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.

Really good and just short of perfection. Unfortunately, Richter Belmont plays very sluggishly, the direction of the jump cannot be changed after jumping, only the direction of view, which seems somehow unintentionally funny^^ The backgrounds and general graphic design are really well done, on a par with the 4th game. The music is also very good, although not quite as convincing as in some other games of the series. Boss battles are really tough, sometimes a bit frustrating due to the slow pace, but definitely motivating and exciting. The optional areas and various endings are also very well done. I liked it very much throughout.

(This is the 110th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

The Castlevania series is among the few series I'm looking forward to the most as part of this challenge, which is something I wasn't expecting to say after I had a bit of a falling out with Castlevania 3 you could say. But after Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania Bloodlines, you can definitely call me a Castlevania fan. I haven't played any other Castlevania games before in my life, so all of these releases are new to me. Does Castlevania: Dracula X deserve to be praised as highly as the previous two games I've mentioned?

Released in 1995 exclusively for the SNES, Dracula X is supposedly a remake for Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which I didn't play yet (but should according to Castlevania fans everywhere) but based on what I've seen from Rondo of Blood, Dracula X looks like a lite version of it for some reason. The wikipedia entry for Dracula X does say that there were limits of the SNES cartridge format to think in mind as part of this port, so I'm assuming stuff was cut out here. With that in mind, remake seems like an odd term for this game. It seems like a port with updated visuals.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

The Belmont family v Dracula Round #854. This time it's Richter Belmont, who fights Dracula Reborn hundreds of years after Simon Belmont defeated him initially. Dracula lures Richter in by kidnapping his girlfriend and sister, who you can save in Dracula's castle, if you can find them. In Rondo of Blood, the sister I believe becomes a playable character when you find her, while here, only Richter Belmont is playable. That's pretty much it to the story, it's the same as with all Castlevania games up to this point pretty much. You just got Richter, who is added to the Belmont Clan of vampire/Dracula slayers.

GAMEPLAY | 14/20

Castlevania: Dracula X goes back to the two-directions only approach with Richter Belmont. There also is no other playable character, so you only have access to a character who feels lacking in ability compared to his relatives as a result. Richter brings something new to the table however, which is called "Item Crash", which is basically a super attack. Instead of using one heart to use your normal sub-weapon attack, you can use up many of them at the same time (I believe 10 are used for the axe Item Crash) for one attack that deals more damage. These attacks kind of felt weaker than I would have thought however.

As far as the weapons and sub-weapons go, Richter is equipped with the whip and the sub-weapons he can collect are the same that the other games have also had pretty much. Incidentally, enemies, both normal and bosses, are also re-used from other Castlevania games. Basically it's more 90s Castlevania, which fans will like and people who dislike Castlevania already won't.

There are a total of seven stages (perhaps more if you can find the kidnapped girls, I didn't find them), and each ends with a boss. Boss fights are pretty cool as per usual with the Castlevania series, at least in terms of design and variety in how you have to tackle them, but some of them are pretty unfair. The Dracula boss fight would have been impossible for me to beat if it wasn't for save states on my emulator. You have less than 10 platforms that you can stand on and pretty much every time you get hit, you will drop down into the pit and die. Considering that the final Dracula fight is hard enough usually, you definitely do not need this extra challenge. There also is just not enough space to reliably dodge the attacks and worst of all, Dracula has a targeted fireball attack that you can't reliably time against at all, so I pretty much had to be lucky whenever I whipped to hit the fireballs and make them disappear. Dracula's design was definitely hilarious (absolutely shredded and only wearing a thong) but in a positive way I'd say.

Among the normal enemies, I want to say fuck you to the spear-flipping soldiers who have stupid range and can seemingly block all sub-weapons.

Overall however, as someone who enjoys the Castlevania gameplay loop, this game has one of the more fun gameplay experiences you can have on the SNES (JRPGs excluded) and proves that the Castlevania formula alone can make your game at least somewhat enjoyable. There is the typical SNES / Castlevania / 90s gaming BS moments in this game here, but that's what you have to expect with all Castlevania games that released, at least up until 1995. I'll return to Castlevania with Symphony of the Night, which I've heard lots of positive things about, so maybe the BS meter is lower there.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10

The Castlevania series seems to be one where songs are reused regularly and simply remixed in each iteration. As someone who loves Castlevania soundtracks, I'm actually fond of listening to the classics again after a while. Dracula X does have some new songs, at least I didn't recognize every single one, and the ones that were reused are great, so I'm not gonna complain. Whether this is your first or 5th Castlevania game, I'm sure you'll have a great time listening to the soundtrack here. Shoutout to Divine Bloodlines, the first stage song. Just fantastic.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

