Castlevania 64 came out before the 3D Beat Em Up era arrived. It pulls no punches well almost.
STORY
The Sun is gone.
Dracula has his hand on the world now you must destroy his evil army of God's rejects. On the way you meet some faces that are quite intriguing. Some good some bad.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay in Castlevania 64 is very good but either hit or miss.
CV starts off quite boring .You just hit a bunch of dumb skeletons. You whip them and get powers. You can upgrade but it seems like those upgrades only go to the health bar.
You have 2 characters. Reinhardt and Malice
Reinhardt is a male who is powerful who has a whip and blade. He can run and slash.
Malice is a young female who carries magical powers who can jump lighter.
Once you come closer to the Castle, things become much better. You have an entire mansion and castle to explore. You fight various horror themed enemies .They are all so terrifying. Hellhounds that breath fire, vampires that infect you, hybrids, werewolves, Spider women, skeletons on motorcycles, evil bats. Many obstacles.,
The platforming is kind of frustrating as the camera but I'm a 90's kid so i can deal with it. The jumping is rather floaty and the characters are quite slow.
The combat in Castlevania 64 is by far the worst combat ever. All you do is run past things and attempt wacking at it. No strategy no no nothing. No lock on. It's very bad.
The castle itself has a rather vacant feel to it. There is just random enemies mostly. Nothing has a purpose. Everything is swept and undetailed.
You get several weapon pic ups but that's what they all are. Pick ups that take power. When you get an inferior pick up it's very frustating and you can't even change it.
You can buy things from Satan which is a nice addition.
Yet some how I love this game. Because their are so many puzzles and it doesn't bore me one bit.
GRAPHICS
The graphics of Castlevania 64 are quite bad to say the least but they do have an atmosphere and I can see why the Nintendo lags so much. There are a lot of vast locations and real time weather and lighting effects.
The art style is vaguely Anime which I like but you wouldn't know that because Castlevania has blurry as hell textures. The characters and enemies are generally extremely blocky. The animation is stiff as a corpse.
MUSIC
It may appear at first that Castlevania has no music what so ever which is disappointing because the music in beggining stages are usually funky and spooky at the same time. This however takes the atmospheric route.
But when you get to the mansion and things change. The music becomes very good and atmospheric at times even scary.
OVERALL
CV 64 is a good game. Not the best in the series but I prefer it, I just can't stand SOTN fanboys.