Castlevania II: Simon's Quest ripped up the linear original and tried something wild for 1987: an open, RPG-flavored adventure with towns, NPCs, a day and night cycle, and money to spend.

The structure is ahead of its time. Dracula's remains are scattered across five mansions, you can reach them in more or less any order, and the land between them is one continuous map you walk back and forth across. Hearts stop being ammunition and become currency, which you spend in towns on holy water, the flame whip, laurels and garlic. Kill enough things and Simon levels up, which raises his health and, in a nice touch, the number of hearts each enemy drops.

The day and night cycle is the atmospheric centerpiece. The screen fades to a message that the night has come, the palette shifts, townspeople vanish behind locked doors, and the enemies outside get meaner. Sleeping isn't an option. You just keep moving through a world that has turned hostile on a timer.

It's also infamous, and the reason is the clue system. Villagers hand you hints, several of which are wrong. The notorious one tells you to hit Deborah Cliff with your head to make a hole, when what you actually need is to kneel there holding the red crystal. Another sends you looking for a graveyard duck. The Japanese text was clearer; what reached us was a rushed pass that turned a cryptic game into an impossible one. The internet era turned that jank into legend.

Play it on its own terms and there's real atmosphere: the creeping dread when night falls, the melancholy towns, and Kenichi Matsubara's "Bloody Tears", which has outlived every complaint anyone has about the game that introduced it.

A flawed swing for the fences, and I love it for trying.