given you charge the attack long enough. However, hanging on the ledges requires you to hold the jump button down in order to do so. While I found it initially weird, it's going to save your life in case if you're walking close to a pool of water made out of xenomorph blood and you happen to fall off if you just manage to press and hold the jump button long enough. The controls however while hanging on a ledge or so are bit confusing, but once you realize you need to press up in the analogue every time you want to climb up it becomes quite clear.

Symphony of the sane cameramen?

Even though you meet all sorts of enemies - some of them with nasty attacks like poison or making you turn into a vampire - your worst nightmare is probably the camera. I used to say more or less jokes about camera, I complained about it in DMC3, I complained about it in RotK, but they all are pale in comparison to this game. With one quite paradoxical exception: once you figure out you can actually change the camera mode manually between three modes, it actually becomes somewhat doable - presuming you don't go batshit bonkers with every platforming part of the game or while running around in general. Honestly, as much as the default camera setting is poor, the action view mode is actually quite decent.

While the audio part of the game is reasonable, the voice acting varies between quite good to almost Resident Evil-alike choppyness. On the other hand, the musics are quite interesting. While they are not as memorable as in some other Castlevania games, they are quite well made ambient pieces and somehow reminded me of the Final Fantasy games for some reason. The game also has one of the better explosion sounds I've heard in ages - which is quite random. Ultimately when it comes to commenting about the game, inappropriate jokes and all sorts of weirdness pops up but I can't say it's bad. I am going against the general consensus and thus risking a potential crusade but Castlevania on N64 is quite a decent action adventure game - and the consensus can go fuck itself. Even with all the flaws such as cameraman being high on crack (until switching modes), some stiffness on the controls, a somewhat lame plot, story, enemies etc it's quite good game. Even the transition from 2D to 3D works out quite well.

However, there is one thing to truly complain about the game: the difficulty. Playing as Carrie the game is mostly easy as stealing candy from a baby, while playing as Reinhardt it can vary from somewhat easy to being bit redundant considering all the enemy abilities... but that's a good thing in weird way. Playing a game that poses a challenge that resembles the original Castlevania games was quite refreshing, but at least here you don't gravitate to the nearest pit everytime an enemy hits you.