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This hack is awesome. This doesn't even feel like a hack to me. It just feels like an entirely different game. New completely different Levels, enemies, and bosses. This hack was harder for me than the original game. Some parts were much harder than the original, some were the same difficulty, and some were easier. But for me it was quite a bit harder to complete than the original due to a couple of parts that I struggled with for a while. The level design is amazing with interesting new ideas. I don't want to describe it all and ruin the surprises but one example of this is the 2nd level which looked like a black and white chess board. That was great. The new bosses were one of my favorite parts of the game. That's rare for many of the bosses to change much in Castlevania hacks and to me having new bosses is one of the best things that they could do to make the game great. This Hack is more different than the original than any other Castlevania hack that I've played. What an awesome game.

Amazing editing in the sprites, graphics and stages. If you love Castlevania I, this is must play hack. It have a high challenge, new bosses and items. Remember, it's a high challenge.

Castlevania on the NES is an interesting beast in that it's a very popular title among romhackers, and it's very easy for hidden gems to become lost in the glut of hacks that have accumulated over the years. As you can probably tell from the glowing reviews here, Chorus of Mysteries is one such gem, but it's one that actually doesn't fully mesh with me, and while it's not bad, I can't say that I was blown away either.

The game is meant to be a side story in the Castlevania universe, featuring a new protagonist named Armund. His sprite looks fantastic, and I admire the work put into it, but what bothers me is that our new hero doesn't stand out on his own, and he ends up looking like a Belmont in a red pirate costume. Heck, he even has the same forward-leaning Belmont slouch that runs in the family, and his barbed rope may as well be the Vampire Killer. Being that the base game is Castlevania, perhaps that's to be expected, but imagine how much more interesting Armund would be if he had, let's say, throwing knives as his primary weapon (a la Grant), and had levels and enemies designed around that.

The game features entirely new levels, but I personally feel that this hack echoes too much of the base game early on. The first screen of the game is more or less the same as the original, which is little more than a single path with basic power-ups sprinkled along the way. You still enter a castle full of zombies and wolves, and there is still a section that requires you to descend to a lower level full of mermen. The bat boss at the end is still the same bat boss that we all know and love. Granted, other Castlevania games have done similar, but they are done as an intentional callback to let you know that you're entering Dracula's turf. Here, it doesn't evoke that sense of newness that I'm expecting from this hack.

Another problem that I had was the visual presentation, which features pallet and texture choices that sound good on paper but aren't great in practice. The first level's pallet features a lot of black and dark blues, which are meant to evoke a sense of night and darkness, but it ends up looking visually uninteresting, and the background look flat because of the amount of empty black space everywhere. The second level's chess theme is impressive, but is again marred by completely empty backgrounds that also don't mesh well with the contrasting black-and-white checkered flooring. The visuals do get better later on though, and you begin to see brighter colors used in the foreground, while darker colors get shifted into the background, thereby creating environments that look more alive.

The retouched sprites have much more detail to them as well, but 8-bit visuals tend to do better with less, and this is no exception; certain monsters either look too thin or have textures that are visually so busy that you have to pause to fully appreciate the detailing. Some of the new sprites do look great though, and I especially appreciate some of the new monster designs.

I also didn't find the audio presentation not really to my liking either, but there are a few solid tracks on there. Hats off to Optomon for doing a fantastic job composing this soundtrack, but the sharps and flats in the first level's Victorian-inspired composition is a bit jarring to me. The later tracks are a bit better, and I especially love his rendition of Dance of Pales from Symphony of the Night, but overall, the styling here is a hit or miss.

Despite my rants, there are a number of things that I do like. Enemy and item placements feel strategic, and the new monsters and bosses are fun. Level designs are intuitive, and the later levels look more vibrant. I never really felt too overwhelmed by the enemies onscreen, and bosses feel fair. I also especially love the addition of the new laurel sub-weapon, which grants you temporary invincibility for eight hearts. It's a clever and very handy use of a mechanic that is often wasted in the original game.

Overall, it's not a bad hack by any means, and I do recommend that everyone gives it a try, since it's one of the higher quality entries out there. It's not the amazing new experience that I was expecting, and there is certainly a lot of room for improvement, but it's a fun time nonetheless. Kudos to Dr. Mario and Optomon for all of their hard work.

This isn't a hack... it's a totally new game! I haven't much to say about the level design and the general design of the hack because it's perfect (the only problem could be that green was used too much, but for me this isn't a defect) in my opinion the chess background of the second level is one of the beautiful level ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The new bosses are fantastic but the most fantastic is the final boss who is probably the best boss ever made started from another boss. It's incredible how only two persons has been able to realize such and ambitious project, this hack could be a sequel of the first Castlevania for how it's realized at the perfection. My vote for this hack is 5/5... What are you doing here?! Go to play it!!

