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.

If Bloodlines felt like a step back in progression, Dracula X feels like getting hit by a Medusa Head while jumping over a pit. The series had been seeing some fairly incremental progress in intelligent design choices way back at Castlevania III. Even entries I was less fond of, such as Super Castlevania IV, were able to shake up the formula with their own unique attributes. Dracula X feels like it should be slotting in much earlier in the franchise, as opposed to being the final release before the series would take a drastic shift in structure. A lot of disdain from this game will be leveled at the technicality of it being a watered down port of Rondo of Blood. This is somewhat fair, as they are designed to tell the same story, and Americans were unfortunately never given the chance to experience one of the better Castlevania games in it's purest of forms, at least for a while. But beyond some aesthetic similarities, particularly through the use of the same box art, these games are wildly different. The SNES just isn't as powerful as the CD Engine, so some of the more creative and memorable points of Rondo of Blood have been wildly trimmed down or even completely removed. You have very little in the way of combat options, and the level design is pretty flat all things considered. It feels almost rushed out in order to keep the series' pulse up between major efforts. Despite everything, it's still a fun and mechanically satisfying game, but Castlevania III, Super Castlevania IV, Chronicles, Rondo of Blood, and Bloodlines all take far more interesting approaches to the formula that simply aren't present in Dracula X, despite being the newest entry of such choices. But Dracula X does have the benefit of including the most absurd final boss design ever. What the fuck was that? 3/6

Man, fuck this version. Rondo is one of the best games in the series and this is one of the worst, even though it uses the same sprites and so on and, on the surface, looks like it's the same game. Everything has been changed for the worse and everything has been made annoying as fuck. Literally constant medusa heads and bats. Richter is even slower and tankier than in Rondo. Pits everywhere, including in the absolutely absurd final fight. There is absolutely no reason to ever play this game and I really don't know why they decided to torture us with this version in the Advance Collection.

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

Dracula X was an excellent game to play right off of the heels of the original Castlevania. It improves upon the Castlevania formula while still maintaining the formula that made the original so much fun. The art, music and overall aesthetic are improved, opting for more of an arcade-y feel instead of the camp of the original (which I have mixed feelings about). My only issue lies with some of the ridiculous difficulty and crazy checkpointing toward the end. I ended up throwing up my hands at the final boss and using save states because the walk was so long and tedious. Overall a ton of fun though!

It's a classic Castlevania game, yet a very forgettable one. While it's gameplay is what I prefer for Castlevania, and I did enjoy what I played, nothing particularly stuck with me after beating it. Mind you, I played the Super Nintendo version, and I'm told the PC Engine version is far superior.

That being said, Dracula X for the SNES is a very standard game. Richter is cool; he can do a backflip! It's versatility can't be understated, and I enjoyed skipping platforming and getting to higher areas with its use, but you can stop using it after a while. The entire game doesn't need to be designed around the backflip, but a handful of extra use-cases for it would've gone a long way. Ultimately, the best part of this game is its music, but even that's 1upped by the PC Engine counterpart.

At the end of the day, I'd rather play the NES original, but maybe I'm in the minority on that one.