ROM Hack - Super Castlevania IV - Alter Quest

Hack description

"Alter Quest" is a hack supposed to be the third quest after Simon has beaten the two from the original game. The focus was in game balance, and the hack includes changes to enemy stats (such as damage, hit points, size and, in some cases, behavior) and to the player's weapon stats (including damage, range, speed and heart cost). Bosses in this hack were buffed and the player will need to use more strategy to beat them.

This hack tried to maintain the feel of the original Super Castlevania IV, so the overall map layout of the game didn't receive many changes, but extra traps and enemies were added nevertheless. There are some changes of graphics also.

The player starts with only three lives, but extra lives can be found hidden in many of the levels. The hack starts somewhat easy but gets harder as the game progresses. Overall, it's harder than the original.

If you like this hack, please feel free to share your experiences with it on the net. Playthroughs/walkthroughs/etc are most welcome! ;)

Have fun!

Version 1.1:

- Increased the damage of the brandished whip so that it is more useful against lesser enemies;
- Decreased the HP of a few monsters;
- Reduced a bit the difficulty of the last level;
- Increased a hints section in the readme file to help the player with some hard parts of the hack.

Version 1.1b:

- Fixed a bug introduced in v1.1;
- Decreased the stability of crumbling blocks (so they will crumble a bit faster now);
- Reduced a bit the difficulty of stage 8-1-2.

Version 1.2:

- Introduced more hearts and extra lives in the game; now all levels have a hidden extra life (to a total of eleven);
- Increased the damage of the knife and cross subweapons from 20 to 24;
- Normalized the damage done by the whip being hold to 1/6 of a direct hit (in the original game it's 1/3);
- Reintroduced the checkpoints at stages 7-1-3 and 8-2-2, that were in the original game;
- Placed another book platform at stage 7-1-3 to ensure that players have where to jump to;
- Reduced the damage done by Koranot's rocks from 3 to 2;
- Made a few discreet layout/enemy placement changes to enhance gameplay.

Version 1.2b:

- Fixed the staircase at stage 9-2-5. Now it correctly leads back to stage 9-2-3;
- Made minor gameplay changes.

Reviews

not for me	pleasejust	2020-04-25	Version 1.0
I don't like how you can't get the longest whip and I don't like how the skeletons at the VERY BEGINNING take 4 hits? They originally took 1. This seems almost like a kaizo hack but the author claims it'll only challenge veterans at the end. I found it too hard and not that enjoyable, coming from someone who loved Other Castle hack.

Difficult hack, but should be expected as such	Uberdubie	2019-10-23	Version 1.0
If you're looking for a general HARDMODE for Super Castlevania, I recommend trying this hack. It's A LOT more difficult than vanilla, so be prepared - probably best meant for Castlevania veterans. But more often than not, I'm finding the changes and spikes in difficulty refreshing. In its current state, I'm also finding it a bit tedious in some spots I'll mention below - so some refining would go a long way here. But I repeat: This will be a lot more difficult than vanilla, including vanilla on a second playthrough. Unlike the 'Other Castle' SC4 hack for those who have played it, this doesn't concentrate on more difficult platforming very much, if at all. Expect to just see a LOT more enemies that act a bit differently/unexpectedly in some cases, along with very different item placement, and other slightly-adjusted mechanics. Some enemies take A LOT more hits than before. Bosses haven't been nearly as difficult to beat as much as just getting through the rest of the levels. While the first reviewer wasn't expecting this to be so difficult (I beat Other Castle, so this wasn't so bad for me lol), I will reiterate that enemies such as skeletons probably shouldn't need so many hits to take out, especially in the early-going stages. At times, the high frequency of enemies is a bit TOO much to the point it feels spammy or unfair. On occasion you'll find enemies quickly flying into the center of the screen (notably rolling porcupines and the bats quickly swooping into the screen) that you'll almost certainly get hit by on your first try - removing a lot of those would help the hack tremendously imo. It also feels like the whip is nearly-pointless if you're just holding it out now - many enemies simply won't go down without direct hits. I believe somewhere between where the whip's strength is generally at now in this hack, and vanilla, would be a really nice middle-ground. But if merely holding out the whip to chip at enemies seems cheap/nonsensical to some, I suppose I can respect that. But with all that said, if you're a veteran of these games and a glutton for some punishment, you'll likely still enjoy this in its current state as I am. Admittedly I haven't nearly completed my run of this yet (and thus haven't played the late-stages which supposedly are much harder), but I wanted to make this review before I forgot about it. I've been playing this in tandem with the recently-uploaded SC4 color hack, which fits this rather nicely imo: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4724/

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