Oy. I'm gonna edit this down because we're starting to get off topic with certain things.
Actually, I can make that argument. All games ARE designed to be fun on some level. Even scary entertainment is fun to those that enjoy it. And to be clear I take the word as in a thing or activity that one derives enjoyment from.
I agree with you on that, but I think that to a certain degree, the designers in some games (the Silent Hill series for instance) do certain things to make you feel uncomfortable. Maybe that's fun but it's designed to bring up feelings of dread, but again, I don't see entertainment and fun as the same thing. Movies entertain you but are they fun?
It's a game, the layouts don't have to be laid out logically. Doing that makes things less interesting, which is exactly what you have throughout most of the overworld. It's pretty much like the PS2 games with long stretches of mostly flat boring areas. And the only areas that aren't flat have annoying gimmicks in play like the ridiculous poison swamps and the frustrating chains of floating blocks. The towns are all boring with basically the same 3 designs for all of them. The mansions are much better as far as platforming is concerned except that they often ruin what would be very interesting layouts with frustrating gimmicks that they always manage to take too far. The invisible floors are a prime example as well as many of the jumps that seem like they are intentionally trying to piss you off in a way that screams laziness rather than challenging design. They did use stairs to denote cross roads in the overworld, which is itself illogical, but I appreciate that. I'm saying that they should have made the terrain more interesting since you have to go over it over and over. And, BTW, there are several spats in the game's forests that have stare in illogical places.
Illogical layouts are usually the mark of lazy design. Dracula X on the SNES is a case in point. At one point of, i think it's the 3rd level, you're climbing all these platforms with Medusa heads and Bone Cannons coming at you. Then suddenly, you're inside some part of the castle with knights accosting you. Simon's Quest at least tried to make things flow well with its design. Other than the stairs in the middle of the woods, and suddenly being in Dracula's castle after crossing the long bridge (which it would have been really cool if they had had a frontal shot of the Castle like the Mansions), the design is sensible and smart much like it was in CV1. It's sprawling, but almost never nonsensical.
Of course I'm not saying that. I'm saying what I said. That a more flexible sub-weapon system is better. One of the fundamental things game design students are taught is to always reduce the number of screens and menus the player has to go through to access things. CV2 did the opposite. Now you have to buy your weapons and you have to use a menu to change them. That is not as dynamic as finding them throughout the game. There is basically only one new weapon, they removed the more interesting ones from the previous games, and the rest are derivatives of the least interesting ones. And they're incredible unbalanced to boot. So I fail to see how there is more you can do with CV2 over CV1 or VK.
With the exception of the Dagger, whips, and Holy water, you don't have to buy ANY of the subweapons, they're all found in game. You can also buy Garlic and Laurels, but these too can be found in-game.
I disagree, despite slightly darker content, the graphics are still cartoony like the previous games and that detracts from any true horror it could have effected n the player. And I think many ROM hackers have proven over and over that all the NES CV games could have had much darker, much more genuinely disturbing graphics.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this. NES game could only handle so many colors. If Simon's Quest could have had a similar palette to CV4, it would have been even better, but as it is, the NES couldn't handle that. They did the best they could with the limitations they had.
No it's not. That's like saying that when you're playing Zelda 2 and you're low on health and out of MP and potions and you need to get back to a town gives it a survival element akin to the survival horror genre. No it doesn't. That is not a situation a player will necessarily get into and the game isn't designed to specifically put you into it. In Resident Evil, for example, when you're low on health and you've used up all your weed you're fucked .There is nowhere for you to go. That is a position that will inevitably get into in that game because it's designed to. There in lies the true horror of the genre. Finding yourself in a situation that you have little to no hope to get out of. Why do you think survival horror games don't have a level up system to make you stronger over time or refill your health? Because that would completely destroy the sense of fight or flight that is essential to survival horror games.
Again, by comparing Simon's Quest to a game like RE, you're making the mistake of thinking that someone has said it's a pure survival horror game where no one has said that. Elements, sure. But pure SH? Not at all. And the key word here is ELEMENTS. Just because a game has a shooting scene doesn't make it a shooter.
That may be true for some people. I also happen to have played CV2 before I played CV1 and I like the game, too. But it's flaws are there and they don't go away just because you don't compare it to it's siblings. Compared to other similar games it still falls short. And making the argument that viewing at from the point of view of a genre that not only didn't exist yet, but that it also has very little in common with is little more than an excuse.
I don't think anyone is trying to make the case that it doesn't have flaws, but I think the OP advises looking at it from a different perspective. Sometimes the coolest stuff is created unintentionally. I don't think it's a perfect game, and if I did, it would be partially nostalgia talking there, but I think the CV community hasn't really given the game a fair shot because they end up comparing it to Castleroid games, or the other NES games, which were created with, I can only assume, a completely different intent.
While it's true that CV1 is an action game, I think you are seriously reading way too much into it. There is more story going on, but there's nothing to indicate that the day & night messages are being spoken by Simon. As a matter of fact your ability to sympathize with Simon is severely diminished because he never speaks a single word during the entire game. You have no idea what his thoughts and feelings about the situation are. You have no more of an emotional link to him in CV2 than you do in CV1 except for a slightly more robust story, that I might add is never even really mentioned much in-game. I will give them props for trying harder on the story and having actual endings.
Maybe I am, though he does speak when the crystal exchanges take place. I can only assume the day/night sequences are capped off with a remark by him because he's the one with the curse. I think it's possible to empathize with a character based on what they have to deal with in the game, but maybe that's just me, though I have to say the endings were part of it for me as well.