Castlevania II: Simon's Quest / YMMV

Anti-Climax Boss:
- Compared to practically every other game in the series where he exemplifies the title of That One Boss more often than not, Death himself is significantly easier here than some of the easiest bosses of other games. Given that he's your first boss you face as well, and you won't face him til the third mansion, he doesn't live up to the menacing title he had as the hardest boss from the previous game as here, he only slowly floats down to touch you and occasionally throws easily destroyed sickles straight at you instead of summoning them from hard to counter angles like usual. Simon's previous battle with him must have left him a little crippled.
- Dracula. As noted under Weaksauce Weakness, there are at least three different ways to fight him that make it impossible to lose life against him. This incarnation is arguably the easiest boss in the entire franchise.
Awesome Music: Bloody Tears, in its first appearance. Dwelling of Doom, the mansion theme, is also really catchy, as is Monster Dance, the night theme. The town theme, The Silence of Daylight is also a standout.
Condemned by History: At its release, Castlevania II got decent reviews and was praised as a nice evolution of the series' formula. Nowadays, it's one of the most maligned entries in the franchise to date and has become infamous for its obtuse progression and annoying gameplay mechanics.
Critical Backlash: Castlevania II's departure from the level-based structure of I and III is still complained about today, along with its rather obtuse puzzles and several flat-out misleading clues. Those who grew up with the title or tried it in spite of contemporary internet critics' snarking, however, tend to be more charitable in their assessment, appreciating the game for its attempt at an open-world action/adventure style (which became the series bellwether once later games ironed out the kinks) and pointing out that plenty of other well-regarded games from the era had their fair share of Guide Dang It! moments. While the game tends to be regarded as the most controversial of the NES trilogy, the gameplay style it pioneered ultimately displaced that of the franchise's original style, from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night onwards.
Disappointing Last Level: Dracula's Castle has no enemies, and the final battle with Dracula himself is extremely easy to exploit.
Game-Breaker: The Golden Knife. Although it's prohibitively expensive to use to just mow down everything in your path, it's powerful enough to render any enemy — even Dracula himself — harmless.
Goddamned Bats: Oddly enough, the actual bats aren't much of a nuisance apart from blending in too well with dark backgrounds, but the eyeballs that home in on Simon and those little hopping blue slime creatures are more than happy to step up as the most annoying enemies in this installment.
Iconic Sequel Song: Bloody Tears, one of the most famous songs in the Castlevania franchise, makes its debut in this game.
I Knew It!: While there has been much speculation on the intended endings, Kanzen Hisshōbon states that the bad ending with the grey backdrop where Simon doesn't show up is due to him succumbing to his curse, strongly suggesting at least that the text for the bad ending was accidentally switched with the normal ending, which is supposed to be happier. The same guide also indicates that there may have been a variant of the good ending without the zombified hand.
It Was His Sled: Simon's quest to cure his condition is all a plot to resurrect Dracula early.
Low-Level Run: It's possible to beat the game at level 0. The trick is to immediately go left from the first town and get to the Morning Star with your original 50 hearts plus every small heart you can get. Your defense will suffer, but your attack won't. Dracula can kill you in one hit.
Memetic Badass: An infamous Nintendo Power cover, created to promote Simon's Quest, depicts Simon holding Dracula's severed head. Coupled with the fact that he's the first Belmont and one of few to take on Dracula by himself, twice, it's easy to see where it comes from.
Memetic Mutation: "WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE." And then a notoriously heavy melodic death metal band decided to make a song... Named after that line.
Mis-blamed: The unhelpful dialogue throughout the game is often blamed on the game's English translation, but as mentioned in Infallible Babble, even the Japanese version contained a lot of bogus clues, with even the manual stating that the villagers may not always be telling the truth. The infamous "graveyard duck" line often cited as "Blind Idiot" Translation is actually a literal translation of the original Japanese dialogue ("ストリゴイボチデ　アヒルカラ　キヌノハクロヲ　チラウト　ナガイキスル", or "Receive a Silk Bag from the duck in Strigoi Graveyard and you’ll live longer") — the best guess as to what it actually means is that it's either obscure slang for a night patrolman, or a Konami in-joke involving putting ducks in every game. Or as the manual states, the NPC is flat out lying to Simon to prevent him from resurrecting Dracula.^note
Once Original, Now Common: Criticism of Castlevania II for being so different from I and III is relatively new. At the time, Nintendo of America believed that Mission Pack Sequels wouldn't sell and that a sequel had to be drastically different from the original (compare Super Mario Bros. 2, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and to a lesser extent Metroid II: Return of Samus).
