Castlevania Legends was released in November of 1997. Word has always been that this put the game’s direction in a weird position: it was meant to be a fairly mundane Gameboy Castlevania prequel in the vein of Castlevania Adventure 1 & 2, but the popularity of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (released eight months earlier) influenced production. Alucard was hastily inserted into the proceedings, and the “legend” gained an additional player (though unfortunately, not literally). Additionally, the (eventual) success of Symphony of the Night meant that one of its key programmers, Koji Igarashi, would become the story director for the rest of the Castlevania franchise. And how could his course suffer the story of a game that was released effectively in parallel to his own vaunted production? No, that would never do, so Sonia Belmont, star of Castlevania Legends and matriarch of the Belmont clan, was dropped. Sonia was “spiritually” disowned in interviews from around the time, and was wholly eliminated from the pantheon by the release and canonization of Castlevania: Lament of Innocence in 2003. Sonia was born to die, and utterly obliterated six years later.
And Sonia’s hopeless fate is compounded by the fact that Castlevania Legends only works if the official progenitor of the Belmont line sucks as much as possible.
On the absolute surface level, Castlevania Legends is just another Castlevania Adventure game. To be clear, that is the distinctly Gameboy-based offshoot of the Castlevania franchise, so that capital A for Adventure denotes quality. Well… a quality. Castlevania’s transition to the small screen meant there had to be a few concessions. For instance, stairs have been forsaken for strictly vertical ropes. Also, likely to compensate for a movement speed best described as “sub-snorlax”, your Belmont du jour can attain the ability to shoot fireballs across the screen. Do not worry! This does not unbalance the difficulty, because the screen’s horizontal length is the same width as Mario’s hat. Other than that, this is your basic Castlevania adventure (see? lowercase): you venture through a handful of stages, there are a host of zombies and other generic monsters littering the halls, and you cap off every level with a big boss critter. Ultimately, the general gameplay of this Castlevania would feel correct in any other whip ‘em up.
Well, except for all the nonsense that makes Sonia look about as adept as a skeleton with a few bones missing.
Sonia Belmont is the first Belmont, so someone decided that lore had to hurt. From the initial time that Simon Belmont touched the Famicom, he wielded five subweapons: axe, dagger, holy water, stopwatch, and cross. Castlevania Adventure reveals that these weapons were not forged in the fires of Wallachia, they were personally retrieved by this greatest grandma from hidden nooks and crannies about Castlevania. The five items are hidden amongst the six (or so) levels Sonia must traverse. They are not terribly difficult to find, but they do often require some lateral thinking. And why would you need to find them? To unlock the good ending, of course. Wait. Did you think you would get to use this well-established weaponry? Ha ha, of course not. Sonia uses her hearts on magic spells that are earned at the end of each level. What dread magics does she possess? Well…
- Wind magic stops time! As this impacts the whole screen, this does not require any extra animations or “aiming”. It also will never work on bosses.
- Ice/Water magic restores health! As this impacts your HP, this does not require any extra animations or “aiming”.
- Flame magic damages all enemies in view! Given it does not damage enemies much, it is difficult to discern if it is working at all. As this impacts the whole screen, this does not require any extra animations or “aiming”. It also will never work on bosses.
- Saint/Holy magic shoots out a dumb little wave that is slightly wider than your whip-fireball. It is no TMNT Scroll, but it is something.
- The hidden Demon Magic nukes all visible goon-level monsters and their projectiles. As this impacts the whole screen, this does not require any extra animations or “aiming”. It also will never work on bosses.
So, if you are keeping track, exactly one of Sonia’s spells will ever have the capability of striking a boss, and it is also the only spell that can be… uh… seen. And, while Ice/Water’s healing does change the Castlevania game a bit (you basically have E-Tanks!), the majority of these spells are just awful. Two “screen crush” skills? And the stopwatch in all but name? Nobody ever wanted the stopwatch in the first place!
But you actually need that damned Wind/Stop magic. The Castlevania Legends screen real estate has about the same area as the tiniest of Trevor’s manties, and this couples poorly with monsters respawning the absolute second you scroll the screen over a pixel or two. Thus, you must constantly use the time stop ability, or you will be assaulted by a dozen bats out of nowhere, or an infinitely generating lizard climber. Or you can take the hit, and use the healing spell to stay alive. Either way, you are using these terrible spells constantly, even though one arcing axe would solve all of your problems. Sonia can only whip in one horizontal line! A squiggly ghost twelve degrees above her whip-line is going to ruin her day! She should have raided this castle with better equipment!
