I mean, why not? When Nobunaga ruled part of Japan, and was asked for his reasoning to go after the rest, he simply went "because it's there". I'm pretty sure he said that, I was alive for it. It was essentially the same mindset I had with finishing the Advance Collection.

Known as "Vampire's Kiss" for our PALs, "Dracula X" could only be assumed to be meant as "Dracula's Hug" rather than some attempt at the 2Xtreme movement of the 90s. You see, because in here Dracula gives you a nice little hug and a peck on the cheek, all before he kicks you down a hole in his dilapidated humble abode. It makes one wonder why Dracula would even bother with floors in general when he's more than capable of flying everywhere, especially if he's already figured out that the best defense against Belmonts is to simply either make them walk up stairs, or dare them to hop with their cement-infused boots across magical levitating platforms. Where these platforms are coming from is a mystery, but I assume it's where all those holes in Dracula's throne room came from, or perhaps that's the origin of all the gaps in the grand hallway where one slip up means Richter falling into an alternate stage that denies him the ability to rescue Maria's now completely useless ass.

"Wow, thanks Richter! Good luck on your quest, I'll make my way out now."

Bitch.

It's really intriguing how a final boss fight can completely overtake discussion, and it's quite telling what the legacy of the Dracula's Smooch version of the climactic finale leaves behind when there exists an entire guide on GameFAQs dedicated to it. A useful one at that. Part of me wishes the Game Gear version of Sonic 2 would have something like that for it's first boss, but I guess there's not much to be helped there beyond "I sure hope the balls don't hit me". To say that the fight with Dracula X is a slog would be shorting it a few hundred didgeridoos, because man I could've made some tasty pancakes in the time it took trying to wait out his ass to get into an advantageous position to hit his godawful hitbox along the pillar system he installed in his throne room prior to him calling in an assist from Devil Kazuya. Kaiser Sigma from X3 would puke at all the times I uselessly cracked my whip across Dracula X's forehead and had it not register, because Konami designed this game from the ground up with anti-blockbuster rental countermeasures instead of waiting for it to come out to us, thus destroying all potential goodwill it could have found as a demake later during the age of emulation, with an audience less upset at being bamboozled out of a more faithful and less mean-spirited retelling of the beloved PC Engine classic. Instead, Switch owners will be annoyed they have to deal with this while Requiem continues chilling as a PS4 exclusive nearly six years later.

Baffling, though not quite as baffling as the censorship where they kept the blood on the title screen, but got rid of Death's Mortal Kombat Deception-style Hara Kiri where he decapitates himself with his own scythe, meanwhile Richter in our version apparently explodes into a pile of flour for Dracula X to make his cookies from.

What cookie would Richter be? Puzzling...

My opinion was ever so slightly improved from forcing myself to replay this for completion-sake, but the most heartwarming thing I get out of Dracula's Kiss personally is seeing the font used at the bottom of the title screen for the copyright, and being reminded of a childhood banger in Konami's Biker Mice From Mars which uses the same thing, so I guess I'll go play that now instead. Ciao.

Unabashedly a bastardization of Rondo of Blood and not even very playable as its own thing - there's an obscene hyperfixation to moving platforms over bottomless pits, the returning enemy roster is super limited, and the final dracula fight is an abomination. And as stunning as the first level's vivid heatwave is, the game's artstyle quickly tapers off into generic halls and caves - well-drawn caves and halls, mind you, but nothing that sells Dracula's castle as an inhabited, lived-in location.

Yet, I still liked it. I have a weird love for B-tier retoolings of games with almost homebrew-esque design philosophies: They're very eye-opening not just as standalone pieces, but as complements to their source material. They're very telling of what is and isn't easily replicable relative to hardware differences, as well as the implementation and design abilities of the rookies involved. Playing one helps you find the vocab to describe the other better. The SNES reinterpretations of the redbook Rondo OST are enough reason to justify its existence imo: Really stellar synthlead work. With exception to a few returning tracks, everything sounds 90% as good and has a ghastly reverb to it that works to the hollow winds and wayward echoes of the world.

Now the world needs a Genesis retooling of Rondo.

The recent Castlevania collections allowed me to finally play a lot of Castlevania games I never had access to previously, the most recent being Castlevania: Dracula X or Vampire Kiss on the advance collection. With these collections I have established something in particular, I simply do not like the classicvania style games and Dracula X is no different, perhaps worse than some of the others in fact.

