Castle of Succubus is definitely what happens when you bring an NES game to today's standards. With the game's intentionally(?) bad design instead of being a fun parody backfires as it becomes infuriating as time goes on, and if you want to fully complete it... well, good luck on being a sweaty gamer.
=Art: It's Castlevania, alright. The style is a good parody of Castlevania. It definitely isn't very appealing, but that's how NES games goes back then. The boss design is as well-detailed as ever though, even given the limitations of the style choice.
=Music: good choice of music. Though not OST, the music chosen certainly fits the Castlevania theme of the game. The SFX is also very fine. It's just fine overall.
=Gameplay: Much like Castlevania, this game has its fair share of lotta bullshit all around the game which kind of drags the game down a lot.
-Movement: expectedly suck, somehow, worse than the original Castlevania. There's no momentum so you fall down instantly, which is actually not a thing in the first Castlevania game, the one this is parodying. What is better is how you can freely move while jumping, but the jumping being bad kind of balances that out. Except, there's one more even worse thing is that when you jump and land on a platform above your starting point, you will suffer a few jump lag frames where you can still move around but you can't jump until that lag is over, indicated by you stop crouching. This is TERRIBLE, it makes platforming tedious in a few areas and annoys the hell out of me. Again, not in Castlevania 1. There's also no extra movements you unlock so yeah, you're stuck with this forever.
-Platforming: well, jumping sucks, so is the platforming section hard? Brutal, platforming in here requires some pretty tight inputs and if you mess up? Well, if you're on Normal mode, you're dead. Though not as bs as the jump lag, it still is a learning curve that you'll have to adapt to.
-Knockback: speaking of knockback it's... weird. It does carry that old Castlevania bs thing where you get hit and knocked back into the void, which I kinda like as a parody. But you do get knocked into the enemy when you're... crouching? It's really weird but overall is kinda fine as an inclusion.
-Enemy: are for the most part fine at first until the skeletons starts appearing, then everything starts becoming pretty stinky. Skeletons changes their movement patterns when you hit them, which makes for annoying situations where they'd fearlessly run towards you while your slow whip can't stunlock them in time. The birds in here is also pretty chaotic and if you can't kill the first time they dive down, they become a big pain in the ass. Enemies are tedious, sometimes annoying and can be very tricky to kill without using your throwables.
-Bosses: most bosses are fine, they work on a pattern which isn't too bad but they can sometimes be a bit too drawn out due to RNG. What is pretty bad is the first stage 6 boss and the stage 4 boss, who are both really annoying. The rest is fine and is kind of fun.
-Throwables: most of those bosses do need you to use throwables though, and they're... "enough" I guess? Certain bosses do perform better with certain throwables and luckily they always give you the right ones to pick from before the boss battle starts. If you don't rely solely on throwables then the amount you have before fighting the boss is good enough. The throwables themselves are pretty dang strong, just a little restrictive on its uses.
-Difficulty: other than tough platforming and enemies, to unlock everything in the gallery is also very tough. You need to collect all secrets like crowns and keys for locked prisoners and you have to beat through the whole game with NO CONTINUES. That's NES level of brutality. It's better to grab a save file for this one, I recommend. Oh, btw, the game doesn't have a normal save system, instead it has passwords, yeah, very retro. It doesn't save your points, coins or current throwables, allat stuff, so yeah, another thing to add to the difficulty.
=H-content: lackluster. Aside from the special CGs that's really hard to get, you have to kind of play the whole game a few times again to get all the save point passwords as well as the CGs where you deny saving the girls for an extra CG scene. And yeah, there's only CGs. There is some small animation, which isn't really appealing and you can't see them in the gallery. The CG part is the real meat here, which you have a lot. Although considering the amount of hard work you have to invest for them, I think they're not that worth it.
=Overall: Castle of Succubus fumbles a lot. It's infuriating to go through and not that good to come out of. I recommend if you're playing through Libra Heart's games, this one is the one you shouldn't go for. If you do manage to put up with its bs then it's... fine. Still not that good though. Not recommended, 5/10.
