Castlevania II: Simon's [Choose Your Own] Quest -- Jova (and "How to Quest")
2Okay, so... bear with me, because it's about to get a little CRAZY up in here for a bit, but... this is part of why it's taken me SO long to actually get around to covering Simon's Quest.
I was struck with a super weird notion even as far back as my first YouTube project, because I contemplated how "simple" the upload structure for a game like the original Castlevania for the NES turned out to be... relatively speaking, anyway.
Castlevania II, on the other hand... embodies a gameplay flow and structure that I'm even still struggling with to this day how I would eve begin to tackle, and not having to restrict videos to a hard limit of 10:59 in duration doesn't really make it too much easier, because you still want to have content laid out in a sensible and digestible fashion... an open(-ish) world totally throws that out the window and your funky flow gets funked right up!
So the part where the notion gets weird and I began sitting on it for years was when I compared the absolutely rudimentary, finite, and fairly limited openness of the world to another guilty pleasure from the past even as I knew they were pretty dumb but persisted in my enjoyment regardless... the "choose your own adventure" style novel.
But what if instead of that, you had a series of content pages with hyperlinks between them... still not super original, but what if THAT was done on YouTube videos? And what if those videos were actually coverage of a video game that most people wouldn't dare commit to actually playing themselves?! ...this is a really dumb idea, isn't it?
As such, this is the last video of the series that will be public... except all the REST of the videos are already uploaded and unlisted, and YOU get to "play" (generously described, anyway) the game without... actually PLAYING the game! ... ... ...
I don't even seriously suggest this as a legitimate alternative to playing Simon's Quest, but I do feel like it might be an acceptably sort-of-noncommittedly-interesting attempt to get fence-sitters and the morbidly curious to play along.
And, hey! ...if you don't like it and think you could do it better (you could, for sure), give Simon $5 and play it on your Nintendo Virtual Console of your choice!
Though I don't necessarily recommend it, you CAN play along and track stuff like Simon's HP, hearts, time taken, etc. and extrapolate your own performance based on the travels you see here and the paths you choose. (Feel free to override MY performance with stuff like "I totally wouldn't have gotten hit there!")
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So let's figure out the basics here, shall we? Life bar... delayed whip... fixed-arc jump... yep, this is classic-era Castlevania. Inventory? NPCs? Nonlinear? Time clock? Day cycle?! What is this nonsense?!
Simon's Quest is a hybrid platformer with light exploration and RPG elements. As such, it is a VERY different game from its predecessor.
A lot of the problems people will point to with this game is that it's VERY bad about explaining itself... NPCs vary from helpful to cryptic to misleading to poorly-translated to outright lying when you talk to them. And for a game revolving for the first time in the series around exploration, it tells you almost nothing about where you actually ARE... it vaguely names locations nearby sometimes, but never directly identifies major landmarks like towns and the like.
You gather the ever-confusing Hearts of Castlevania tradition, not to bolster your life, nor to power subweapons you somehow find for destroying candlesticks... this time, they're going to serve primarily as your currency. Wait, people WANT these things? You gain them from defeating enemies at a fixed amount IF they drop.
You also gain experience points at a rate of one fewer than the number of hearts received... with some caveats we'll get to later. Upon reaching a certain threshold, you will level up, get your life bar refilled (and occasionally extended!), AND you'll take less damage from enemy attacks. If you exceed a certain level, however, enemies in a given area will stop giving you experience points, though you'll still gain hearts.
Incidentally, if you die or get Game Over... you basically start where you died anyway...
Happy (Vampire) Hunting!
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Jova
Items:
"Buy a White Crystal?" (50)
"Want to buy Holy Water?" (50)
"Buy a Thorn Whip?" (100)
Villagers:
"First thing to do in this town is buy a White Crystal."
"A crooked trader is offering bum deals in this town."
"A flame is on top of the 6th tree in Denis Woods."
"Rumor has it, the ferry-man at Dead River loves garlic."
"13 clues will solve Dracula's Riddle."
"You have a friend in the town of Aldra. Go and see him."
"A magic potion will destroy the wall of evil."
"Clues to Dracula's Riddle are in the town of Veros."
Enemies (at night):
Zombie
-2 HP
-8 damage
-4 hearts
Sign:
"Turn right for the Jova Woods. Left for Belasco Marsh."
West: Jova Woods
https://youtu.be/12k-_Gz0kSs
East: Belasco Marsh
https://youtu.be/-vFsCQTLZmo