Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth (Review)

Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth
Platform: Nintendo Wii via WiiWare
Released October 27, 2009 (JPN) December 28, 2009 (US)
Designed by Keisuke Koga
Directed by Toshiyasu Kamiko, Akihiro Minakata and Keisuke Koga
Developed by M2
Published by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

You didn’t really think I was going to let the Halloween season go by without reviewing some Castlevania games, did you?

Originally, this review was going to be Castlevania 64, which I did start and played for almost ten whole minutes before I needed a break. A big break. Like, one the size of two or three full playthroughs of an entirely different game. Also, by “break” I mean the type of break like when a squabbling couple says “I think we need a break” because “I never want to see you again” is too blunt a thing to say while emotions are high. BUT, for this…..break….. I chose a different Castlevania game that was exclusive to a Nintendo platform and is awaiting its first re-release. So, like…. would it be cool if I decide to not restart Castlevania 64 and just move on after this? Thanks. I feel much better now 🙂

Anyway, remember Castlevania: The Adventure for the Game Boy? I reviewed it back in 2024 and I still think it might be the worst action game I’ve ever played in my life. That is not hyperbole. It’s absolutely f*cking atrocious.

Castlevania: The Adventure (1989 – Game Boy)

Castlevania: The Adventure (1989 – Game Boy)

But it doesn’t matter if you remember it or not because Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth has almost nothing in common with it. Just like how Castlevania Chronicles isn’t really a remake of the original Castlevania or Dracula X isn’t really a remake of Rondo of Blood. Gosh, this series has a lot of non-remake remakes, doesn’t it? It’s an especially baffling choice because Adventure’s reputation isn’t exactly on the same level as Dracula’s Curse. I have no idea what would possess someone to shackle a decent, fast-paced game like this to the name and legacy of a game famous for being slow, sluggish, and overall horrible.

I’m actually taking an alternate route in this picture. The game offers a lot of those. I walked away believing that’s a bad thing.

So what does Castlevania: The Adventure and Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth have in common besides the name “The Castlevania Adventure?” Well, the top upgrade for your whip is a fireball. Even that’s completely different in how it works. In the Game Boy original, you have the fireball until you get damaged. While you also lose the fireball off a single hit in the remake, now the fireball will eventually wear off no matter what. So the one thing the two games share is actually the one downgrade in this version. Go figure, right? Or maybe unlimited fireball would make the game too easy or eliminate the need for the knife, aka the sub-weapon nobody likes anyway. And, uh, that’s the list of similarities in its entirety.

And they both star Christopher Belmont and I assume have the same story. I mean, if you actually care about the story of Castlevania. Since the original game didn’t have a cutscene or anything and presumably the entire “story” came from the instruction book, who cares what the name of the guy with the whip is? While I love the gameplay of the series, friends, I honestly don’t care one bit about the story. It’s just too ridiculous for me to take seriously.

Literally everything else is different. The original Adventure had four completely linear levels. ReBirth has five levels. Ignore everyone who says “six” because there is no sixth level. Just a staircase and a hallway that leads to Dracula. That’s not a level. I’ve seen title screens that take longer to get through.

This Castlevania leans a little into slapstick by allowing you to kill enemies by dropping chandeliers on them. I tried to beat the Grim Reaper by eye gouging him but my fingers got stuck.

Every non-Drac level also has alternative paths that fundamentally change the game’s flow with different set pieces and vibes. Those paths, besides the bosses, were the weakest aspect of the game for me. Oh, not the content of those paths. Actually, I thought the strongest level design usually was contained within those alternate paths. But, that means you only experience some of what I felt was an overall well designed but unspectacular Castlevania game each time you play it. That’s just the first of many problems related to those paths. Like this:

I didn’t want to use a guide. I wanted to see if I could find the keys that open the doors on my own. Some of them were pretty damn well hidden, yet the game actively discourages exploration. I literally forgot I was being timed, so when this happened, I sat frozen in shock for a few seconds AND THEN I threw a tantrum and launched my controller through a window.

