Castlevania Legends

Did You Know?

• Sonia was one of the confirmed leads in the Dreamcast game Castlevania: Resurrection, up until that game's cancellation.
• Sonia appears as a playable character for the Ode to Castlevania DLC in Vampire Survivors.

Gameplay

Castlevania Legends is a side-scrolling platformer in which the protagonist, Sonia Belmont, uses a whip to fight through five stages of Count Dracula's castle. Stages contain enemies and candles holding items, and each ends with a mini-boss that rewards a Soul Weapon, which can be cast by consuming hearts. The game offers two difficulty levels and password-based save states. If Sonia loses all lives, the player may continue from the last checkpoint of the current stage. Once per stage, she can activate Burning Mode, granting invincibility, faster movement, and stronger attacks for ten seconds.

Plot

She meets Alucard, who seeks revenge against his father. After defeating Dracula, he vows to return as long as evil exists, and Sonia swears her family will always defeat him. The game was designed as the first in the series timeline but was later declared non-canon after Lament of Innocence.

Reception

Castlevania Legends received mixed to negative reviews upon release. Electronic Gaming Monthly's four reviewers criticized the game as overly short, boringly easy, and suffering from ropy collision detection and cheap deaths from simple jumps. They noted no real advancement from Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, while other Game Boy titles had made major advances in gameplay and graphics in the seven years since. Nintendo Power praised the addition of Light Mode and the Castlevania look and feel, but echoed criticisms of the game being much too easy and punishing slight jump miscalculations with death. Computer and Video Games found the game overly simplistic even by Game Boy standards, stating that some early Game Boy titles were better in graphics and collision detection. In a 2007 retrospective, IGN called it a cult classic but noted it suffers from the Game Boy's technical limitations and is overly different from other series entries. GameSpy described the music as disappointing, given the high praise for the music in the previous two Game Boy Castlevania games. Game Informer's Tim Turi felt the game was lacking especially compared to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Longtime producer Koji Igarashi removed the game from the series timeline, claiming it conflicted with the main games' plotline. Time Extension ranked Legends fifth last on its list of Castlevania games, stating that it is inferior to Belmont's Revenge in visuals, controls, and music, but noted it became one of the most desirable and expensive Game Boy games.