Beat following a walkthrough since I had no idea what to do in the beginning. I did not like this game. Like the 1st game (rom site didn't have the 2nd game so I have not played it),this game was not anywhere near as epic as the box art, had that stupid repeat jumping from holding the button too long, and the weird combat system of holding the other button and using the D pad to swing in each direction. Unlike the 1st, this was open world with 3 different forms and money to be spent on health. The concept was interesting but the actual game was not, playing more like a puzzle adventure with isolated platforming and combat arenas. The open world itself was of very little threat with zero instant death platforming and minimal enemies that would not even attack the correct form, and even when they did attack they were easily avoided. Only the birds at the very top of the world were aggressive enough to be any kind of threat. The world layout was mostly vertical and was ridiculous. You started in the town which was only a few screens wide, yet the houses were built on top of each other with stilts going up and up. Above that somehow was a stone castle that again went up and up. Then on top of that were multiple weird looking towers that felt out of place with the medieval art style from below. I kinda got the impression they were created by magic, or maybe made of the colored stones making up the different layers of underground areas that again go down and down. The structure of the gameplay was very linear: find room with statue, beat mini boss, go to guild, take difficult platforming test that culminated in a simple pattern boss, get new ability that allows access to next statue. Repeat 6 times, then get the 4 jewels from the 3 princesses and hydra boss, then final boss and done. Along the way were plenty of side areas with optional treasure. 6 of these treasures were optional special items that took up your limited 4 slot inventory. The statues and jewels also took up inventory space so it was very possible to soft lock yourself into being unable to progress. This almost happened to me. I had 2 treasures, 1 jewel and the gold thief statue, yet in order to access the gold thief guild I needed the silver knight. To get silver knight I needed that statue, but my inventory was full. I was able to fix it by looking up where to turn in the treasures. I almost got stuck again at the end because I had 2 treasures that had to be turned in behind a waterfall that required the silver wizard ability to pass. Yet the gold wizard lost that ability for some god awful lack of proper game design reason. So I went to the end where there were 4 gem shaped slots thinking I could put them in 1 at a time, freeing up space to pick up the other 2. It was not working until I stood in the middle mashing buttons and thus was able to beat the game. Final boss was tough because his shots were impossible to dodge. The walkthrough said to just tank the hits and hope to win. I played around with the forms to see if something worked. Levitating up to his height as the wizard did not help, despite that being an awesome ability for a platformer. The thief could outrun the shots but there was not enough time to keep up switching back and forth to both avoid damage and cause it. Maybe with practice and perfect timing it would work. I ended up using the walkthrough strat and noticed that sometimes I did not get hit. Perhaps the sword blocked the shots. In phase 2 the sword did destroy the shots, and this phase was much easier.

Castlevania 3 this game was not. The 3 forms were incredibly under utilized. The bronze wizard aimed fireballs were awesome but only used for 1 "puzzle" then lost after upgrading to silver. This game had very little depth, boring gameplay and some serious design flaws.

4.8/10

Would have been lower if I actually soft locked