This is a remake of another Castlevania title, Rondo of Blood, made 2 years prior. Although I haven't played that yet I gather its far superior to Dracula X. The story follows Richter Belmont invading Dracula's Castle to defeat him but this time must also save his girlfriend Annet and her kid sister Maria who Dracula has kidnapped to lure Richter there. (As if a Belmont wouldn't go to Dracula's Castle to kill him?)

The game plays over 7 stages with only a few alternate paths and secrets to find that I'm aware of. From what I can see it's pretty barebones seemingly relying on its difficulty to make it repayable. And there lies my big issue is I find this game frustrating or cheap in places. Dracula X has several locations where enemy placement is intentionally awful, being stuck on platforms with medusa heads coming at angles you can't attack whilst an armored enemy throws objects on a platform you can't jump to without killing him first, it's just not fun.

Interestingly I played Super Castlevania IV at the end of last year and though it was released four years prior to this also on the Snes it just felt like a much better game. It plays better with more options and I found the sprites, backgrounds and bosses just much better.

Overall though I'm glad I played Dracula X, it's a piece of gaming history from a series I later found and loved but without the ability to rewind time from the Advance Collection I would never have been able to finish it due to its artificial difficulty with terrible enemy placements and mediocre level design.

+ A piece of gaming history...

- Frustrating enemy placement.
- Poor level design.
- Inferior to Super Castlevania IV, an older title on the same system.

felt it was worth mentioning that a lot of the reviews here mention Rondo of Blood, and how this is a bad port of that.

it's not. for some inexplicable reason, the art is ripped from it (as much as they could anyway), and the entire soundtrack consists of SNES renditions of the rondo one but... it's a completely different game. "play rondo instead" is a misnomer, since it's a completely different experience (outside of the soundtrack, which is easily one of this game's strengths. the SNES renditions are legitimately really good. i highly recommend checking them out if you like the rondo ost)

that being said! is this good? no! you might notice that I've marked this as "Abandoned", but I'll note that I did actually play to the end. but hahahaha that final boss. it's still kinda fun at the start though, but maybe worshipping classicvania gave me brain damage

so instead of saying "play rondo instead", i'll instead say "play any other classicvania instead". though i still enjoyed this more than 4

Takes my favorite game in the series and dumps all over it, with a sort-of "reimagining" that's inferior in basically every way. Now to be fair, despite some recycled assets and music, Rondo of Blood and Dracula X are actually fairly different games, so comparing them might seem unfair, but even on it's own merits Dracula X is a pretty bad game. I think the most glaring flaw with the game is it's level design, which is mostly just boring but has some really unfair difficultly spikes thrown in. Enemies have been placed in these levels at what feels like complete random, leading to rooms that that feel impossible to get through without getting hit. It doesn't help that your post-hit invincibility frames are a fraction of a second, meaning you're constantly taking multiple hits from the same attack/enemy. Another big issue I have is that for some reason in this game, Richter's jump is massive and floaty, making it feel like he's on the moon or something. It completely threw off my instincts and I found myself missing some of the most basic jumps because I'd overshoot them. Even stuff this game does ok, like some of the music remixes and sprite work, I still generally think Rondo does just as well if not outright better. If all that wasn't enough, this game ends on one of the most bullshit final boss fights I have ever seen. If you've ever managed to beat Dracula without abusing save states, then hats off to you, because I sure can't.

This game is rough. I played the original on the turbo grafx. It’s fantastic. Crisp graphics awesome music and it’s fun. This is not that. It’s a port. But a poorly done port. The sprite work is very beautiful. The soundtrack is ok. It’s snes versions of the games original soundtrack and they are alright. The backgrounds are ugly. The level layouts are hard but not because of challenge or clever layouts. It’s lazy slapped together and cheaply made. The hit detection is clunky when hit enemies. The knock back is horrendous for a Castlevania game, which is saying a lot. The last boss is one of the hardest cheapest things I have ever played and only because of cheap level design and crappy hit detection on the last boss. This game is not fun, good, or worth playing. Play the original.

I've played different versions of this game, Dracula X Chronicles, Rondo of Blood, and now here we are with Dracula X on it's own. I really wish there was a lot to say about the game, honestly it's really short.

