Somehow, this masterpiece has been forgotten by most Castlevania critics.
Let me tell you, it did not disappoint.
It has one of the worst plots of all the castlevania games. It's something like, dracula's castle isn't in Transylvania anymore, now it's in an ECLIPSE, and it's only a matter of time before your childhood friend Mina dies of some kind of dracula-disease (let's just say eclipse-induced cancer) and some guy is trying to inherit dracula's powers, and oh by the way you haven't beaten the game COMPLETELY until you equip the right souls to access the chaos realm, but it's all spoilers after that so I'm done. Got that? Well, it doesn't matter whether you do or not because the plot is totally meaningless til the end (the TRUE end).
What makes it a good game is that this game does NOT wimp out on violence. If you die, you fly backwards in slow motion, spurting impossible amounts of blood into the air. Instead of plain old big skeletons, the skellies in this game are so big they have no lower half. According to the bestiary the top was too heavy for the legs. Wow. In a lot of copies of the game, there's also nudity. And I don't mean oh-come-here-baby nudity. I mean this she-devil probably a hundred years old, with snakes for hair, and four arms, and a loincloth lined with skulls. Oh yeah, and she's greenish-brown. And she has six boobs. Again, wow. And I'm not kidding-the Curly soul transforms you into just that and starts hurtling towards your enemies. WHAM! 432 damage!
If it were just the fact that this game doesn't wimp out on violence and nudity, it would be pretty good. But they don't stop there- They implement a whole new system called the Soul system where every enemy in the game has a soul-all two hundred something of them- that sometimes gets sucked into you when you kill it. Each monster has a different soul, and therefore a different effect. Fr'instance, you know those damn bats that always kill you in the early castlevania games? Well, their soul is basically a little circle that does damage to enemies that touch it. There are also passive and special souls-special souls aren't that special, they're usually just a buff of some sort- and grey souls, which give you new abilities. Yeah, you know the DSS card system in COTM? Well, it's like that only on a colossal scale.
But wait! There's even more!!!! Now you finally get a shop-a REAL shop, not the crappy one from Simon's Quest-where you can buy potions, maps, armor, and weapons. Yes, weapons. Forget the whip-now you can kill skeletons with around 70 different weapons. That may not seem like much, but there's a weird thrill in getting a new weapon. 'Oh I wonder what this one does. Sweet, 12-foot sword.' That's actually in the game by the way. Twelve feet, jesus.
And the Bosses are totally new for a Castlevania game. The earlier ones show up again when you get strong enough, but there's also a Giant, a big floating ball of zombies, a witch with no head that collects heads, the GRIM REAPER (again) and a Belmont. Yes, you fight a Belmont. I can't remember his name, but he's really tough (duh.).
Overall, I would say that this is one of THE games to own on the GBA, along with Golden Sun 1 and 2, Fire Emblem, Metal Slug Advance, and all those other wonders. There's only one problem huge gaping problem with it: I can't find anything to complain about.
By the way, if, you're still curious about how this game ruined my life, remember that I was six when I played it, and reread paragraphs three and four. Should I really have played this game at that age? O.O