I honest to God don’t think I ever previously timed-out in a Castlevania game, but I was killed by the timer in the third AND fifth levels of Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth. Hell, the third level’s timer got me in both the first and second playthrough. GOD FORBID in a game with hidden keys and branching paths all over that a person has enough time to look around. My favorite version of Dracula’s Curse is a ROM hack that eliminates that game’s branching paths, so you have to play all fifteen stages. What I wouldn’t have given for that type of experience in ReBirth. I played through it three times for this review, and each time it felt like I was missing something. I was.

Sometimes the art style is inspired, and then there’s moments like this level where the platforms you stand on look like they’re in the background.

Another reason is that you can’t just pick the path. Oh no, it takes an item to do it. While I found one path by breaking through a wall, most required keys. The key takes the spot of the sub-weapon, which means you have to play the game without access to all the fun parts of the game to activate the paths. F*ck that! F*ck that in its undead ear! In a game that’s only five levels long, I think the branching path idea, well, f*cking sucks.

As unbelievable as this sounds, the famous Castlevania drawbridge moment is, in this game, a branching path that requires a key to activate.

Even if you’re a fan of those, seriously, wouldn’t the game have been better if they cut the split paths out and turned them into separate levels? There’s enough content in this game to stretch the five levels out to seven or eight. This is a back-to-basics Castlevania game. I don’t want to f*ck around with alternative paths. I want to just beat levels. What the f*ck is wrong with that? And it’s not like one branching path leads to an entire different level, like with Rondo of Blood. It’s just a series of forks that lead to the same bosses. BUT, those forks play completely differently. The themes change. The vibe changes. I don’t like how ReBirth was structured at all. Not one bit.

While the eyeballs are probably in this game because the Game Boy original had eyeballs, these ones don’t explode. In fact, they only seem to be in this game because people remember that the Game Boy games had giant eyeballs.

And, while I’m complaining, I might as well just say that this has the dullest bosses of any Castlevania game not named “Simon’s Quest” or “Haunted Castle.” They’re just generally unmemorable in design. Like I kind of figured this….. thing in the picture below was meant to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and according to the Castlevania wiki, I was right.

Way to get in under a deadline, M2.

But it’s so generic in appearance that it didn’t work as a big, climatic moment at all. Maybe you can get away with that type of design if you’re making a Gumby Halloween special and you have a REALLY low budget, but for the purposes of a Castlevania game, that doesn’t work. Earnest cheese works. There were a couple winners, like the over-the-top golem where you can’t even see its head until you kill it and have to whip its tummy.

Okay, so they could have come up with something more sinister looking for the furnace that makes up its stomach.

I know that bitching about the looks of bosses is shallow, but I mean, there really isn’t all that much to whine about with ReBirth and this is a review site. Overall, this is a pretty damn decent Castlevania game. A very short one that feels like it was slightly half-assed, but decent. I think it could have been better than decent if they had dropped the branching path crap and maybe just leaned into the cheese. But, when ReBirth wants to go for white knuckle action and nail-biting close calls, it doesn’t f*ck around. There’s some inspired stretches in this game. Like this:

Oof, that was close.

Angela walked in the room while I was playing this and said “you’re literally on the edge of your seat.” It’s true, too. Too bad there’s only five f*cking levels, none of which maintain a consistent pace thanks to those branching paths. Given the fact that ReBirth had THREE directors, part of me wonders if they got into a fight over direction and the large forks in the level design are some form of compromise. That would explain the inconsistent tone. Just make a slightly longer game and promote one of the mini-bosses to a level big boss.

Hell, I thought this generic vampire (which, it turns out, is NOT Carmilla) WAS the level 4 boss.

I think fans have slightly overrated ReBirth, as a lot of people talk this up like it’s one of the better Castlevanias, but I’m not even close to that. I’d actually put this third-to-last among the ones I’ve reviewed that I’ve awarded a YES! to, with only Game Boy nothingburger Castlevania Legends and MSX oddball Vampire Killer ranking lower. I think a lot of the fandom for it is probably based on the low expectations one would have for a remake of Adventure. The idea of remaking that game is so dumb that I can’t believe it wasn’t dismissed out of hand, but then again, Haunted Castle got remade as well. I think I’ll save that one for next year’s Halloween.