One amazing thing about the game is the graphics. Despite it being on the same console as Super Castlevania IV it looks kinda different. While SC4 has taller sprites with more detail, Dracula X goes for the small sprites, but more color and a lot of stuff in the background. It's a really pretty game, even if it's supposed to be in horror context.

The gameplay is a tad bit on the stiff side. Better than the NES games, but still a bit stiff when compared to SC4. I think it feels a bit on par with Bloodlines on the Genesis. The Item Crash is really good on here and gives the sub-weapons ore purpose, but your whip only goes in front of you, yet it feels faster than past games.

The thing that shocked me the most was the music. I know the SNES was capable of magic when it comes to music sometimes, but this game sounded pretty close to CD quality to the point I had to check. I don't think there's been a Castlevania game where I liked every track.

I think if the game was closer to SC4 it would have been highly praised as well as the very last boss is extremely cheap so I'm sure that hurt the enjoyment majorly for others, but for me...it was a really decent game that I enjoyed.

Of all the Classic Castlevania games that follow the traditional formula of the series, Dracula X is likely the most divisive, disliked of them all, with the fact of it feeling like an inferior version of the highly acclaimed Rondo of Blood, but for the SNES, immediately souring the opinions on the game for many people, especially in retrospect. Further adding to the displeasure that many people felt for the game was how it felt like a step back in a lot of respects, with reduced whip functionality, bringing back the whip controls from the NES titles, but also making the mobility be far more limited than Super Castlevania IV, along with the design of the game in terms of its approach to difficulty also feeling extremely out of whack. Nonetheless, despite me thinking that this game has a fair few shortcomings and that the Genesis got the superior game in the form of Bloodlines, there’s definitely some positives along with the negatives.

The game’s presentation here is far more vibrant than the often washed out look of Super Castlevania IV, with a much brighter colour palette, along with more detailed models across the board, many of them going on to be the signature look of them for games to come. This ultimately makes it that even during the most frustrating moments in the game, there’ll almost always at least be some eye candy on screen to keep you interested, especially with the developers seemingly wanting to push the hardware to the absolute limit with some of the effects in the game, notably the gigantic fire in the background throughout the opening level. The unfortunate downside to this is that I feel that the game ended up making the same mistake as Super Castlevania IV, overextending to the point where there are some significant performance drops in certain areas, most notably during a boss fight that continuously summons enemies as time goes on, creating an insane amount of particle effects to the point where it almost feels as if the boss is using the extreme lag as a weapon of its own. One other issue with the presentation of this game is the fact that by this point the series begins to feel formulaic, perpetuating many of the conventions within this series, but without really adding anything meaningful or interesting to them, with a lot of it, such as the obligatory clock tower stage, simply feeling like retreading old ground, making the excitement of discovery and progression from the games feel lessened here due to its predictability.

Outside of the presentation, the game’s design as a whole also feels considerably weaker than a fair few of the past titles as well, bringing back a lot of the more unfair aspects of the past games such as excessive bottomless pits and enemies placed in extremely awkward, near undodgeable locations that often force the player to either perform an extremely reckless action, or spend a great deal of time tediously inching their way through what the game throws at you. Often it just feels like the original intention of the slow movement of having to constantly think about your each and every move was lost to an extent here, with it often feeling like an unnecessary hindrance rather than anything else.

The worst offender of a lot of these issues is the final stage however, which feels straight up a mess in multiple ways that ultimately makes the game unsatisfying. For one, a lot of the stage feels conventional and unadventurous to the point where I genuinely didn’t realise it was the final stage until I got up to the Dracula fight, since very little outside of the initial stair climb really resembles anything too climactic, the obstacles either being incredibly easy or downright obnoxious to deal with, but nothing really having the spectacle you’d expect from the grand finale of the game. However, while the game being quite anticlimactic is definitely disappointing, where this game truly fails is by having undoubtedly the worst boss in the series, and it’s not even close. A large part of the problem comes down to the fact that the arena is set up on thing pillars of varying heights over a death pit, effectively making most hits taken from the fight an immediate death. While this alone is absolutely awful, the nail in the coffin is really how aggravatingly tedious the fight is, with certain locations making it impossible to get hit by all but one attack, but RNG potentially making the battle last from anywhere between a minute to 5, especially depending on whether or not the player makes effective use of the axe subweapon or not. What this does is make the already underwhelming final stretch of the game end up leaving a bad taste in your mouth after either struggling for an incredibly long period of time against the final encounter, or just giving up on account of it not feeling worth the effort in the slightest, making an already flawed game even less fun by the end.

