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Super Castlevania IV Game Review

Super Castlevania IV is a 1991 platform video game developed and published by Konami for the SNES. It is a flawed, but still rather strong fourth installment in this franchise.

The original trilogy for the NES is renowned except for the second entry, so it is expected that the first SNES entry would be respected almost as much. The game received great reviews and I myself find it very good, but I have my issues with it and I will single them out in a moment, but now let’s just say that the plot is basically a repeat of the first game’s storyline. Other than that, though, this isn’t really a remake as some critics called it as everything else, especially the gameplay was quite different.

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Simon is back and he looks and acts cool here. Getting to see him go after Dracula again was fun, but I would have preferred an original story instead of a retelling. One of the best changes introduced for this game was the addition of the food items that restore your health. They are fairly frequent and very well positioned within the levels, but the fact that the final bosses even offer them in-between their forms was phenomenal. It was a great example of a gameplay mechanic done just right.

Other elements that were the staples of the franchise are back, the weapons being the most preserved element of the bunch. However, the secondary weapons that you get here are usually not all that amazing nor necessary for the bosses that can be defeated with the regular whip. This isn’t a huge problem, but still its predecessors did this aspect better.

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A bigger issue has to be the versatility of the whip’s directions as this entry makes you basically too powerful. You have the ability to slash your whip in eight different directions, thus making it really unfair for the enemies that are above you or in diagonal positions. This is the one change that made the game too easy in my opinion.

This game has eleven stages that are too linear, but fun throughout. Well, the first two or three stages were way too easy and frankly boring, but eventually the game became much harder to the point where the last couple of stages were quite difficult to get through. The problem of the uneven difficulty remains here, but at least the game did not stay easy all the way. The enemies are the same as they were in the previous entries while the levels are very well designed with the highlight being that fourth stage where everything around you spins, including the platforms you are standing on. That was an ingeniously crafted stage. The sixth stage was also quite cool and memorable.

The bosses are a total mixed bag. Again, their difficulty level varied way too much. The first three or four bosses were ridiculously easy to beat, making me question whether I was playing a classic Castlevania game at all at that point. Eventually however, the bosses became significantly better and more memorable.

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Slogra was superbly designed and overall solidly realized in its attack moves while that Ghost Dancer was both very difficult and highly original in movements and style of attack. That entire level was fascinating and quite creepy. But the best bosses are the last two. The game throws both Death and Dracula at you in the final stretch and it was actually not as extremely difficult as I had feared. The health being given in-between was essential in making the battle more enjoyable. These two are superbly realized in look and patterns. This was by far the most fun part of the game.

Graphically speaking, Super Castlevania IV is rather excellent. A definite and obvious improvement over its predecessors, the color palette here is more varied while the overall castle and its inhabitants looked splendid. The backgrounds are particularly arresting here while all of the bosses were superbly designed. The score was once again terrific and quite a lot of atmospheric fun while the level design was spot-on as was the game’s length. I did miss the third game’s open-world elements, but still this more straightforward approach was well used.

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