From the classic castlevanias I played, this is the one I enjoyed least. The ones I finished are Castlevania 1 and Bloodlines. But I also played Castlevania 2, 3 and 4.

The player controls feel worse than in Castlevania 1. Enemies have a tendency to blend in the environments more than in the NES games, with a more limited color palette.

The game loves throwing at you a lot of enemies with multiple attacks that are selected at random, in a game where the health bar is tiny. The map design is typically very linear and uninteresting and doesn't gel well with the enemies you fight; they don't complement each other.

The only great things about this game are the music and art in my eyes. All the other classic castlevanias I played were better in my opinion.

This is largely known as one of the best of the classic Casltevanias, and it's honestly one of the biggest reasons I got my PCE Classic. I played through it for our Birds are Jerks Together Retro, and at Maru's pushing I then went and 100%'d the game, rescuing all the maidens and finishing all the stages. I'm gald he did, because it was really worthwhile! It's not the longest game in the world, nor is it the hardest Castlevania game out there, but it's still well worth going through.

The story is pretty bog-standard for a Castlevania game, Dracula's back and you gotta go give him his lumps again, but this game does spice things up a bit by adding some animated cutscenes with spoken dialogue using the POWER of the PC Engine's CD add on. An intro in German (with Japanese subtitles) as well as cutscenes and voicelines throughout the game help bring the story to life in a more entertaining way than prior Casltevania games. A lot of them are especially entertaining because the VA (when you can hear it, as it's very quiet due to PCE CD voice clips just not really emulating properly on modern televisions) is quite campy and silly (like how all the maidens Richter rescues are SO thirsty for him XD) and the animations used in them is often uncanny and unintentionally funny as well. It's a story that does the job of adding the set dressing, and it was fun to indulge in as someone who knows enough Japanese to know what they're saying.

This is a PC Engine game, so sadly the ability to throw a subweapon with a shoulder button is lost due to there only being 4 face buttons (including "run" and "select"), and the ability to whip in 8 directions is also scrapped from Castlevania 4, but the game plays great. It's still the case that there were a lot of times I ended up throwing weapons when I didn't mean to due to how the PCE's controller is a bit fiddly, but Richter always controlled well. This game even adds a second playable character, Maria, and once unlocked, she's basically an easy mode. She can double jump, has a weapon that does way more DPS, and has a sliding dash she can do. While it's a shame you need to unlock it, it's really awesome to have accessibility options, of a sort, in an old action game like this. And as an added cherry on top, Maria even gets her own versions of all the cutscenes for rescuing the other three maidens and beating Dracula.

The level design is top notch, and you never feel like you're getting horribly dicked over like so many of the earlier Castlevania games can feel like. Checkpoints feel fair as do bosses, and there was never a point I was frustrated to the point of wanting to just give up. After beating the game with Maria, I even went back to play most of the stages as Richter and had a lot more fun than I thought I would. There are a total of 13 stages (if you wanna count the prologue and the one that's just the Dracula fight as "stages") and they're all totally worth playing. Four of those are even hidden stages that you need to do certain requirements in each stage to find your way to, and the bosses guarding the secret stages are different from those guarding the normal stages. The hidden paths and cutscenes give the game a feeling of of being this sort of missing link between games like Castlevania 4 and later Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night, and that's really neat~.

What also makes this game feel like a missing link is the presentation. For the music, it's a greatest hits of the best of the old tracks as well as a bunch of new great ones. The soundtrack is heckin' excellent, and easily one of the highlights of the game. Looking towards the future, the graphics in this game are excellent pixel art, and it's art so excellent Konami would keep on using a LOT of them for as long as Igarashi was making Castlevania games. It was really uncanny seeing so many familiar sprites, from bosses to the simple medusa heads, that I knew so well from games that came out well over a decade after this one, and it just goes to show how well the presentation holds up (and how well asset reuse can serve those who wish to indulge in it, I suppose ;b).

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a game that I can easily say deserves its reputation as the height of classic Castlevanias, even dethroning my old favorite of Castlevania IV. Konami really outdid themselves with this one, and this is absolutely a must-play if you've already got a PC Engine Mini in some form, and if you don't have one of those already, then this is a pretty darn good reason to think about picking one up.

Perfeito, per-fei-to.
Superando seu antecessor Castlevnia IV, Rondo of Blood entrega o que é talvez a melhor experiência que se pode ter com um classicvania, os níveis fluem que é uma beleza, nenhum desafio é injusto, todos os bosses são interessantes e possuem mecânicas bem implementadas, cutscenes animadas extremamente carismáticas, jogar de Maria Renard é uma delícia (acho até melhor que o Richter); e além de tudo isso, o jogo possui múltiplos caminhos, os quais com certeza irei experimentar depois.
Infelizmente joguei a versão do Requiem de PS4, que é uma bosta e sem nenhuma vantagem de emulação, mas de forma alguma desmerece essa pérola.