Honestly, this game just feels really formulaic and mediocre in a lot of ways, despite some good aspects definitely making it feel at least somewhat worth a try. It feels like there was a serious issue with creativity in this game on the whole unfortunately, just going through the motions again but with a really nice looking coat of paint, with some aspects, such as the boss fights feeling greatly improved for the most part, while others just felt like creative bankruptcy. This is highlighted to me in the OST for this game, with all of the tracks being really great, with a more upbeat feel than any previous game, but with 3 of the stages out of 7 being reprises of the main themes from the original trilogy of games, and the final stage feeling like a mishmash of them that didn’t end up sounding quite right. Ultimately, while this game does succeed in some ways, as a whole it often feels more like a botched love letter to the games of the past, but rather than building upon the ideas of these games, it just feels like taking them without much additional thought put into it, which makes the game really feel like a step back form the progression the series was seeing from game to game.

Castlevania Dracula X is the infamous reversion of Rondo of Blood that the rest of the world outside of Japan got instead of Rondo of Blood itself. Here the meme of “mom, can we have Rondo of Blood? -Mom: we already have Rondo of Blood at home” totally applies.

It's actually a different game, though it's also definitely a big downgrade from the quality of the original game, but I still think it's not too bad all things considered... or maybe I'm just being masochistic.

The plot is the same, it's a retelling of Richter's story, with minor variations like Maria and Anette being sisters, or that the other damsels don't exist (no cutscenes either). The level design is also totally different, and it is also the case for the stage graphics, in this aspect I can say that Konami did a really great job, because everything looks spectacular, it is one of the best looking Castlevania games of the 16-bit era and in my opinion surpasses the original Rondo of Blood. As for the characters and enemies, here the sprites are reused from Rondo of Blood, so they look equally good, although there are also a couple of new bosses. The music is also reused, and the sound team did a great job converting the music, because despite not being CD quality, it is impressive how well it was translated.

So, let's get to the heart of the matter; the gameplay. I have to say that this game plays pretty well, the gameplay from Rondo of Blood is almost 100% translated, although the control doesn't feel quite as good, as it's a little bit clunkier (try doing the backflip or crouching too many times in a row), but it's almost identical to the original installment, and as such, it plays better than most classic Castlevanias for that fact alone (or at least it will if you have mastered the Rondo of Blood gameplay). However, the real problem with this game stems from the balancing that was given to the difficulty. Because the field of view is smaller compared to the PC-Engine game, the development team made some adjustments, like everything moves at a slower speed, they reduced the knockback that enemies generate when they hit you, and they also decreased the invincibility time they give you after being hit, so in other words, with these small changes they foolishly increased the difficulty of the game, so now it's more punishing. For example, if a medusa head hits you, it may not hit you once, but twice in a row, and this may cause you to fall into a bottomless pit and die, a cheap defeat.

Another thing is that the level design is more similar to the NES installments, so in that sense it's a step backwards. It contrasts a lot with Rondo of Blood, because that game had a perfectly balanced difficulty and level design, instead this one is a bit more challenging and punishing, so if you are not very skilled playing this kind of games you are going to have a very bad time and I don't recommend you even try it.

Things I like is how not saving Annette makes her become a boss, a concept that would be brought back for the PSP remake of Rondo of Blood. And I must say the infamous Dracula battle as well. Everyone knows that the original installment has an overly easy battle, but this time around they made it quite a bit harder, although it's not that hard if you know what you're doing. If you're equipped with the axe as sub-weapon and stay in a certain position, the first phase is like taking candy from a child, and the second phase isn't that hard, but if you're not careful you can get insta-killed.

Conclusion
Yes, the game is not that bad, except that it has a little cruel difficulty. Obviously with respect to the original Rondo of Blood it pales, because while that game felt like a premium quality Castlevania game, this one feels like an attempt to mimic that greatness, but falls short in many ways, and the fact that it wants to be a more challenging version plays against it because some parameters are not as well adjusted as they should be, making the result not so great.

However, if you are someone who enjoys the gameplay of Rondo of Blood and you are looking forward to a bigger challenge, trying this game might be a good idea, but if you are not such a fan of the classic formula, don't even dare to play this game or you will totally regret it.

