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Well, just like you guessed by the title and my recommendation selection, it doesn't really improve upon the original. In fact, in some aspects, it worsens it!

Let's begin by one of the first "features" of the hack: You need to wait more to get the fully upgraded Whip. This by itself doesn't seem like a MAJOR problem, as in the beginning of the hack you only fight a few battles with the small whip and when you notice, you're already with the long whip. But this gets REALLY tricky on the late stages since you NEED the long whip to properly play them in the first place! Why not just keep it in the way it is? Or why not go to the Round of Blood route and remove the whip upgrades? There isn't a reason to have them in the first place and some sections of the game could be more bearable if you go back to them after dying.

There's also other cases of the hack changing things that weren't needed. In fact, I think the proverb: "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" fits very well here. One of the new "features" of the hack is that it doesn't gives you nearly as much hearts to use your items. which again, it doesn't seem like a MAJOR problem at first, but things get problematic when fighting bosses, as I actually managed to run out of hearts during some boss fights!

Now, you may be thinking: "But this change was made so you couldn't exploit bosses weaknesses like in the original!" And I GET that, but there's a REASON why people exploit Castlevania bosses (mostly the late game ones; though I do see some exploits for the early bosses as well); It's sink or swim, or the bosses are nearly impossible to fight or they are nearly impossible to lose. This also make so that players -especially those who already know the game- have to rely mostly on only one item (you know what it is) and not have fun with the other cool items that the game has. If they changed to bosses A.I to accommodate the changes (y'know, actually MAKING the game better and fairer) then I wouldn't mind this change at all and I would even praise it, but it doesn't seem the case...

Well, at least the game looks prettier...

The new graphics and optional Chronicles Simon are absolutely lovely. Unfortunately, the changes to the gameplay just make actually playing unpalatable. Far more frustrating experience even if the effort in attempting to change the game is commendable.

I just played through the hack. Everything just looked really clean and better. It looked like a late NES release instead of an early release.

Ive beat the vanilla version at least 30 times. When I got 20ish minutes to kill I fire it up on the ol BVM1911. I don't die.

After I beat the "Ultimate Castlevania patch", I loaded the vanilla version for comparison. It made my eyes hurt. For example, the trees on the first screen actually look like trees in the hack but in the vanilla version they just look like green abstract blobs that are trying to look like trees.And pretty much every screen in the game gets cleaned up. There's no fancy graphics added.In fact the overall treatment is subtle.

The hack is darker and less garish.

There are a few vanilla sprites that I prefer over the hack, like Dracula and the whip, but overwhelmingly I prefer the hack's sprites.

The level design is altered slightly and I think it is an improvement. Especially the intro to the 4th level, and just the 4th level in general.

In some places it felt harder but in others in felt easier. kinda a wash.

I hated the look of level 5 in the vanilla version. It got the uggs. But this hack tones it down. Still not a beautiful level but the hack is better.

The game did hard freeze on me while fighting the cookie monster. and I was playing on original hardware with no save state. 10 years ago I would have been pissed off AVGN style. But I'm old and don't care. I just hit reset. poured tequila. and beat it. I'm having some weird issues patching roms right now and I'm not sure it's the patches fault. It could very likely be on my end.

It's October 2020 right now and I'm feeling the Halloween vibe thanks to this patch!

This hack is wonderful! There aren't big changes but little improvements about the game: the design of levels has been updated with some changes to make less frustrating some levels but without make the game less difficult, even the design of the enemies has been update and the design of the second form of Dracula is 124235563457r56574674 times better than the original! This hack is absolutely outstanding! Is like adding wine sauce on blood meat! (absolutely fantastic). My vote for this hack is 5/5.

I honor of Halloween time, I spent an evening playing through Castlevania with this hack.

I'm not intimately familiar with the original game (I've played it many times, but it's been years), so I can't speak for how well this hack rebalances it. However, judging the difficulty of this hack on its own merits, I can tell you that it was hard, but not impossible. Medusa Heads are still prone to knocking you into pits and Flea Men are still the bane of my existence. I'd say the difficulty curve felt about right to me, though there were a few levels where I desperately needed some of that yummy rejuvenating wall meat, but I kept finding hidden wall hearts instead. Though this hack apparently reduces the number of hearts you get for sub-weapons, I never felt like I didn't have enough.

I really enjoyed the subtle changes to the graphics. I felt they enhanced the atmosphere while remaining true to the flavor and spirit of the original game. So it still feels like the same old classic game, but it's just ... a bit nicer looking. Nothing felt wrong or out of place, as is often the case with fan modifications like this. It's obvious that a lot of thought and care went into this hack.

I played through the game using the 1st of the three Simon Belmont sprite options, which seems to be a slight modification of Trevor's sprite from Castlevania III. I personally thought it was an improvement over the original Simon sprite, since I dig my vampire slayers to sport the long-hair headband '80s Conan the Barbarain look.

One of the real stand-out features of this hack is that it goes the extra mile by including a high-rez remake of the game's NES manual. Again, this remains true to the style of the original game, but the art is hi-rez and it includes some rad new art done by this hack's author. I was happy to find that the manual also features a retranslated version of the story that seems to stay true to the original Japanese game (before Nintendo of America removed the religious references).

The only downside I found with this hack is that I couldn't get it to work with NaOH's Improved Controls hack. But for those who don't mind Castlevania's clunky original controls, I highly recommend giving this hack a try.