Castlevania - The Adventure Rebirth For Wii

Over the years i've been a massive Castlevania fan, i've seldom ever attempted the original Gameboy titles. My vague memory of attempting the first, titled Castlevania - The Adventure was a sour one. Terrible graphics, reasonable if not great music and perhaps one of the most dissapointing side scrolling platformers for the Gameboy. It was slow, unresponsive, you name it - it was all wrong with it.

So years later, Konami announce a Castlevania game for Wii Ware, built from the ground up. Everyone assumed it would be yet another retelling of the original Castlevania (itself retold twice), but many seemed to not notice the Adventure subtitle. (Neither did I originally, truth be told). Excitedly I saw this as my first real oppertunity to take this title by the reigns and experience it.

However, The Adventure Rebirth isn't just a straight port with upgraded graphics, it's an entirely renewed approach to the title; though the basic story is the same, it's extended and been completely revamped. It is to the original 'The Adventure' as Super Castlevania IV was to the original Castlevania. It's the same story but told completely differently.

Nonetheless, it is an exceptional title. The first real attempt at a classic style Castlevania since Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP, but still true to the 2D roots. You play as Christopher Belmont some 100 years before Simon's own adventure. The levels to be fair are a typical Castlevania affair, you start outside the grounds and then fight your way through Castlevania itself, through a chapel and up to Dracula's tower (faithfully recreated here as everyone will remember it from Symphony of the Night).

Most of the bosses people will recognise too, from the first boss of the game being the large bat, to a stone golem, and there's much here recycled from the previous titles but as far as I'm aware have nearly all been redrawn for this title, it all looks pretty good truth be told, and a good art style and clear graphics hide the sub HD resolution well.

The music however is of a mixed bag, it all sounds great but dissapointing to some as it's all of midi quality - sounding exactly like you'd expect if it were an old Megadrive or SNES game. It's perfectly acceptable however, simply because in a typical Castlevania affair it's all really really good, many classic tracks from the series return though long time fans will be crushed to learn the classic track from the original Gameboy title 'Battle of the Holy' is strangely absent. A small oversight in an otherwise very good game soundwise.

Make no mistake though, the game truly shines in its gameplay. It's fairly fast, wonderfully responsive and very easy to pick up and play. Christopher is a joy to control, and the classic Castlevania whip has seldom been easier to use than it has here. Starting off with the leather whip as per the classic titles doesn't hamper you as the game is very forthcoming with upgrades straight away. There are generous (but not too generous!) checkpoints through the levels should you die and in proper Dracula X tradition, seperate pathways exist through many of the levels, giving much in the way for replayability. The challenge is variable; if you breeze through the classic style Castlevania's you'll probably find this to be one of the easiest, but as much as I enjoy them I generally suck at them so this was a welcome challenge at times. Dracula himself now has 3 forms with a very cool and wholly different final form that does well to differentiate itself from the Dracula X battle. The final form however many will find incredibly hard, which is refreshing given how easy the Metroidvania's have become over the years, (remember how hard Circle of the Moon was compared to say Order of Ecclesia?!).

All in all it's a nice little package, for 1000 points it's perhaps slighly overpriced as the experience is a brief one (most people will clock this in 40 minutes to an hour) and once you've been through all the paths of all the levels you've seen all there is to see, but that said it's one of the better experiences one can aquire from the Wii Ware section. It's also worth pointing out that there is no save option at all on this title, nor can you suspend the game and come back to it another time, you have to complete it all in one sitting or have to start from scratch. There is a hidden level select by which you can start from levels you've already gotten too, but there isn't actually a way of pausing the game to come back later. Again, another small oversight but then the length of the game lends itself to single sittings anyway.

A final complaint but a small one, is that it would of been nice to have perhaps included the original version emulated with this package, that way people would be able to compare the two and really see how far the title has come. But this is clear oversight from Nintendo who still haven't included the Gameboy in the Virtual Console yet. A real shame.

One also has to wonder whether Konami are somewhat testing the water with this game. The Gameboy in its day was home to some canonical sequels of many of the core Nintendo franchises, including Metroid 2 and The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening, as well as the sequel to this title, 'Belmont's Revenge'. I can't help but wonder whether we'll get similar 'Rebirth' titles.

Source:http://www.gameshard.net