Dracula X isn't necessarily an affront to the franchise but it by all means is a poorly thought out and rather unfortunate neutering of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. It mostly just feels like a whole lot of nothing, like they needed to toss out a quick Castlevania game before the SNES' marketability started waning. It's not even really a port of Rondo so much as just a barren slog that happens to reuse its assets.

On top of thoroughly boring level design, the lack of enemy variety adds a lot to how rushed it feels. They especially loved to reuse the annoying ass knight with the spear, for...some reason. At the very least, it does feel like proper care was put into the first level, but that's about all I can give this one. It all just feels super stripped back from both IV and Rondo, and maybe even 3 honestly.

I suppose they thought the final fight with Dracula in Rondo was too easy, so here they redrew him and ramped the fight up to utterly nonsensical levels. The first phase mostly consists of trying to figure out where the hell he spawned, and then once you find him you have to be careful his fireballs don't knock you into one of eight bottomless pits strewn across the area. Even hitting him is a chore, his hitbox is as small as it is in other games but with constantly jumping over and avoiding the pits it becomes so much more of a hassle. He becomes easier to hit in his second phase, so much easier actually that he takes up a big fucking portion of the screen and knocks you into the pits even more than he already was beforehand. I wasted 15 minutes on this fight even with abusing savestates, not the most but still absolutely not normal for a non-RPG boss. When I was done he kinda just slumped over and disappeared in a single frame, like he was deleted from an image or something. Wonderful.

I kind of doubt that fight was even playtested, seeing as there are no testers listed in the credits. Once again, it just adds on even more to the rushed aura around this game. I'm not particularly sure if a faithful port of Rondo was possible, seeing as I'm no hardware expert, but they definitely could've done a better standalone game than this too. It really makes you wonder which one they were even going for here, and whatever the case, it falls flat pretty hard.

It's weird. I remembered this being way harder than it actually is, and I feel like a lot of that was due to my only real memory of the game being its shitty and tedious final boss.

The level design doesn't really do anything too new or interesting, and because very little of it stands out, all you're left to remember it by is some irritatingly placed enemies who all just so happen to be standing in the worst spots imaginable. I can appreciate that they tried to vary up the stages in comparison to Rondo of Blood with more verticality, more stairs, and more moving platforms... but it doesn't DO anything with these gimmicks. It's all just different types of moving platforms. Sometimes they're sideways, sometimes they're up and down; if a stage's got some platforms, it's 50/50 whether it moves. It's a shame, because I can see they wanted to make something more in line with the NES entries, but it's just not very creative. Not that it would matter if it was, because very large chunks of the levels can just be skipped with backflips!

A lot of the enemy types are reused from Rondo, but there's not really a lot to go around- it seems like they just took what they knew would be general-purpose and left it at that. A lot of the more interesting / challenging enemies were omitted from this game, so you're really just encountering the same Axe Armors, crows, and whatever the lance dudes were called over and over again. They're not an issue with proper spacing... and since you see them so much, you'll figure out what that was and not need to put much, if any, thought into it at all.

It kind of stings that so many of the cooler types of enemies are absent, since that game had more of a combat focus- Richter has all the same abilities here, but no real need to apply any of it since nothing difficult enough to justify it shows up. The bosses aren't anywhere near as capable as they were in Rondo either, so it's an utter curbstomp once you get to them.... and it's honestly really easy to put yourself on autopilot, walk forward, and whip them to death. I'm still reeling over how I stunlocked the minotaur boss. By accident.

I don't know. It's got some snazzy new backgrounds, the sound design is satisfyingly punchy, and the soundtrack is filled with some pretty faithful recreations of Rondo's soundtrack (Bloodlines in particular might even be an improvement over the original track!), but I left the game feeling underwhelmed by how much shorter and easier the package as a whole was. Especially compared to everything that came before it at the time...


Also, is it just me, or does Richter's walking animation feel like it's too fast? Boy you are NOT running what's going on

Look at how they massacred my boy.

I really couldn't tell you what the fine folks at Konami were thinking when they decided to condense a PC Engine CD game onto an SNES cart in freaking 1995, but it couldn't have been driven by profit motives. At least not realistically. The only argument that can be made for playing this back in 95 is because you couldn't get at Rondo of Blood, and the only argument for playing it today is curiosity. I'm curious what driving a heated needle through my fingernail feels like, but you don't see me following through, and likewise you shouldn't be so driven to play Dracula X.

