Basically an alternative version of Rondo of Blood made for a less capable platform, expect downgraded visuals and music, though both are pretty good on their own.

Not bad at all for a few stages, but then devolves into being one of the most frustrating games out of the Classicvanias and for no good reason either seeing how much more well balanced Rondo is, and it's not like that's a walk in the park either.

If you only have time to spare to either play Rondo or X definitely play Rondo, otherwise it may be worth to give this one a try too if you're curious about the differences between the two.

This is the version of Rondo of Blood that did get localised, a remake carrying the Japanese denotation that Rondo and its sequel use: Dracula X. This remake is noticeably different from Rondo of Blood since the Super Nintendo hardware lacked the capabilities of the PC Engine Super CD-ROM2. The plot and mechanics are mostly the same and it does retain alternate paths. The music is good and the game plays well enough, but it is noticeably inferior to Rondo. The game is pretty damn difficult to come by, so you would have to use an emulator, virtual console, or the Castlevania Advance Collection if you do want to play it. Or you could, y'know, just play Rondo instead. 'Tis the better option.

MY BAD GAME JOURNEY WITH FRIENDS IN VOICE CHAT
MARATHON PART 1: DRACULA X

this game isn't nessesarily bad despite the title, but as a CASTLEVANIA game its a huge letdown, this isn't even like a watered down port of Rondo, its pretty much in terms of its level design is completely different, in a very bad way, the bosses were OKAY until dracula. the dracula fight is slow and every time i think about it i can only think about the sonic jam ost on the game.com specifically because my friend put that on the bot on loop.

its such a dissapointment that it caused my autistic brain to come up with a new vocal stim, every time i took an unfair hit all i could think or speak was "awesome sauce" so imagine being with me in the voice chat where every time i got hit from some bullshit or had to deal with any bullshit in the game (which happened quite often) you'd have to hear me exclaim "thats so awesome sauce".

and its not like this game is like the worst either its just that if you've al;ready played rondo then you wont have a fun time with this game.

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.

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

Me: Mom, can we have Castlevania: Rondo of Blood?
Mom: We have Rondo of Blood at home...

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood at home:

God, I'm such a hack.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

CASTLEVANIA MARATHON- 9/22

Rondo of Blood but worse in literally every aspect.

Looks worse, sounds worse, plays much worse. Less player choice and the final Dracula fight is like pouring Pop Rocks down my pisshole. It's such a shame that this is how Western audiences experienced Richter's story because it fucking blows. I don't think it's as bad as The Adventure or even Simon's Quest but it made me much angrier than either of them could have ever done with its bullshit final boss fight.

Next- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Previous- Castlevania: Bloodlines

. I really don't think there was a single moment I liked about it. The game designers must've had a fetish with bats and Medusa heads cuz they were everywhere. Also jumping and attacking was mad stiff, even for Castlevania standards. Whoever designed the stages needs to take a class in continuity cuz every screen transition felt like I was warped to a completely irrelevant location.

In the end, it just makes me want to go back to Rondo of Blood. It tries too hard to be something it's not while asking the player to perform ridiculous tasks (carry a key for an entire stage to have a cutscene with maria?). I guess the music was good though, even if it's just ROndo of Blood's OST but watered down

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.

It really is a shame that the Turbografx-16 never took off in the West and we had to miss out on Rondo of Blood until it was localized in the late 2000s. To make up for this, we had to make do with a reimagining of sorts with Castlevania: Dracula X. The plot and characters are the same, but it is a clearly different beast than its 1993 PC Engine release. In this review, I want to talk about what they've changed in Dracula X that really impacted how I feel with this game particularly

Right off the bat, there are no cutscenes in the game, which is to be expected since cramming it into a Super Nintendo cartridge is a technical impossibility. All of the same controls, sub-weapons, and item crashes all were carried over from Rondo of Blood, so I'm not going to reiterate of what they do; but what I can say is that Richter controls here are nice and responsive

For this adventure, the ones that needs rescuing only are Maria and Annette, and yes you can save Maria, but you can't play as her; it's Richter from beginning to end in this game. There are a total of 9 levels with only two altenate stages with Stage 4' and 5', with one you need to get to if you are still willing to go for the true ending, like I did

Later in Stage 3, you must obtain the key and cannot fall off because if you do, it will send you straight down to Stage 4' meaning you are unable to save the girls. You must also carry the key to Stage 4, and if you die on this stage where Maria is being held captive, you lose the key, meaning you have to go back to the menu and put in the specific password to try again. I honestly can't do this without using save states beause that is a huge task for someone who is playing this blind. And this isn't the only time I had to use save states, and oh boy I will get to that later

I can say that the music is kept relatively intact in the transition, and they are worthy to be called Castlevania music. There are a few songs I prefer over Rondo of Blood like Ghost Ship Painting and Den, but it just cannot compete with the CD audio that made Rondo of Blood's soundtrack so excellent

The major culprit here is the level design. It is needlessly difficult and that's where my frustration came into play. Bottomless pits are back full force, and I cannot tell you how stupid the level design is in the second-half of the game. For some reason, there are no invincibility frames in this game, meaning I can get hit constantly by enemies, and it's more aggravating with the smaller ones like Bats and Medusa Heads. It's like if the developers looked at Stage 5' from Rondo of Blood and implement its bullshit difficulty to all of the levels

Stage 6 in my opinion is the worst level in the game. The first-half isn't awful, but the second-half can just fuck right off. In the vertical section, there are Spear Guards placed in very awkward positions with bats coming out from the right. They randomly spawn just to ruin Richter's day and I was not having it. After the vertical section, there are certain gears Richter has to jump to, but Skull Heads can easily mess you up, and they are a one-way ticket for plummeting to your death. I was also not having it with Death either, and most of my deaths were by his spin attack. All of this combined led to an exercise in frustration and using save states as my saving grace. I don't mind a challenge, and the level design could've been decent if they got rid of the unnecessary shit and add in invincibility frames, cause this is just poor level design in the later half

Lastly, who the hell designed the Dracula fight? Dracula in Rondo of Blood was a decent challenge, but did they really have to add bottomless pits into the mix? Just one wrong move and I plummet to my death. It also takes forever for Dracula to reach the destination you were expecting him to warp to in order to attack; so not only is this frustrating, it's also tedious. The best sub-weapon for this fight in particular is easily the Cross, and please save your hearts for his second form to trigger multiple item crashes that can drain his damage. This took me about an hour to finish him off with me mindlessly abusing the save state feature that takes me back to the beginning of the fight. This is easily the worst Dracula fight I've ever encountered so far, and I don't want to think of coming back to it

Castlevania: Dracula X is ok at best, but bullshit at worst. Comparing to its SNES predecessor, Super Castlevania IV, feels like a downgrade in mostly all departments. I want to say it was decent when I first started playing it, but I can't bring myself to do that. This was a painful experience, and this was not fun to play

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.