After a succession of 9 games in the Castlevania series (yes, for some reason Konami counted Vampire Killer and Haunted Castle), each game making variations to the original formula in its own way, comes Castlevania X: Rondo of Blood, which is a return to the basic gameplay and also serves as a sort of tribute to all the Castlevania games up to that point, a game that came to the PC Engine exclusively for Japan in 1993.

I'll start by talking about what makes this game so satisfying to play, and that is that everything is super polished, calibrated and refined in every aspect, from tiny things like the speed at which Richter and the enemies move (which is a bit faster than past installments), to things like a very well constructed level design. All Castlevania games up to this point have always had parts that are designed to make you fail or trip you up the first time, often feeling unfair, however, in this game even though a bit of trial and error is required, every challenge from the levels themselves to the bosses feel like a perfectly balanced obstacle to be challenging, yet fair, to the point that it's easy to get hooked on this game as each attempt can lead to discovering the rest of the stage until you finally get to beat it.

Rondo of Blood simplifies many aspects of the gameplay, as there is less emphasis on the point system and the upgrades for the whip are completely eliminated in pursuit of having the whip at its maximum level from the beginning, not to mention that the limiter on the number of times you can use a sub-weapon no longer exists and now you can throw them as many times as you want (as long as you have enough hearts). And thanks to that the sub-weapons actually have a more prominent role in this game, as they were slightly re-balanced in terms of behavior, not to mention that when you pick one up, you can go back to the previous one in case you did it by mistake, making the game allow you to carry your favorites always and allow you to plan better strategies for the levels in some cases. Also, Richter can perform a "super-attack" with each of the sub-weapons, which despite consuming a lot of hearts, can save you on more than one occasion and is a pretty cool addition.

Still, there are small changes in the character control, which if you master well, can reward your skill. Richter can perform backflips if you press the button to jump at the right time while in the middle of a straight jump, and also be able to jump up stairs and jump when you're on them, as well as instantly jump down at any time. Also, while you can't redirect your jumps completely, you can redirect where Richter is looking, which makes it so you can jump backwards while flipping in the opposite direction to attack, and if you do a normal jump without moving backwards or forwards, you can slightly change the position you might fall into. I may have gone into too much detail when talking about this, but the way you move has always been a very important aspect, and it's partly these little tweaks and additions that make the gameplay feel so good despite keeping the classic control scheme.

The aesthetic of this game is timeless and perfectly captures the 90s era in all its glory. Certainly the fact that at the time it was a Japanese-only release makes this section have more explicit religious references, and above all, it was what allowed it to have those anime-style cutscenes (which feature voice acting!), which even though I'm more a fan of the somber and mystical atmosphere that Castlevania IV was trying to build, I won't deny that these little pixel art cinematics inspired by the anime of the time also have their charm. Graphically it's not as impressive as the aforementioned SNES title or Castlevania for Shap X68000, however, the artistic style of this game ages better by having a more refined pixel art that wisely combines bright colors with dark colors to give life to the scenarios, and the enemies in this installment look so good, that many of these sprites could be used even more than 10 years later in the installments released for the DS. I almost forgot, but mention to the simplified interface of this game that re-designs the old one so that the score, vitality and what sub-weapons you have can be displayed in an elegant way while covering less screen space compared to the old interface.

One of the things I love most about this title is the variety of stages it has to offer. Thanks to the fact that this game hides a series of secret levels, it can allow itself the freedom of having the typical castle levels, but also levels in which even the weather of the day is sunny, and it is quite entertaining to explore these levels to find the secret exits.

And finally, one of the best aspects of this game is undoubtedly its soundtrack, which thanks to the fact that the game is in CD format, has an extremely high fidelity and does not compare to anything of the time, just listen to this (Bloody Tears). This game has a lot of good remixes of songs from previous games, but it also has many new songs like Illusionary Dance, which is the melody that sounds when you face Dracula and instantly became an icon of the franchise, or my favorite;Opposing Bloodlines, the Richter's main theme and a piece that captures very well the essence of this game; classic enough to not clash with the setting, but at the same time modern, lively and even a little heroic.

Conclusion
And well, needless to say, this game is really solid and I dare say one of the best platformers of the 90s. Rondo of Blood doesn't innovate in gameplay, as it goes back to the basic gameplay as I mentioned before, however it perfects it to such a level that it is considered by many (including me) as the pinnacle of the classic Castlevania games.

And well, I'm glad to have finally reviewed this game, although for the moment I think this will be the last time I'll play it again, because I've already played it so many times, that if I did it once more, I would prefer it to be in its PSP remake, which I personally adore and consider it as the definitive version of Rondo of Blood, but that's a review for another day...

Anyway, play this game if you want to experience a good classic Castlevania, whether it's your first time or your twentieth, rest assured you'll have a spectacular time.