And that is why Sonia Belmont works as the zero year in the Castlevania timeline: she did try some stuff! Just none of it worked. We have covered Sonia’s magic repertoire, but she has a few other abilities that rarely pop up in the franchise. For one thing, this metroid can crawl, so you may crouch low and walk forward at a pace that can barely be measured with positive numbers. Is this ever useful? Of course not! But it sure seems like it could work if our prince of darkness was in another castle. And speaking of things that absolutely should be useful, Sonia can just straight up become invincible. With the flick of a button (or two), Sonia can become indestructible and do extra damage. This is only available once per level, so you must ration your berserker mode, but the utility of complete invincibility cannot be understated. Or, at least, you would think that, because in reality, it just means you will get one or two extra hits on a boss before your bonus dissipates. Or maybe you used it during a level to get through some random monster gauntlet? Well, that is kind of pointless, too, as just tanking hits and using hearts to restore health is more economical. Oh! And the presence of the “invincible gauge” means that Sonia cannot see boss health. So you can understand why later Belmonts forsook their power modes to see how many hit points Death has remaining. You do not want that battle to last any longer than it has to!
And Sonia’s worst sign of inexperience? She has no sense of direction. The men of the Belmont clan must have acquired a GPS somewhere along the line, because Sonia has the opportunity to wander down a number of dead ends with absolutely no benefits. Hell, she can fall into a zombie trap in the first level that is just there to waste your time. These detours are likely gameplay side effects of the whole “find the hidden weapons” sidequest, with some terrible person determining that a player must have the ability to make wrong choices in the name of finding collectibles. But, since even Simon did not waste this much time banging his head against cliffs, it just makes Sonia look like an idiot. You went the wrong way, again, dummy. Do you have any vampire hunting skills at all? Alucard is going to yell at you so bad…
But that’s the thing: if Sonia Belmont is the first Belmont to fight Dracula, I still have to hand it to her. She is a teenager in 1450, which was not a time period known for constructive strength training regimes. I have literally no doubt that myself or any of my ancestors from that time would have been unable to single-handedly tackle the undead hordes. Sure, she isn’t as good at this as her descendants, but I would not force my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother to efficiently host a gaming blog. Families get better at these things over the generations! Yes, playing as Sonia Belmont in Castlevania Legends may be the worst experience you can have with a Belmont, but she was first, so we must grant her a little slack.
And for all the effort she put in to putting Dracula back in his coffin, now she doesn’t even exist. She got written over so some jackass with a dead girlfriend could be the patriarch. Terrible! Bring back Sonia and her terrible adventures, Konami! Vampire Survivors remembered her! You can, too!
FGC #717 Castlevania Legends
- System: This was a super late Gameboy game. Yes, Pokémon revitalized the system, and we definitely lived in a world where Pokémon Red and Playstation’s Monster Rancher were technically going head-to-head, but this gal going up against Symphony of the Night and/or Final Fantasy 7 feels unreasonable. Errr…. Anyway, I guess it is on Nintendo Switch now, too.
- Number of players: Sonia Belmont is going on this quest alone, with nary a wizard or pirate dude to help out.
- Favorite Boss: The second boss of this adventure is a Zombie Dragon. On one hand, it is always great to see Dracula get a dragon, because he is supposed to be riding around one of those in various myths. On the other hand, why is it an undead dragon? This is the first Dracula siege! Why is the dragon already dead!?
That’s just Maggie: The Grim Reaper is the boss of the clock tower. Glad to see he established his apartment early in the mythology here, but he merely jumps back and forth and fires off one (1) single scythe. Really underwhelming, especially considering he could have been the boss of the hidden stage over an anonymous executioner.- Hidden Stage? After four stages of the hidden items just hanging in candles, there is an entire hidden stage dedicated to rewarding the cross and Demon Magic. Annoyingly enough, with its cave-y environment and plentiful fishmen, it is one of the most interesting stages in the game. That is a low bar, but it is annoying to think that any players missed this area. However, it is very short, so it is easy to see how this wound up as “extra”. Oh, and the boss is a camping goliath with an axe. Bad form on that one.
- An end: So you fight Alucard as the boss of Stage 4. There is a little dialogue there, and it seems to imply that Sonia and Alucard have a relationship. Then, the “good ending” reveals that Sonia eventually has a child. And, since Alucard is literally the only (half) living male in this entire game, many assume he must be the father. Frankly, I do not see much of a reason to jump to that connection (Alucard seems to be playing the role of loving mentor more than actual lover), but if you want to claim the Belmont line has some Dracula blood in there, there are worse explanations for why Trevor can arm-wrestle bat creatures.
- Did you know? Sonia was due to be revived for Castlevania Resurrection for the Sega Dreamcast. She was going to team up with a descendant from 200 years later, but the whole project was scrapped because “Castlevania on the Dreamcast” is the most cursed phrase anyone could imagine. Sorry, Dreamcast owners, you will have to be content with other Konami releases like Nightmare Creatures II and The Grinch (with George Lowe!).
- Would I play again: I respect Sonia Belmont starting the bloodline and crusade against Dracula. That said, I never want to see her again, and I will not be revisiting this garbage. Any other Castlevania will do, thank you.
What’s next? It’s the end of the month, so we are going to close out October with the Smash Bros Challenge and Mario’s brother, whathisname! The green one! Please look forward to it!
“Boy, I hope nobody in my family ever has to do that again.”