Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness Review

CastleVania: Legacy of Darkness Review Is Jon's second video under the JonTron name, and is technically the first true episode of the series, as the previous review, Daikatana, was designed as a soft pilot for the series. Much like the previous episode, however, this video is a more traditional review, and is segmented into two parts.

As for the actual subject of the video, Jon reviews the supposedly enhanced version of the infamous Castlevania 64 game, which despite being "enhanced" is not much better than the original.

Part 1
The video starts off with a lovely montage of Castlevania games from the days of yesteryear where video games had class. Jon gives us a little insight on his own personal love for the series, but he doesn't gush for too long and jumps right into the review after a brief introduction.

Right from the get-go, Jon is impressed by the presentation. The game's intro scene is heart-stoppingly well-made and gets Jon in the mood to kill some vampires. He's quick to criticize the fact that Dracula is once again the villain as if anybody expected otherwise.

He gets into the game finally and, while he's initially hyped due to the music. Memories of the original games begin to cloud his judgment, and he starts to see how poorly the game compares to the originals.

He ultimately decides that it's serviceable before starting the first objective of the game: rotating masts to steer a boat. He then climbs atop a mast to see that the horizon (and by that I mean draw distance) is incredibly foggy (and by that I mean incredibly poor). Jon then decides to showcase the jank controls and camera by attempting to jump a ledge on one of the masts, only to fall, suddenly grab the ledge, let go of the ledge and then have the camera get snagged on a piece of the environment.

After grueling through the first area, Jon informs us that he had previously gotten stuck before realizing that the objective was to find a candle atop a mast and destroy it in traditional Castlevania fashion to obtain a key. Note I said "traditional Castlevania fashion" when in actuality, the game doesn't properly condition you to know how to do this, and traditional fans of the series wouldn't have the instinct to do this given the game's new 3D build. Nonetheless, Jon takes the key and uses it to enter the ship.

Jon kills a skeleton and rides an elevator into the ship and thusly into a room full of enemies. During the ensuing battle, Jon accidentally turns Cornell into his beast form, which drains Hearts. Jon is thrown off by this and advises the audience to never press "L" lest they want to lose hearts. He also brings attention to the discrepancy in which the series's traditional Hearts are replaced in this one instance with Diamonds.

He finishes the room and goes onto the next which contains an escape sequence where Jon has to travel against the camera. Where games like Crash Bandicoot give you ample time to react to what's ahead of you, Castlevania seems to revel in forcing you to make blind leaps of faith, something that gets under Jon's skin.

So the ship sinks after Jon escapes and the cinematic is considerably less impressive than the opening and Jon Jokes that James Cameron must have helped with it. Now that Cornell is off the boat, Jon questions the importance of the boat level, to begin with. Jon sums up the game in its entirety as a larger version of the same pointless shpeal and attempts to end the review early. He comes back and continues talking about the game, specifically the weapons. Mostly standard fare, save for the new ability to level up weapons by picking up multiple copies of them. Jon, however, cannot quite lavish in his newfound power as, despite Jacques's warning, Jon is attacked by a sea serpent and is unceremoniously killed. He then just skips over the fight into the next area for our sake (b'awww, he's so good to us fans~).

In the next area, Jon is perplexed to find almost nothing of any interest. He stumbles upon a door that he's unable to open, and then stumbles upon a boss. Jon panics and simply attacks the boss, only for it to die in a measly two hits. And it wasn't a simple elite mook either, the game labels it like a boss. After its defeat, Jon finds his way to the door he couldn't open before and proceeds to open it from the inside, only to be locked out again.

He makes his way to a slow, tedious, and arbitrarily difficult platforming section, speeding up the footage to show us just how much so. What follows is an admittedly mean-spirited joke about Mary-Kate Olsen's eating disorder as Jon encounters a boss in the form of a giant skeleton which promptly runs away mid-fight and kills itself.

Jon is then very notably bothered by the fact that water equals instantaneous death for Cornell. What follows is the end of part one, which consists of Jon pulling levers and activating devices before being cut off again like the first episode, only this time the second part sta-

Part 2
which consists of Jon pulling levers and activating devices before being cut off again like the first episode, only this time the second part starts a little bit before the cut actually happens. Jon proceeds to show off some exciting footage of other Castlevania games in comparison, showing the lack of mundane puzzles.

Trivia

 * This is the first episode of JonTron to use the Season 1 intro.