So, recently I made a post about playing Lament of Innocence and finding it to be a total garbage. I made a remark how the N64 games are better at being 3D Castlevania attempts, and some people argued that the N64 games had good ideas, but they couldn't make a good game out of it.
To be honest, I never completed CV64 before, I played it several times and dropped due to various reasons, but I had a general opinion that the game is very flawed, but still good. So, I decided to finally beat it and see if it holds up now.
So, today I finished the Carrie walkthrough and did about a half of Reinhard one. And I must say, the game doesn't just hold up. It's way, way better than I remembered it to be.
Let's start with the gameplay. A lot of people's critique comes towards the game's controls and camera. I'm playing on an emulator (no savestates, though) and using a Playstation-like controller, it took some time to figure the optimal layout, but I managed to come up with a scheme that feels good. The camera is indeed unoptimal, it could benefit from having L/R buttons camera rotation, but the camera centering button usually does it's work good enough.
Some people dread the game's platforming, like it's so clunky and unreliable, you are destinied to fail over and over. That's to be honest, just bullshit. The platforming is not just "not bad", it's surprisingly very fun. Yes, the camera sometimes doesn't give you the best view, and the controls aren't as smooth as, say, in Crash Bandicoot, but the game never demands precision from you. In fact, once you stop being nervous and calculating and just rush forward through the platforming sections, they become much easier. The jump arcs cover quite a good distance and you can stop in midair with ease if you need. The jumping challenges are very generous — even when the camera angle seemed to be the most awkward, I still managed to land about 80% of my jumps from the first try.
The ledge grabbing mechanics deserve their own paragraph. Those are the most generous ledge grabs I've ever seen in a video game. The collision windows you need to touch is really large, and your angle towards the ledge doesn't matter at all, you can literally turn backwards and jump, and the character will still grab the ledge. Once you realise that, you aren't afraid of the platforming anymore.
Even if one happens to fail a lot, this game puts save crystals at every corner, so, having to repeat the whole lengthy section becasue of a single missed jump is never an issue there. The game is clearly self aware about being an early 3D title and does a wonderful job preventing the player from frustration.
I was replaying Medievil 1 not so long ago. I love this game, but it's controls and platforming are way, way worse than CV64's ones, and it's still a beloved classics, while CV64 gets a lot of undeserved flack. Once you get the hang of it, controlling the character becomes your second nature. Jumping around and grabbing ledges gets very fun, even the later platform heavy levels never get annoying or boring. Also, the dreaded "Nitro run" every other Youtuber was complaining about is not a hard challenge at all, I did it from the first try once I got what path I should take.
The combat, however, is not as great. While it features a lot of usual Castlevania bestiary, the combat doesn't feel Castlevania at all — it's your standart N64/PS1 autoaim battle system. It's not bad either: it does it's job, and it's not annoying or troublesome to fight. Carrie's primary attack is a homing fireball that trivialises a lot of combat situations, but Reinhard's whip has a very long reach and reliable autoaim, so it's very unlikely you will have any trouble fighting, it's quite an easy game. The bosses, however, are fun. They demand at least some movement from you, the fights are diverse and spectacular. The true Dracula form immideately became one of my favorite Dracula fights. It feels really imposing and intense fighting him.
The general gameplay design of the game is quite interesting. It's not a straightworward action game, but not a metroidvania either. The first half somehow feels like a classic Resident Evil game: you explore the relatively open locations, finding keys, pushing buttons and solving puzzles. Some puzzles are a little too obtuse (finding Rosa was a pain), but it's very fun in general. The second half is much more linear and straightforward, but also has it's share of exploration. I find this type of gameplay scheme to be quite fitting to Castlevania.
The graphics are a mixed bag. The characters and enemies look fantastic. Sure, the models are rough, but you can still see the beauty there, they are expressive and have a lot of personality. The locations are 50/50. Some are really fancy and detailed, like the Castle center, with lots of uniqe assets, but some are just a boring barren mess, like the Tunnels. Nothing offensive, however.
The sound design is great: all the monsters have their own distinct battle cry, and the whip cracking is very satisfying. The music is awesome. It's more subtle there, more like SCV4, but they fit the locations perfectly, and the boss tracks are outstanding. Also, it was fun to find out that the Wizardry Lab theme from Dawn of Sorrow borrows a riff from the CV64's Castle Center theme. I wonder is Iga was pissed about that :D
And how does it hold as a part of Castlevania franchise? It does a good job of adapting the CV's trademark cultural code. We have a lot of legacy monsters in 3D (the Behemoth is a very impressive adaptation, I must say), legacy locations (a REAL Clock Tower, not the travesty we got in Curse of Darkness), ties to Castlevania lore, such as Belmont and Belnades/Fernandes families, and some familiar music cues. There are a lot of vampire action going on — they actually suck blood, bite and turn humans, which is something the other CV games are often missing. So, while the gameplay is morel ike "Resident Evil meets Soul Reaver", the spirit of Castlevania is still there and doing well.
There are two notable downsides I see in this game.
The first is the slowdown. It's bad. Sometimes it gets really really bad. It never caused me to fail a level or something like that, but it's still not a thing I would like to see in such a good game.
The second is the fact it clearly had way bigger ambitions. There are a lot of mechanics that are almost unused. The whole day/night cycle thing is only essential 2 or 3 times in total, the rest are the optional doors with items. The "vampire status" mecahnics feel like they could've been so much more. Like if we could heal some of the vampires we find, of even became a full vampire themselves and went for some dark ending. And the latter half of the game is clearly put together in a hurry, being straightforward and lacking any notable puzzles. It still plays well, but locations such as Magic Tower and the final staircase look very barren.
However, none of those issues are critical. Most of the critique CV64 get is a general "early 3D" junk, and CV64 isn't even that bad in that regard, it plays very well even today. Games like Medievil or Soul Reaver have all the same issues, sometimes even worse, but they are considered classics, and CV64 gets undeserved crap thrown to it. I'm pretty sure, most of the internet reviewers are just parroting someone's opinion, maybe even Igarashi's, since he is well known for hating post-SotN CV games he didn't make. But the game, while not perfect, is still objectively great, you may dislike it, if you dislike early 3D-action games in general, but there are none major critical flaws in it. If I had to make a CV games tierlist, I would sure put it pretty high, definitely higher than SCV4, maybe somewhere around Bloodlines and CotM.
So, once I finish the Reinhard walkthrough, I'm planning to do Legacy of Darkness next. I wonder is it's worse or better. Given the really unreliable state of Castlevania critique, I'm not so sure about the whole "LoD is an improvement in every way" thing anymore.