On paper, Dracula X is meant to be a remake of Rondo of Blood for the SNES, but it is so compromised by the limitations of the hardware that any connection to Rondo rapidly dissipates after the first level, devolving into a series of generic caves and hallways sparsely decorated with enemies placed in the most annoying positions they possibly could be. Sprites are highly detailed, yet everything looks so washed out and boring. I'd say I'm in awe of how they accomplished that, but the explanation is simple: fidelity over style.

There are still branching pathways, but when those lead to levels just as uninspired as the ones you've been playing, what's the point in concerning yourself with them? You can still drop through floors onto new pathways, but when the game is riddled with so many bottomless pits what encouragement is there to experiment and discover which ones aren't deathtraps? The final fight against Dracula heself is laden with pits leading to instant death, and if you manage to survive the glacially paced initial phase, then his second will likely run a clinic on you, flying right at you while blasting projectiles that provide little room for error. I'll give him this, he finally figured out the perfect counterattack: not having a god damn floor.

Did you know this game sells for over 300$ on the secondhand market? Look, I understand these prices are often driven by rarity and not quality, among other more artificial factors, but if you bought a used copy of this game for anything over 15 bucks I think you should be hunted for sport. There's no reason to play this game today. I'm pretty sure Rondo of Blood is in one of the Castlevania collections Konami has released and can be easily obtained legally, or if you'd rather you can just spend like, ten minutes figuring out PC Engine CD emulation and play it for free. I am begging you not to play Dracula X, even out of curiosity, I promise you that you'll only be wasting your time on a bad game.

When I was a kid I went to SeaWorld in San Diego with my mom. She left me unattended (as she often did) for a few minutes near the ocra's tank. One swam up close to the glass and made eye contact with me, and though it was only for a moment, I felt as if I was falling into its gaze for an eternity. Reflecting on this connection, I find myself wondering if it was trying to communicate with me. Perhaps this animal, trapped in its enclosure and forced to put on shows for the amusement of humans was trying to impart the importance of living without wasted time. To accomplish something, to become something, to cherish life in each microcosmic moment to its fullest. Or maybe it just saw that in 25 years I'd own a copy of Clayfighter 63 1/3 and play Dracula X like some kind of asshole.

Dracula X is a soft remake of Rondo of Blood made for the SNES, a relic from a time when game code was entirely specific to a platform and porting over a game meant rewriting everything from scratch. In adapting to the limitations of the new platform compared to the PC Engine, the port was made much lighter on content than the original game, featuring less stages, characters and types of enemies, and also removing the animated cutscenes that told Rondo's story.

Taken as what it is, it's... passable. It's an SNES platformer, like so many others at the time, and can last through a couple hours of enjoyment -- if that's your thing, that is. Personally, clunky combat and instant death pits are not my favorite features in a game, and Dracula X sure is packed with those, even bastardizing the iconic Dracula fight to include a bunch of pitfalls. However, I can see an SNES owner getting this game as a kid and loving it.

In 2024, though, a more pressing question than "why would one play this" is "why would anyone play this instead of Rondo of Blood itself". Even for those craving some classicvania, there's not much to see here that's not already in Rondo. Dracula X's inclusion in the Advance Collection is thus, puzzling.

Estava um tanto quanto relutante de jogar o tal do Rondo of Blood Júnior, não vou mentir. Após ouvir umas várias críticas controversas sobre Castlevania: Dracula X, achei que seria um joguinho bem do mal feito e amador, porém, em minha teimosia de querer zerar todos os classicvanias, e em minha recente obsessão pelo Richter Belmont, não podia deixar esse rapazinho de fora, e olha, esse jogo não promete nada, e entrega tudo.
Primeiro de tudo, joguei essa bomba com save states, se isso é uma redflag pra você, nem termine esse review; enfim, sendo um classicvania, a jogabilidade segue sendo a mesma de sempre, ande pra frente, e bata em tudo o que se move, a esse ponto já to tão acostumado, com as escadas, movimentação travada, e dificuldade cuzona dessa franquia, que já nem reclamo mais, afinal, esse jogo não inova em nada, assim sendo, o game é bastante divertido, oferece bons visuais pro SNES (dá-lhe chip mode 7), e uma excelente trilha sonora, além de bosses muitos bacanas e que não enchem o saco além da conta (exceto, claro, o Drácula, aquilo é de fato o pior ponto dessa experiência).
Não resgatei as donzelas.