I really like the visuals in Dracula X. Backgrounds are detailed and set the atmosphere, there are some nice visual effects, enemy design is repeated from many other Castlevania games but looks good, environments are varied, and level of detail is pretty good overall. It's a step back from Super Castlevania IV, which is understandable for a glorified port like this, but it's still one of the more graphically appealing games for its time, both in quality and art design.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10

Atmospherically the game places itself right in the middle of all prior Castlevania entries. The gothic-medieval art style that Castlevania is famous for sets the scene in Dracula X just as it always has, and the soundtrack for Castlevania games are probably the best examples the 90s have for music that tells the player to go be a hero. Castlevania has the gameplay to pull the epic music off and not have it awkwardly run counter to the gameplay itself, even if Dracula X is not the prime example for this, but it still works well here.

CONTENT | 5/10

Dracula X's content is, based on my understanding, the same as in Rondo of Blood, just worse and with plenty of content cut. That's certainly a disappointment. The content in this game is certainly enjoyable enough, and the short length does not necessarily work in its detriment, the fact that the original was longer probably does. Because the way the game is set up, you constantly see unique areas and fight bosses pretty quickly after one another, so it flows pretty nicely, although bosses can ruin the fun for sure.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10

Levels don't feel repetitive as far as the game itself goes, though obviously you've seen these designs in other Castlevania games already. The difference to a game like Super Castlevania IV is that the game lacks some of the more clever levels like those that made use of SNES' Mode 7. Other than that, you have the typical dangers and challenges to overcome, which is certainly still fun, and as mentioned, they always feel fresh because the number of stages and areas is not on the high side.

That said, some levels have entirely too many enemies that keep spawning and annoying you to no end and too many bosses are not well designed in terms of their fairness.

You can, however, find different routes that lead you to find two of the kidnapped individuals, and with that, find optional bosses, which is pretty nice.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

A game full of FMV scenes that is not a Night Trap-like game but rather a horror adventure game was conceptually unexplored at the time, and looking at how the game turned out, I don't think D managed to get it quite right. That said, I can tell that with the start of the 5th generation of consoles, experimentation is a big theme, so I can appreciate that about D, as well as the fact that it atmospherically did plenty right.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

There isn't as much replayability here as in previous Castlevania games. Only one playable character, no real multiple paths to use and not all that many sub-weapons to try. What you do have are 3 different endings depending on how many of the girls you find and a few optional bosses to fight, which adds some replayability.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 64/100

Castlevania: Dracula X is another enjoyable Castlevania game but two factors that work against it is that it is a remake/port of a superior game and that some of the bosses, especially the final one, are ridiculously hard. Overall though, if you don't go into this thinking it should be Rondo of Blood, the soundtrack and the typical Castlevania gameplay loop is still challenging and fun for at least a few hours.

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.

Taking Rondo of Blood and squeezing it into the constraints of the SNES couldn't have been easy... but I can't buy for one second that it had to be this lacking in quality either. Dracula X is more than just a Rondo port with necessary cutbacks, it is also one that neglected to replace these cutbacks with anything of even remotely equal worth. Even Super Castlevania IV was more impressive through its frequent use of setpieces, and the way it danced around the limitations of the console to deliver some truly impressive moments.

Dracula X strips away most setpieces, and replaces them with arbitrary level design changes that hover somewhere between the most barebones shit you'll ever play in a Castlevania game, versus frustrating and frequent use of insta-death traps. Somebody thought the final boss in Rondo wasn't exciting enough, so here they added 4 bottomless pits for you to get knocked into when you get hit once. (unless you're crouching, which can negate the knockback) The spritework has also seen some very strange changes, with certain backgrounds being replaced to resemble something closer to a comic book art style. This clashes against the spritework from Rondo that does still remain here, let alone against the whole gothic aesthetic that Castlevania is supposed to be embodying.

There's no 2nd playable character here, there's less routes, there's no save system other than passwords, the cutscenes have been mostly removed altogether... along with most of the essence and soul of the game that this is based on. At most, the soundtrack has seen the most graceful conversion and still holds up very well. Either way, for newcomers to the series, I would strongly advise playing Rondo of Blood instead, as you're guaranteed to get a richer amount of content and a much better designed experience. Dracula X is an unfortunate little oddity in the series, which back in '95, gave the exciting impression to fans that Rondo of Blood was finally going to make it over to western audiences. Instead, showed up its chain-smoking cousin, Blondo of Roond.