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Blood Moon easily became one of my favorite graphical hacks with its otherworldly clor scheme and style, with stage 3 being my favorite stage in the hack. The stages were both familiar yet refreshing at the same time. The controls however took some time for me to adjust to, whipping while sliding wherever I was moving was a strength and a weakness on its own, encouraging aggressive gameplay while at the same time punishing impatience, at least that's what I believe. Stage 5 was probably the roughest example of how this mechanic works against you, most of my deaths being that I fell off Death's platform. They are a few bugs that make the hack difficult to work with, such as random clipping when jumping off certain tiles, and some portions of the hack where the HUD is not visible (Although I taken a liking to the way it worked with the final battle). Overall, real awesome hack with awesome visuals, and new mechanics that give the hack a new kind of challange.

This would be a great hack if not for the addition of running-and-whipping which messes up the controls. When I play Castlevania I have a habit of holding forward when I jump and sometimes when I whip. In this hack doing so causes me to slip off ledges and into enemies and really messes with my cognition, it especially doesn't work well in sections where you have to platform and whip Medusa Heads like in Level 3.

In short, running while whipping is anything but a QOL improvement like it was intended to be, and I would very much like if the author of this hack (if he's still around) included the patch that kept the controls how they were in the vanilla CV1.

The basic idea of ​​this hack is brilliant, the use of game mechanics excluded from the original game is a very interesting idea and I'm happy to say that the run and hit (the most important mechanics introduced in the hack) was implemented really good. But this hack has a big problem: the level design. The first level is set into a cemetery so it's fine, the second level is set in a cave and the background is a starry sky (this is CV or Contra?) in the third level you're on the building's roofs and the background is (again) a starry sky, but in this level it is fine because you are on the roof of a building during the night. Levels 4 and 5 are strange but well done. Can you imagine the background of the last level? It is (AGAIN) a starry sky... Why? This is CV not Contra! Why are there so many starry skies as a backdrop? You can notice the last problem during the final battle against Dracula, during the battle you can only see the life bar, your secondary weapons and the symbol of the hearts ... but you can not see the number of the hearts, so why leave a symbol that is it useless without another symbol? My vote for this hack is 2.9 / 5

This is an absolute masterpiece. Definitely one of the best Castlevania hacks. It's my personal favorite out of roughly 20 that I've played so far. In my opinion it is the best. It might be the hardest Castlevania hack that I've beaten so far but I will beat harder hacks after practicing more. It took me 6 hours to beat it the first time that I finished it. But I tried 2 times and failed to finish it and put it away and came back to it. The 5th level was hard for me but I kept at it till I got it. This game feels as much like a completely different game than the original as any that I've played. Everything is different. Level design is amazing and completely different. The levels and the way you go through them have changed so much that I won't even try to describe it but I will tell you that it's great. The 3rd level which is my favorite is a completely different and special journey with the most beautiful background and design as any levels that I have played. If you whip while walking in this hack you will slide forward which is interesting and can help or hinder your progress. Enemy's look different and so do the bosses. This is such a great hack if you can handle the difficulty. If it is too hard at first do not give up. If you fail try again. That's one of the great things about Castlevania is that you have infinite continues. What seems impossible may become easy with practice. You can do it. I hope you stick with it to see all the amazing things it has to offer. It had me saying wow... this is great... often. Especially on the 3rd level. Which like I said is one of the most beautiful and special Castlevania levels that I have ever played. When you get to the stairs to walk up to Dracula you will see the most amazing and beautiful sight. A red background with red crescent moons. Blood Moons! What a wonderful and enjoyable hack this was for me to play. If you do not like the harder Castlevania hacks then this might not be for you. But it is not near as hard as some that I have tried such as Metal of The Night, Legendary Hero, or Hell's Fury. It is hard but the difficulty is well below those three in my opinion. I love Castlevania Blood Moon. This is an absolute Masterpiece.

Here you see a lot of changes. There went a lot of work into changing everything up to bring a true part tow of Castlevania.

The Castlevania experience would still be here but there is something that mugged it up for me. I tell it here right away since I think it should be changed. The new whip walk mechanic. Walk forward and whip triggers a whip slide one block forward. It feels wired, you can levitate over pits and it kills you in most cases. Pressed forward to early after whipping and you can not jump anymore and move without any chance of stopping it into the next pit. I never felt the need of it because the stages are slow phase anyway. The mechanic was only frustrating to me and did not add a challenge I was interested to learn. It takes away your control of something simple. And added a lot of very cheep deaths!

What I like about the hack is a creative level design with secrets to find. There are hints that help to discover them. You can keep your sub-weapon even when game over! Interesting Dracula fight.

Stage one feels truly Castlevania! But with stage tow and three it feels a bit outer space because of the star background. If there would be a simple sky or castle shape it would be great. How it is now it feels just wrong.

Stage Frankenstein feels like Castlevania again and here the whip walking is use-full the first time because jumping will kill you.. very cheep moving platform death.. and why making pits for Igor when you want to do a hard hack?

Stage Death looks Modern metal. Kinda hard to see where to go and what to stand on.

Bugs: In stage one are graves that you can't walk on. It looks and feels very broken. I hope it could be fixed.

I feel like a broken record at this point... how many Castlevania 1 hacks have I reviewed at this point? Too many... and now I'm going to review possibly the most famous one of all.

Castlevania Blood Moon is probably the Castlevania 1 hack with the most ASM hacking in it, but the thing that no one seems to ever get with Castlevania 1 or Mega Man 1 hacks is that it doesn't make up for bad stage design! To be fair, though, this is far from the worst I've seen. The first couple of levels are actually kind of fun. It's reasonably difficult, and overall a good experience for the first two levels from what I remember, but from level 3 on, the quality drops significantly, and it all just becomes one big cluster fuck!

I've never beaten stage 5, and I really don't have the patience to try and get past it. (For those who think, based on my other Castlevania reviews, I don't sit through challenge, that's not the case at all. I love challenge in games, but I just don't care enough to sit through THESE "challenges" because they're not fun, and they're frustrating because of poor level design).

This hack sucks, it's a bloody mess, it's... I'm running out of things to say at this point... CV1 hacks are like pop music; they're just all the same to me...