(Image credit: Konami)
Even after just a little practise that opening "maze" of staircases and rooms I can exit from either side has gone from being a daunting sequence to something casually cleared with minimal damage in seconds. That's not a boast—that's just Vampire Killer working as intended. This wasn't designed to be something I make steady progress through and then put away forever, it was designed to be played over and over, my own knowledge and experiences as much a part of Simon's Dracula-slaying arsenal as any whip upgrade or item POE currency trade .

I do feel like I've been put through the wringer playing it, but I don't mind as much as I thought I would. Not even when Simon grazed a platform just above his head, the slight collision with the architecture altering his mid-air arc just enough to send him fatally crashing into the depths below. If I'm honest with myself, some of Castlevania's more notorious segments actually make more sense in this MSX2 version of the game, because their difficulty is balanced out or even nullified by items that simply don't exist in the NES version.

The NES Castlevania may have firmly embedded itself in our collective gaming consciousness forevermore (helped in no small part by the console's massive popularity in the US and Japan and continuing nostalgia for it), but Vampire Killer remains an ambitious glimpse into an alternative, more freeform, horror-platformer—a concept Konami would return to several times over the years until they finally found the masterpiece hiding within this go-anywhere gothic game: Symphony of the Night.

PC Gamer Newsletter
Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.

By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Path of Exile 2 fixes some of the biggest problems with the original game

When Path of Exile creator Chris Wilson took the stage during ExileCon this weekend, I expected a big announcement. I didn't expect him to announce Path of Exile 2—a whole new campaign set 20 years after the first one. Though it's still all one game (players will choose which campaign they want when starting a new character), Path of Exile 2 will feature major overhauls of many core systems along with significantly upgraded graphics, all while avoiding the problems inherent with sequels. No extra costs, no divided playerbase, and every core expansion from the original campaign will be re-integrated into the new one POE currency for sale .