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Everything promised is delivered. Play Castlevania 3 as it was meant to be played. Only gripe is that the canon name of the protagonist is in fact Trevor. Other than that it's how you should be playing.

This is awesome in every way! The new title screen is masterfully drawn, the Alucard sprite has been impressively translated from the SotN original, and the dialogue is lore-accurate and refined. I'm forever grateful to the creators of this hack for allowing me to experience the improved music of the Japanese release in such a clean package. The only issue I had in my playthrough was with two screens of garbled graphics in the end credits, probably as a result of using the Alucard sprite update. That affected nothing, however, and I was still left with a fantastic Castlevania game. I would 100% recommend this hack to anyone and everyone.

Along with Contra, Castlevania III is one of the more egregious examples of Western gamers getting shortchanged in the 8-bit era. We still grew up with an outstanding game, but meanwhile, Famicom owners were enjoying an epic, enhanced version of the soundtrack, less obnoxious difficulty, better story, more animations, and 100% less censorship. At last, now that we're finally old enough to see 8-bit statue boobies, we can experience arguably the best Castlevania in all its original glory.

Any gripes I have are mostly cosmetic. The new title screen looks great, but it also looks just a bit too modern to my eye and reminds me right away that I'm playing a hack. I missed the ghoul rabbits; I thought they were much cooler than the fleamen and added some nice variety to the enemy roster. Also, I found Grant's use of the word "bastard" a bit jarring. Censoring classical statues was silly on Nintendo of America's part even back then, but I can't imagine they'd have let any sort of strong language slide in 1990, so that momentarily broke the illusion for me.

These things are easy to look past. This is absolutely the way to play Castlevania III. The superior translation coupled with the original soundtrack restores this classic's full punch. Excellent work!

This localization is perfect. Absolutely perfect. My only complaint is the Title Screen, if possible, can we get a patch where we can use the american version instead?

This + the better control hack is the best version of Castlevania III. The only thing I found wrong was in the intro, which states the game to be 100 years before Simons adventure. In actuality, there are two Belmont's between Simon and Trevor (Christopher and Soleiyu). That coupled with the 100 year Dracula revival thing means it was at least 200 years before Simon. It's not that big of a deal, just something I noticed.

ShadowOne333's hack is a nice happy medium that gives us the enhanced audio of the Japanese game while preserving the localized American canon.

The ShadowOne333 hack addresses a major issue I had with another translation patch, which is that it restores the canonical connection to the other Castlevania games in the American franchise. While there's room for both translations, this is my preferred version, and I'm glad to have this choice.

At long last, this feels like the game that should have been released on the NES all those years ago.