Topic: Most incompetent of the series?

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Which Castlevania is the most incompetent in the franchise?
Note, this isn't about which Castlevania is "the worst". That's a value judgment.
I'm asking what you think is the glitchiest, most sloppily put together mess of a game the franchise has to offer.

For my money, of the games I've played in the series, I honestly have to say Harmony of Dissonance, at least the Double Pack version. I cannot count the number of times it has frozen and/or deleted ALL my data without me asking it to. But this may be a problem with the Double Pack release itself, as the Aria of Sorrow repackage in the cartridge also suffered from that, but nowhere near as frequently as Harmony did.

As for simple lazy design, I don't think a single Castlevania can compete with Curse of Darkness for the title of King of Lazy game design.

Bloodlines with some of the crazy graphical effects fooled me into thinking I had a screwy ROM on my first time through though. Little did I know at the time that it was SUPPOSED to do those things.

[FerryMANsAJEDI]

Don't know if this qualifies but Castlevania64 gets my vote.The jumping controls are horrible, the camera will get you killed more times then any enemy in the game and you can never get it situated right. The targeting system with the whip doesn't feel quite right.   plus why not just delay it since they released legacy of darkness some 8 months later with all the problems fixed(pretty much)

 

[Flame]

Haunted Castle? :B

[TheouAegis]

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. You die instantly upon touching spikes and if you fall into a pit you're dead into rather than dropping down to the next level. Huge oversight on the developers' part.

[Nagumo]

Vampire Killer, obviously.

[darkwzrd4]

I'd say CV64.  My files wouldn't save.  The bad camera angles got me killed who knows how many times.  There were times in the castle center stage in which the magical nitro suddenly exploded for no reason.  I'd just be running and all of a sudden....BOOM!  I didn't jump or get hit and yet it still exploded.  Not to mention, there were times in which I used a purifying crystal to cure VAMP status and it wouldn't cure me.  It's possible that I just had a bad copy, but what are the odds?

[Sumac]

I couldn't say for all of the games in the series, but as of now it's a close tie between Vampire Killer, Haunted Castle and Castlevania: The Adventure. All of this games has awful hit detection and main characters in HC and CVA has too big hitboxes. CVA also plagued by slowdown (or rather slowdown it's a normal state of this game) and very strange collisions. It's like they created level design and game engine separately from each other and when merged, they naturally born a horrible mess.

On note, never had such problems with CV64. At least camera was always manageable and Nitro exploded for a reason (my clumsiness).

[Ridureyu]

I would say Haunted Castle, for being built to suck quarters but not making proper quarter-sucking possible. It defeats its own purpose as a game outside of emulation and save-scumming.

[Fofa]

Several games in the series can be considered "incompetent" for their own reasons: Haunted Castle for reasons obvious to everyone but the developers; Portrait of Ruin froze on me at least twice, though I suspect that, as it was developed on a short schedule for the 20th anniversary, it was rushed so it couldn't exactly be tested properly; Dawn of Sorrow for a boring story that feels as if it was one of those awful direct-to-video Disney sequels in the mid 2000s; the camera angles were the bane of 64's existence; and Harmony of Despair if only for the fact that it had potential that they wasted. For shame Konami.

[uzo]

Haunted Castle being "hard" or "designed for consuming quarters" does NOT make it a glitchy or a lazy design. In fact, it makes it a good design for the purpose they had in mind.

My award would go to Harmony of Despair first and foremost, but for a real honest attempt that just falls short of the mark I would have to say CV64/LoD, followed by Curse of Darkness, followed by Portrait of Ruin.

[Ridureyu]

You misread.  let me try to explain better.

The problem isn't that it's "hard."  "hard' is great for an arcade game. Quarter-munching is great.  The problem is that you can't continue - the same thing that ruined the arcade versions of Contra, Super Contra, or Rygar (all remembered for their home versions, not the arcade games).  When your game is designed to make someone constantly feed quarters into it to push through, designing the continue feature so you can't do that is a very easy way to keep people from feeding more quarters into your arcade game.  Haunted Castle's design actually would have been okay as a home game, but as an arcade game it defeats itself.


Same difficulty as always, but without limited/four/zero continues?  Just fine, and a worthy quarter-muncher.
Same difficulty as before, and same limited continues as before, but on a console?  Also fine.
Difficulty and lack of continues in the arcade?  What, the game doesn't want my money? Fine, I'll just play Castlevania at my house.

[uzo]

Ah, OK, I see what you mean. I can agree there.

[Ridureyu]

To explain a little more:  Contra and Super Contra had three-continue limits, and Super COntra (Arcade) was the TOUGHEST of all the Contra games.  I can beat Contra 4 without too much difficulty (well, I used to be able to), but I can't get anywhere in Arcade SUper Comntra without save scumming. It just overwhelms you, and you're slow.  Rygar had unlimited continues up until about five stages from the end, at which point you could continue no more - this does mean taht you could be on your last life when you hit the cutoff point. Rygar (arcade) was also extremely unforgiving, and the game could at any time just toss enemies on you before you could react.  That just takes the fun out of an arcade game really fast.

Now, Rygar was somewhat similar to King of Fighters 2002, in that if you made it to Omega Rugal (hidden boss), you had one shot at him before the game ended itself for you. This was really frustrating, mostly because you had to do pretty well to make it to O. Rugal.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

The Answer is clear:
Castlevania (Commodore)
I once went down a set of stairs and died.  Died by stairs.

[VladCT]

The Answer is clear:
Castlevania (Commodore)
I once went down a set of stairs and died.  Died by stairs.

Did the game think you fell into a bottomless pit or something?