One thing that bugs me about the Castlevania series is how easy it is to upgrade your whip (for the record, I'm talking about Castlevania, Castlevania III, and Super Castlevania IV).
The rules of the game made it so that you needed four (4) hearts to upgrade from the leather whip you start with to a stronger ball&chain whip of the same length and eight (8) hearts to upgrade to the longer ball&chain whip. The thing is, you start each life with five (5) hearts so it's practically impossible to be stuck with the leather whip for any length of time.
The player may as well have started with the ball&chain whip...
This could've been rectified by having either the player start each life with no hearts or making the upgrades at higher heart levels, say eight (8) for the first upgrade and sixteen (16) for the second one.
Another option could've been to adopt the rule from Game Boy version of Castlevania: if the player gets hit, he loses an upgrade. In that game, you could get a chain whip that launches a fireball after two upgrades. One hit and you're back to the chain whip. A second hit brought you back to your standard leather whip.
Either option would've made the game a little harder. Whether it would've made the game better is a matter of debate. It makes me wish I knew how to ROM hack...
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