So I've now played through both of the Castlevania games on N64. A way overdue mission, after originally playing the first stage of both eons ago, not really giving me any clear idea of what they really were.
These two games actually make me wish more attempts had been made at bringing Castlevania into 3D. When Lament of Innocense came out I was actually disappointed that they hadn't tried to do something more like this. And now after fully working my way through both games, I'll say for sure that this interesting mix of adventure, exploration and pure linear platforming through traps and enemies feels very much like the perfect approach for a three-dimensional Castlevania game.
Castlevania 64 starts out on a very, very drab note. Immediately starting the player in the Forest of Silence, among constantly respawning enemies, awkward platform jumping, and stage sections that are strangely repeated several times throughout the stage as if they were running out of storage space (which is obviously not the case). After a short while the game will turn to night, which means the skeletons will no longer die in one hit, making fighting them slow enough that stopping at any point to take them down will just get you overwhelmed with even more of them, which gets extra frustrating once the exploding kamikaze skeletons also start appearing, and you'll immediately learn that the better approach for most of this game is just to run from everything.
This is also where you'll start to see the first issues with what otherwise first appears as a decent combat system. Just hold the lock-on button and whip at a skeleton while it's still at a decent distance. It actually feels really good.
However, most of the fights in this game will involve fighting enemies that spend 80-90% of the time out of your field of vision, due to the completely unmanageable camera that doesn't seem to change its ideals no matter which of the three confusing camera modes you cycle through. Combined with what appears as a random 20% or so chance that even a well timed and perfectly aimed whip will still miss, these fights are for the most of the game reduced to a combination of anticipating patterns based on guesswork, experience and audio cues, as well as straight up luck. You do also have a close combat weapon, which is faster but barely does any damage, so it has very little actual use. Occasionally you'll have bats spawning basically right on top of you, and this attack is the best way to deal with them - just press the button while they are close and
hope that it hits. I'm sure there's a way to time it, but it's definitely not apparent, and even if you watch speedrunners playing this game you'll see them hilariously struggle with a lot of the same apparent randomness that comes from the entropy of completely wacky and unpredictable controls.
It doesn't just stop at the camera's unwillingness to show what your enemies are doing either. Utilizing the whip well also requires being able to correctly judge your distance to the enemy you're fighting, and basically the entire game through you'll be forced to view the action in the exact angles that makes judging distances as impossible as it can get. This will impact fighting and precision platforming alike, and it makes the first form of Dracula a complete torment to suffer through.
Although Reinhardt is the traditional "castlevania man", and the one I played through the game with, Carrie is probably the better choice for anyone who wants to just try the game. Instead of the whip she has a charge-up homing energy ball which completely bypasses the two biggest issues with the whip - judging distances, and actually connecting with a hit. They get a couple of unique stages each, but most of the game is the same.
You'll miss the Death fight though, and the honestly kinda-cool story of Rosa - The tragic vampire lady who Reinhardt refuses to kill because he can't get himself to punch hot babez. In general there's a lot of really awesome world building in the game, which makes you wish the gameplay weren't such a trainwreck. I really enjoyed exploring the Villa stage, and even the backtrack-heavy Castle Center which has received a bit too much hate from its bomb-carrying challenge gimmick (it's nowhere near as bad as some of the genuinely frustrating places in the game).
A fun addition showed itself after I'd failed one go at Dracula. Instead of saving in his room, I went back to the previous save to use the rest of my saved up gold to fill my inventory with healing items. On my way back to the final battle I was met with a different cutscene from the game's merchant, who gives you an extra boss fight at the end if you've used more than a certain amount of money. That was a pretty cool idea, and along with many of the secrets you can find everywhere in the game, it's one of the things that really speaks to the game's well guarded merits.
Apparently there's another "secret" boss fight if you spend too many in-game days getting to the end, in which you need to fight a fallen vampire hunter, which in turns affects the ending of the game. I never got to experience this though.