Castlevania III - Stage 5A

The reason I'm on a Castlevania kick is because there were good indications that the next one credit challenge would be Super Castlevania IV. I have a slightly obsessive thing I do where before I play a game that is a sequel in some series, I like to play all the games that have preceded it. More specifically, I like to have beaten all the games that precede it.

That won't happen with Castlevania III. This game seriously kicks my ass.

I guess I'm just thinking that because I'm coming from Castlevania II where the gameplay portion is pretty easy. So going back to a Castlevania as difficult as the first one takes some getting used to. It also doesn't help that my first time through, I picked up Sypha as my companion and he provides none of the platforming help that Grant or Alucard do.

What finally got me to give up was the section in stage 5A where you are climbing the tower and it starts moving downward by itself. This means you have to frantically climb to the top before the screen scrolls past you and you fall to your doom. This is a fine gameplay device and I would enjoy it if it weren't for the fact that I get to one point and there seem to be no platforms I can reach. All of the platforms are too high to jump to and there are no stairs. I looked up some FAQs and they mention nothing specifically about this, so I assume I must be missing something, so after about six tries I gave up. I then tried to start the game over and get Grant, but I wasn't into it.

Most of the internet's Castlevania fans seem to believe that III is an amazing game, but I'm just not feeling it. It is probably due to my frustration in that one point. It certianly isn't the difficulty, because I really enjoyed the first Castlevania despite its difficulty. I think the fact that you can acquire another character who has different abilities and there are different paths to get through the game are neat, but... it just isn't seeming quite as good.

The music definitely seems to be a step down from the first two games, which is a bummer.

Maybe I'll grow to like it, but I'm moving on to Super Castlevania IV