Polished Port: In the reverse of what would happen to the next game, the soundtrack to the NES version is widely considered a massive improvement over the original Famicom Disk System version. Some of the American versions of the music are even included as bonus tracks on the Japanese soundtrack release, one of the very few times you'll see "NES" on a Japanese product.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The game's day/night cycle has a multitude of issues that bog down the experience. First of all, the actual transition is on a timer that cannot be controlled, and is incredibly slow since it has to display the text box every time it triggers with no way to skip it. Second of all, you can only do things like shop and heal at a church during day time, so if you get caught in town at the wrong time you're out of luck until sunrise. Finally, nighttime doesn't serve any purpose besides making stronger enemies spawn, which is decent for grinding but otherwise doesn't contribute to the other parts of the game's design (e.g. puzzles, night-exclusive events).
- The leveling system can be this depending on how much of it you understand. In theory, it isn't complicated, though unlike most RPGs where each monster gives you set experience based on its difficulty upon death, here Simon only gains experience by collecting hearts that may not even drop at all when a monster is defeated. As a result, it can take quite a while to grind up even your very first level, especially since you only gain 1pt for every small heart, 3 for half hearts, and 5 (the most) for big hearts, which puts you at odds with the day/night cycle since you're on a time limit for a better ending, meaning most players prefer to just grind experience in the mansions, where the day/night cycle is put on hold. Also, unless you're paying attention, you may not notice that you'll actually STOP gaining experience from any heart drops in an area permanently and will need to grind in another, and since the heart cap is a low 256 and takes far less time to hit than the amount needed for a level gain, this can equal a lot of wasting time if you don't realize you're no longer gaining experience, though this is probably Developer's Foresight telling you to move on so the rest of the game doesn't become a total cakewalk before your first mansion, except the game doesn't mark individual areas exactly, so you don't know what areas are now locked out of experience gain. Again, the actual mechanics aren't complicated, but potentially confusing for newcomers or an RPG gamer used to mechanics from most basic games of said genre of the time. And like another video game notorious for punishing too many deaths, running out of lives sets your experience gain back to 0.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: While the obtuse hints complicate things to a degree, the actual gameplay is considerably easier than in the first game due to a variety of factors, such as:
- Permanent whip upgrades which do a lot more damage than in other Belmont-based titles.
- Less aggressive enemies that freeze more than usual on hit.
- A relative lack of Bottomless Pits and Ledge Bats.
- Simon getting a ridiculous amount of health thanks to the game's leveling system, as well as respawning in the same location after dying and continuing.
- The overpowered sacred flame and golden dagger.
- Only three bosses in the game, one of which can be skipped and the last of which can be defeated easily with one of several exploits.
Sophomore Slump: This is generally regarded as one of the weakest early games, sitting in between Castlevania (1986), the iconic best-selling first installment, and Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, regarded widely as an improvement on the first game's formula. Simon's Quest features a lot of interesting ideas like open-world exploration and an inventory system, two staples of what would later come to be called the Metroidvania genre, but many of these ideas are implemented in a way that displeases a lot of players: a day/night cycle that forces a long pause when switching between the two phases, a currency system where all currency is lost when getting a Game Over and continuing, towns with layouts that have deadly water pits for no good reason other than to cheaply screw over players, poorly-hinted and obtuse procedures necessary to progress the game, and end-of-dungeon boss fights that are largely underwhelming (including a skippable Death and an anticlimatically easy showdown with Dracula). Many of these Metroidvania elements would be refined much later in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
That One Level: Dead River/Jam Wasteland. Not only does it end with the infamous Red Crystal puzzle, but to get there you have to cross a river on a bunch of one block-wide platforms moving vertically. If your jump is the slightest bit off just once, you're dead. Worst of all, it can be easy to miss getting the Red Crystal required for That One Puzzle, since you had to remember that, depending on whether or not you're holding a specific item, you can be transported to two different areas by the same ferryman. Forget the Red Crystal and you'll have to backtrack.
That One Puzzle: In order to reach Bodley Mansion, you have to kneel in a dead-end at the end of the Jam Wasteland with the Red Crystal and wait for a tornado to come and carry you to away. There are hints to the solution in the game, but the sheer insanity of it definitely qualifies it as this.
Watch It for the Meme: Play it so that the game can interrupt you and inform you that it's a horrible night to have a curse.

YMMV / Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

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