Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Amazing"

Story: Pretty average for a Castlevania. It all comes down to killing Dracula and destroying castle. Nothing new is brought to the table here. Rating: 7/10

Gameplay: The gameplay is absolutely amazing. Now you can obtain items and use them unlike in previous games! You also can get armor to improve your stats (another new concept in CV), or you can obtain weapons and create all sorts of combination like never before! The best thing however, is that you can go ANYWHERE you want in the castle. The gameplay is almost never boring. There are lots puzzles to solve. And the combat system in the game is actually fun compared to many other games. Rating: 10/10

Visuals: Beautiful. The the background in this game has a very deep, melancholic feeling to it that sends a shiver up your spine. Alucard's sprite is really well animated and awesome. Heck, all of the character's sprites have great animations. The enemies and bosses are very detailed. So detailed that one of the bosses actually gave me nightmares after playing this game! Some of the visuals in this game are quite rushed though. Rating: 9/10

Sound: The sound effects are average, nothing too extreme. The voice acting is bad that's it's actually funny. But the music is really awesome, and it's in very high quality!

Replay value: You will have lots of fun playing through the game as another character and finding secrets. You can also play hard mode and obtain 100% in everything, like collecting all the items. (A lot more fun than it sounds.) Besides that, there isn't much to do, sadly. Rating: 8/10

Overall: I definitely recommend this game. Although many hardcore gamers (including me) may find this game too easy, that shouldn't keep anyone from playing it at least once!