Castlevania 64 / Legacy of Darkness (Nintendo 64, 1999)

I almost quit in the first five minutes. Ever since I started this series-long Castlevania playthrough I’ve been dreading the N64 games, which are saddled with a rock-bottom reputation.

But I want to be comprehensive so I figured I should at least try them. The first experience was rough, with a wildly misbehaving camera, floaty combat, ugly graphics, and poor animation. Hello nausea. But I persevered until, perhaps with Stockholm Syndrome setting in, the faintest glimmers of what might be recognized as ‘fun’ appeared.

Don’t get me wrong, Castlevania on the N64 is bad. But at least it’s not as unplayably bad as those first impressions indicate. A couple of things up top first, while I played a little Castlevania (aka the confusing official title of Castlevania 64) I primarily played Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness.

Released in March and December of 1999, Legacy of Darkness is essentially a director’s cut. It contains almost all the content of the original, tweaks to camera/combat, and two new characters. Strictly speaking I should have finished Castlevania 64 and then moved on to Legacy of Darkness but dammit, I’m only human.

I ended up finishing Legacy of Darkness with two of its four characters and dabbled with the remaining two as – and I hope you can forgive me – the idea of playing through this not-particularly-fun game four times is vaguely hellish.

So, why’s it so bad? The obvious answer is that the game suffers from ‘yer typical teething problems when a 2D franchise first goes 3D. With Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night this series had polished its 2D platforming to a mirror sheen, learning lessons from each prior game and adding some fun twists.

Is this a… Resident Evil homage?

But with a 3D game the design document started from scratch and Konami’s Kobe team (which would be dissolved in 2002) just doesn’t seem to have been up to the challenge.

The main culprit is the camera, which almost always does the opposite of what you want it to. When you run down a corridor it’ll spin round so you can’t see what’s coming, or if you’re lining up a tricky jump it’ll spin in mid-air and throw you to the floor. The only reason the game is playable at all is that you can hold R to centre the camera behind you – I spent 90% of the game with R jammed down.

Combat is similarly clumsy, though the new Legacy of Darkness character Cornell’s attacks are long-range lock-on projectiles that feel like an attempt to mitigate this. On top of all that the platforming physics are very wonky. Jump awkwardly and you can be propelled backwards at high speed to an instant death.

Accepted wisdom might be that these are simply symptoms of early 3D game design. I don’t buy it: this game came out in 1999, not 1994.

By the time this hit shelves we’d seen Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Quake, and GoldenEye 007. You could argue that a 1999 game would have been in development throughout 1997 and 1998 and been unable to learn the lessons from these early 3D masterpieces, but Super Mario 64 had come out three years earlier. C’mon…

All the above is compounded by muddy graphics, sparse maps, uninspiring character/enemy models, and a frame rate that’s poor even by N64 standards. I don’t want to twist the knife, but this was developed concurrently with Metal Gear Solid and Kojima’s game graphically obliterates this on less capable hardware.

The only real mitigation for Konami Kobe is that it’s not like other developers were ready to nail 3D Castlevania either. The demo for the unreleased Dreamcast game Castlevania: Resurrection is similarly janky, and while I haven’t yet played PS2 games Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness they’re not exactly considered classics.

The nicest thing I can say is that this game turning out so crappy proved that 3D wasn’t always better than 2D. Back in the late 90s there was a general feeling that the medium was transcending sprite-based 2D games and long-running series would either have to adapt or die. Castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness disproves that. Sometimes the old ways really are best.

Despite all that, I’m glad I played it. I’m equally glad I’ll never have to again.

Onto Circle of the Moon!