#7: Castlevania Legends
Not as legendary as its brethren
This review was originally posted on August 8, 2018.
Initial release: 1997
Platform: Game Boy, Super Game Boy
Developer: Konami
The last Castlevania game (of three) on the original Gameboy and one of the very last games on that venerable handheld, ever, is Castlevania Legends, and boy does it disappoint.
The Game Boy Castlevanias have something of a poor reputation, somewhat well-earned mind you, but Legends is particularly galling given that it came out in 1997 and therefore really should look and play better than its predecessors.
Your character, Sonia Belmont, moves slow and attacks slow. The classic subweapons exist only as collectibles; instead you get a new power for every boss you defeat, not all of them useful. The small screen makes dodging enemies difficult; unresponsive controls do not help.
The soundtrack is really bad — not as bad as Mega Man II on the Game Boy’s “my ears died and went to hell” soundtrack, but bad enough. The Game Boy is capable of fantastic music (The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is a good example) so this is inexcusable.
As usual with classic Castlevania, the plot is fairly non-existent, but it tries to present itself as an origin story for the Belmont clan’s battle with Dracula, with Sonia as the matriarch. Unfortunately it falls flat, especially in the face of Lament of Innocence 6 years later, which would supplant this game in terms of canon.
The most galling thing is that Sonia Belmont, the series’ first female character to be the sole protagonist (previous games had a few women as secondary playable characters) only starred in this game (she was due to star in the cancelled Dreamcast game.) She deserved better.