When it drunkenly stumbles into all the Castlevania parties, Dracula X gets some serious side-eye from the chad units Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood. Even their sidekick Bloodlines has far more going for it with its two playable characters.

Dracula X is slower, clunkier, and worse-looking. It lacks the branching paths of Rondo and the gameplay variety of IV. It’s not a horrible game, just a step back. Doesn’t fit in with the cool kids, but doesn’t deserve to sit with the booger-eating Castlevania Adventure.

In case you’re wondering, Castlevania 64 is too cool to be at the party and is upstairs with your sister and your mom.

Classic-vania games all function so similarly that it seems pointless to go over their design except as a delta of the template, but that makes it difficult to review this game in particular. Bloodlines has multiple characters, Super Castlevania 4 focuses on setpieces more than challenging action, but Dracula X is essentially the first game all over again. It’s simple, it’s difficult, but it doesn’t have the same stylistic flair as its peers.

Ok, I can’t keep going on with that style, anyone who reads my stuff knows this sudden lurch in tone is the equivalent of me throwing the papers on my desk into the air, but I take issue with the way that Dracula X is discussed, and this is my chance to air some grievances. The phrase you can’t get away from is “botched Rondo of Blood”, and while there is some truth to that, I think it’s way too easy of an evaluation to slap on and call it a day. The truth is that Rondo of Blood has its own flaws, and Dracula X is a response to those criticisms mixed in with the limitations of the Super Nintendo. Namely, the difficulty curve of Rondo of Blood definitely needed a second look. Most of the game is pretty easy, until you reach the sixth stage, which is a massive difficulty spike that I found to be one of the hardest bosses in the series. Then, the difficulty jerks up and down until the final fight, a showdown with Dracula that’s one of the most effortless. Meanwhile, Dracula X’s curve makes much more sense, starting high but increasing steadily, finishing off with an appropriately difficult climax. Whether that makes the total experience for you better or worse is a question unto itself, but the point is that it shouldn’t just be dismissed as a porting mistake. Meanwhile, one aspect that’s an almost indisputable downgrade is the general game feel, where Richter feels less responsive and slower than he does in Rondo of Blood. However, when compared to the rest of the series, the movement in Rondo is the one that’s the outlier. Castlevania Bloodlines also came out after Rondo and feels the same way as X, but it doesn’t receive the same criticism because it fits in line with the rest of series without carrying those stylistic expectations.

That’s really what I wanted to put out there about Dracula X, that I hope people can play it with the perspective of the wider series, not just its most direct predecessor. Imagine how this game would be thought of if it had the exact same content, but was about, I don’t know, Steve Belmont instead of Richter. I think we would end up with more reviews like the one I started with, simply noting that this game felt like a SNES version of the original Castlevania. It’s simple, it’s challenging, and it requires more planning and experimentation with subweapons than either Bloodlines or Super Castlevania 4. As someone who likes that original NES Castlevania more than Rondo of Blood (I can hear people fainting), I’m completely ok with that. I like Dracula X, even if it really isn’t as good. In my view, it’s much worse of a fate to be dismissed and forgotten rather than critiqued, so I hope this review can inspire people to take a second look and be disappointed in a whole new way.

It is wrong to say it's a lesser version of Rondo of Blood, while they are meant to be the same events, they are clearly very different games. What's not wrong is to say this game sucks.
The levels are frustating, with a lot of them being to corridors with enemies on the top who CAN attack you while you cannot. The screens barely flow into one another making it feel like you just teleported places. On the topic of screens, a few of them are lifted from older Castlevania titles and end up being ust worst version of those screens.
Richter controls terrible, he feels slow and heavy, and has really short invincibility frames, making it that you could get stun locked by some enemies.
On the topic of enemies, it has the worst Dracula fight of the Castlevanias i've played, just a bore.
With all that you could wonder why i didn't score the game lower? At the end of the day is still a Castlevania game, and has its good parts, when not being an extremely frustating game i had fun with it, as some parts of it display effort and competence, it's just a shame those parts are not that many.