The first hack that ever really blew my mind was Dragoon X Omega; most hacks I'd played before that just threw in some male genitalia and/or drug references, but that was a complete hack that changed the graphics in their entirety, the music (which I'd never seen before), and even had an entirely new story. Chorus of Mysteries reminds me of that, because it does all of that, and even changes the gameplay a bit with new enemy behavior and a new subweapon. Clearly, a lot of time was put into this hack, and I'm already a big fan of Optomon's work, so I gave this a go, and it's pretty solid. A remake of anything, whether it be a movie, a song, or a video game, should strive to surpass the original, and I'd say that in certain aspects, this achieves that. The graphics are an obvious improvement; some are used from Symphony of the Night (and impressively downscaled, I might add), and others are completely original. The dark aesthetic makes new levels look pretty neat, but the one that stands head and shoulders above them all is the chessboard that is prominently featured here. The new subweapon isn't bad, either; it's not something I used often, but it's at least less useless than that stopwatch from the original.

Chorus of Mysteries is not without its drawbacks, but they're pretty minor. The level design isn't as tight as the original game, but it's not bad by any means. I can tell that the story had some effort put into it, and it was neat that the ending addressed it, but I just wasn't feeling it; the ending text seemed a little disjointed, too, making it hard to follow. I also wasn't a fan of the music; I'm not totally in love with the original Castlevania's music (aside from Heart of Fire), but this sounded a bit tinny, and more like something you might hear at a party at some snooty aristocratic castle. I suppose it'd almost feel at home in a hack of the original Final Fantasy, but it brings neither action nor foreboding here, so it doesn't quite fit. The flaws don't outweigh its strong points, though, so I'd definitely recommend this one!

This hack has everything and did everything well or excellent. When I played the hack I did forget that this is a hack. It is a new game and a great sequel to the original.

The challenge is great. Hard but fair and there is enough stuff that helps you through for casual playing. New bosses that are very rewarding to kill. It was like back in the day as a kid when I played Castlevania the first time around. Sure it went a bit quicker I could beat it in one sitting. But the game play is phenomenal.

This is a game that can be picked up by anyone who is looking for a challenge. The sound is new and did fit the scene very well. I prefer the art style of the original but this is done very well. The levels are nice to look at and everything is crisp clear.

I am running out of words. Thanks to the creator for your awesome work.

Bug: I did walk through a door in stage 3 with Laurels active and it crashed the game.

This is another of the only mediocre at best Castlevania 1 hacks out there, but this one is like that for a very different reason; this one doesn't really have bad level design, like literally every other CV1 hack out there, but rather, it suffers from a major factor of over-ambition.

The hack advertises so many changes, and I was expecting something really big, but what I find is a piece of ambitious work with not enough time and effort put into it; the music is extremely bland and underwhelming, the graphics are very bland looking, and I feel like everything just seems very dull and depressing. I'll admit, the chess board was pretty neat, but again, it felt very bland to look at, and listen to. (Actually, you know what? The music is fine! You know what it really is? There's no drumming!! I still think it's a little underwhelming. Castlevania's soundtrack was upbeat). Not to mention the fact that everything is such dark colours, and it really is just depressing to look at. I guess you might say it makes it look more creepy, but it just doesn't look alive to me.

I didn't play past stage 3, so I can't make a full judgement of the hack, but overall, bottom line, I just feel like the hacker bit off way more than he can chew on this. When you advertise such huge changes, you put very high expectations in the people downloading your hack. For those who aspire to attempt a full scale hack like this, do not attempt unless you're willing to put in the full time and effort.

Overall, this is one of the most ambitious hacks I have played and enjoyed. All of the sprites and animations have been redrawn and match the Castlevania theme very well. Perhaps the very best feature is the one item that allows the player to become invincible at will. The one aspect of the hack that doesn't fit well is the music. It is not bad and done well, but does not feel like it should be in a Castlevania. Regardless, this is still a hack that every player should try.

This was a rather challenging hack. Much like the original game, there are many parts that are just downright frustrating to play through.

Notable things in this hack is totally new music, sprite redesign, and graphics redesign.

The game essentially plays through much like the original Castlevania. Even with some of the goofy little glitches. My main complaint was that the game had somewhat of an anti-climax. I won't say how it ends but the final villain wasn't nearly the hardest boss to fight.

The music was well written. It actually fit the world of Castlevania quite well.

Graphical changes were great. The whole game was redesigned and it becomes an eye-candy treat.

If you have played the original than you would probably love this hack. It feels more like a sequel than Castlevania 2 did (still a great game).

This is a pretty good hack Dr. Mario and Optomon have put together. The graphics are really great and it looks like almost none of the original graphics remain. And the new level layout, themes, and MUSIC make this seem like it's a new Castlevania game. It's worth playing through to the end due to the Dance of Pales remix included in the last level, that's one of the things that made me play through the whole thing. I rarely play through a hack from beginning to end so I think that says something. I highly recommend playing this hack at least once if you are a Castlevania fan.