=Art: It's Castlevania, alright. The style is a good parody of Castlevania. It definitely isn't very appealing, but that's how NES games goes back then. The boss design is as well-detailed as ever though, even given the limitations of the style choice.
=Music: good choice of music. Though not OST, the music chosen certainly fits the Castlevania theme of the game. The SFX is also very fine. It's just fine overall.
=Gameplay: Much like Castlevania, this game has its fair share of lotta bullshit all around the game which kind of drags the game down a lot.
-Movement: expectedly suck, somehow, worse than the original Castlevania. There's no momentum so you fall down instantly, which is actually not a thing in the first Castlevania game, the one this is parodying. What is better is how you can freely move while jumping, but the jumping being bad kind of balances that out. Except, there's one more even worse thing is that when you jump and land on a platform above your starting point, you will suffer a few jump lag frames where you can still move around but you can't jump until that lag is over, indicated by you stop crouching. This is TERRIBLE, it makes platforming tedious in a few areas and annoys the hell out of me. Again, not in Castlevania 1. There's also no extra movements you unlock so yeah, you're stuck with this forever.
-Platforming: well, jumping sucks, so is the platforming section hard? Brutal, platforming in here requires some pretty tight inputs and if you mess up? Well, if you're on Normal mode, you're dead. Though not as bs as the jump lag, it still is a learning curve that you'll have to adapt to.
-Knockback: speaking of knockback it's... weird. It does carry that old Castlevania bs thing where you get hit and knocked back into the void, which I kinda like as a parody. But you do get knocked into the enemy when you're... crouching? It's really weird but overall is kinda fine as an inclusion.
-Enemy: are for the most part fine at first until the skeletons starts appearing, then everything starts becoming pretty stinky. Skeletons changes their movement patterns when you hit them, which makes for annoying situations where they'd fearlessly run towards you while your slow whip can't stunlock them in time. The birds in here is also pretty chaotic and if you can't kill the first time they dive down, they become a big pain in the ass. Enemies are tedious, sometimes annoying and can be very tricky to kill without using your throwables.
-Bosses: most bosses are fine, they work on a pattern which isn't too bad but they can sometimes be a bit too drawn out due to RNG. What is pretty bad is the first stage 6 boss and the stage 4 boss, who are both really annoying. The rest is fine and is kind of fun.
-Throwables: most of those bosses do need you to use throwables though, and they're... "enough" I guess? Certain bosses do perform better with certain throwables and luckily they always give you the right ones to pick from before the boss battle starts. If you don't rely solely on throwables then the amount you have before fighting the boss is good enough. The throwables themselves are pretty dang strong, just a little restrictive on its uses.
-Difficulty: other than tough platforming and enemies, to unlock everything in the gallery is also very tough. You need to collect all secrets like crowns and keys for locked prisoners and you have to beat through the whole game with NO CONTINUES. That's NES level of brutality. It's better to grab a save file for this one, I recommend. Oh, btw, the game doesn't have a normal save system, instead it has passwords, yeah, very retro. It doesn't save your points, coins or current throwables, allat stuff, so yeah, another thing to add to the difficulty.
=H-content: lackluster. Aside from the special CGs that's really hard to get, you have to kind of play the whole game a few times again to get all the save point passwords as well as the CGs where you deny saving the girls for an extra CG scene. And yeah, there's only CGs. There is some small animation, which isn't really appealing and you can't see them in the gallery. The CG part is the real meat here, which you have a lot. Although considering the amount of hard work you have to invest for them, I think they're not that worth it.
=Overall: Castle of Succubus fumbles a lot. It's infuriating to go through and not that good to come out of. I recommend if you're playing through Libra Heart's games, this one is the one you shouldn't go for. If you do manage to put up with its bs then it's... fine. Still not that good though. Not recommended, 5/10.
