Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (Switch)

Only a woman can break his spell
Pure in heart who will offer herself
To Nosferatu

The second game in the series and takes place 7 years after the first where Simon has to travel the land of Transylvania in search of Dracula's relics spread out in different mansions in order to summon Dracula and kill him of and stop the curse that have been laid on Simon. In parts I actually like this game more than the first, mostly since I can see that if I had the game as a kid I might been able to win it. First of it's "open world", go where you want if you can handle the enemies. Secondly, it introduced RPG elements like EXP and levels rewarding defeating enemies so you can take more damage and survive the harsher environments. Thirdly, you can permanently upgrade your weapons and buy helping aids like laurels. And you can choose between your subweapons freely. All that makes it more likely that I could have won the game. Also the relics give Simon different abilities, of course better used in later games like Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance.

That said, there are problems with the game, better articulated by the AVGN, but take the cryptic nature of the crystals you carry with you and where to use them. I can see certain hints in the village, but the translation butchered parts of them and the other part is that the game gives itself an excuse to lie to the player with the corruption of Dracula. Still, with pen and paper I feel one should be able to do it. This time I even got the best ending that is determined by how many day/night cycles you go through before finishing of Dracula. To do this I skipped picking up certain upgrades for the whip since I didn't have enough hearts passing through (hearts are both the EXP and currency, also, after a certain level-threshold weaker enemies don't give EXP). That made traversing certain mansions and areas harder, but I still made it. The reward was a nice ending cutscene with Simon kneeling before the grave of Dracula and when the night comes, Dracula's hand raises from the grave.

THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!

Music is decent, not many tracks at all. Hardly any bosses which feels like they run out of time implementing since shouldn't there be a boss at every mansion? And I think you can skip one boss since it doesn't do anything other than give you a certain subweapon and doesn't even block the way to the relic of the mansion. Like my fascination for Zelda II I probably would play this game more often than the other games in the series for the NES. First time playing it was the Wii Virtual Console, and I got it for Wii U and 3DS as well. Interesting that it is seen as a bad game, even though it pretty much laid the foundation for the GBA-games that I recall where loved by most people. I've seen Egoraptors point on that as well, and I can see that it might have some coverage, but still.