That’s Dracula’s final form in this game, which again, doesn’t match what you’d expect from a Castlevania game. That looks more like Loki’s final form.

So yeah, I had fun with Castlevania ReBirth, but probably not as much as some people expected. It controls well, has some very good level design, and yet it’s one of the weaker Castlevania games for sure. It’s too short and I doubt I’ll remember anything about it in a year, as it’s lacking in memorable moments or stand-out bosses. But will it get a re-release? I think it might be thrown in as a +1 to an unrelated Castlevania collection. There’s still some “classic” Castlevania games that haven’t been re-released, namely the 3-D games and the Lords of Shadow trilogy. If I had to guess, I would guess a set that contains Castlevania 64, Legacy of Darkness, Lament of Innocence, and Curse of Darkness will happen, and this would be a really good +1 for that set.

It’s kind of bland looking too, isn’t it? The sets just aren’t well dressed. They’er not ugly either. They’re just sort of there, you know? ReBirth feels like a quick, cheap, budget-priced Castlevania dumped onto Nintendo’s first international digital distribution platform as an experiment that Konami had no faith in and told M2 to not waste any amazing ideas on. Seriously, that’s the vibe I got from it.

BUT, I also wouldn’t be shocked if Nintendo has talked with Konami about adding Castlevania 64 to Switch Online. If that happens, I still think the two PS2 games are probably going to get their own set, and ReBirth has a big enough cult following to probably get included anyway. Outside of a collection? Eh, probably not a good idea. This was 1000 Wii Points when it came out. I just had flashbacks about Wii Points and Microsoft Points and had to make sure that 1000 Wii Points equaled $10 USD. It did, and I think Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth is worth maybe half that today. This is a $5 game at best.

This is Castlevania Resurrection for the Sega Dreamcast, or rather the alpha-build 1999 E3 demo or something like that. I messed around with it for about fifteen minutes. It’s not even remotely close to finished. I’d say this build is BARELY playable and probably should have never been shown off to press. The game was cancelled and, going off this build, yeah, I can tell why. But it’d make a neat bonus feature for a 3-D Castlevania collection. What does this have to do with the game I just reviewed? Well, Sonia Belmont might be the mother of Christopher Belmont. Or possibly Trevor Belmont. Or she might not exist at all since the Game Boy title was declared non-canon.

Castlevania ReBirth feels like it was tailor-made to be a +1 to a collection instead of a stand alone game. Today, it feels like a relic of the era where companies thought digital exclusives should be half-games. I wonder if that’s why it’s only five levels long and full of branching paths. Maybe Konami was putting the screws to M2’s plans and thought a lowly digital exclusive shouldn’t give players full value. “Why would anyone buy our full priced games if you’re putting out ten level games for under $20 on Wii?” I could imagine such a boardroom conversation in 2009. Now it’s only seventeen years later next Grand Theft Auto will only exist digitally and the first new mainline Castlevania game in over a decade is a mid-priced release that I bought digitally. Times change, for better and for worse.
Verdict: YES!

Indie Gamer Chick’s Castlevania Reviews
Castlevania (NES) Vampire Killer (MSX2) Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
Haunted Castle (Arcade) Castlevania: The Adventure (Game Boy) Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES)
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (Game Boy) Super Castlevania IV (SNES)
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (Super CD-ROM²) Castlevania: Bloodlines (Sega Genesis)
Castlevania: Dracula X (SNES) Castlevania Legends (Game Boy) Castlevania Chronicles (PlayStation)
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA) Kid Dracula (Famicom) Kid Dracula (Game Boy) ROM Hacks (NES)
Konami Wai Wai World (Famicom) Wai Wai World 2 (Famicom) Master of Darkness (Master System)

Dracula looks bored. “Man, this sh*t again?”