Yes, I am reviewing a game from 1997. However, it is available on the current Xbox and Playstation consoles with updated graphics, and the game still holds up as a fun adventure.

The game opens with Richter Belmont fighting Dracula in a climactic battle. After winning this fight, you are given the backstory: Dracula's castle, the eponymous Castlevania, reappears every century. The Belmonts fight to prevent his return. However, it has only been six years since Richter's victory, and the castle has reappeared. Alucard, Dracula's half-vampire son, returns to the castle to investigate and fight against his father's curse. After mopping the floor with some mooks, death itself appears and asks him to buzz off and mind his own beeswax. He declines, so Death steals all his cool toys and leaves him to die.

A photo of a screen. Yay? The game keeps the old 4:3 aspect ratio inside an artistic frame, but this can be altered in the menu system if you want.

If you like hack-and slash adventure games with exploration and puzzles, this game is perfect for you. It is difficult, but not painfully so, and it seems fair in its challenges. Learn the patterns and tactics, and it's winnable. The graphics are dated, but the core elements still hold up. It is still a pixellated 2D sidescrolling action-adventure RPG with sprite-based graphics dominating the aesthetics, but the update has softened the look and given it all a nice polish. The art style is gorgeous despite the limitations of the original game, and the changes add to what was already there instead of adding a bad overlay.

Spoiler warning: game plot details ahead!

Y'know, in case a game from two decades ago hasn't been spoiled for you already, and that matters to you.

The game consists of exploring the castle, fighting minions and bosses, getting better loot, and eventually confronting the castle's new master, Richter Belmont, in Dracula's throne room.

Or so it seems.

Killing Richter isn't the real ending. I realized it was an option, so I saved the game and dwcided to see quat would happen, but the ending narration and the numeous empty relic slots in my inventory both said there was a lot more to find. Sure enough, fully exploring the castle meant getting extra goodies needed to unlock the real plot. Richter was the victim of a mind control plot by a priest trying to resurrect Dracula early. Killing the priest's spectral form unlocked an entire second map: the inverted castle. So now I am exploring an upside-down version of the castle map populated by new enemies. I do not know exactly what I will find, but this game continues to surprise me with its depth.