This is one of the best 2D action games I've ever played. The act of play feels fantastic with rock solid, responsive controls. Richter's personality comes through with his still stiff, but more acrobatic moveset when compared to previous Castlevania protagonists. And as a secondary playable character, Maria takes this acrobatic control to greater heights.

The pixel art is evocative and lends a sense of place to the environments you traverse. The soundtrack has already jumped into my favorites.

And for a 2D action game, Rondo of Blood gives you an incredible amount of freedom. There are secret alternative routes through stages, alternative levels and bosses, and plenty of secrets to find. This game is an incredible achievement, and I can see myself replaying it many times in the years to come.

Favorite Tracks: All of them??? Fine, I'll choose a few.

Bloodlines (Stage 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR0UjAQIX6E&list=PL60B3A83F3AAC6E44&index=3

Cross a Fear (Stage 2a): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT6PC3z-BLA&list=PL60B3A83F3AAC6E44&index=4

Beginning (Stage 4b): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbObVMYy3yg&list=PL60B3A83F3AAC6E44&index=9

Opus 13 (Stage 5b): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1dRzjA_Xlc&list=PL60B3A83F3AAC6E44&index=11

One of the most gorgeous sounding and looking games of 1993. The sprite work here is incredible and it's no surprise that they would end up being copy/pasted into Symphony of the Night. It takes full advantage of the CD audio to deliver some really memorable music.

The gameplay feels like closer to Bloodlines than IV with its faster pace, but there are a few refinements. Castlevania finally does away with respawning enemies so no more taking two steps back and having to deal with that damn skeleton again. The bosses are all pretty memorable and fun to fight. The difficulty is somewhere between IV and Bloodlines - not quite as hard as Bloodlines but definitely harder than IV.

There's some branching paths and a few extras. Maria mode is a ton of fun making some really tricky parts of the game extremely trivial with her slide and double jump. Her super attacks can make humorously short work of the bosses as well.

This is a game that certainly deserves its reputation. This is the finest 2D Castlevania from this era.

You ever play a game that just fucking rocks? A game where every little thing about it feels precisely designed to make you (yes, you!) go “oh, HELL yeah!” at the screen? The type of game where each component doesn’t just work well, but works with such bravado that it feels like you’re discovering just how cool games can be for the first time? Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is one such game, a true 90s action kickassterpiece if ever there was one.

Where to even begin, man. As soon as you press start, Rondo bowls you over with just how stylish it all is. The pixel art is so vibrant and crisp, the cutscenes have this rad 80s OVA aesthetic, there’s so many little details and flashy effects. Backgrounds are more layered than ever, enemies move with such clarity and fluidity, and Richter has just the gnarliest fucking death animation I ever done saw. And the music, my god, THE MUSIC! This has gotta be my favorite Castlevania soundtrack yet, that extra CD space gets put to work. Everything about this game’s presentation just tickles my brain in exactly the way I want it to. It reminded me a lot of how completely Megaman X4 overwhelmed me with its aesthetics, a comparison I do NOT make lightly. Coming off of how vague and unspecific Super Castlevania IV’s art direction was, this just felt like a huge shot in the arm.

And hey, not to be a hater or nothing, but the gameplay is also a marked improvement over Super IV. I could appreciate that game’s attempts at shaking things up in theory, but Rondo feels like a much truer expansion of the Castlevania formula. You have a little more mid-air control, but your jump arc is still very stiff. Richter can get more height using a new backflip move, but that requires a quick button combo and plenty of screen clearance to use effectively. Your whip has more range and no longer needs to be upgraded, but still has a slight delay and can only hit directly in front of you. This necessitates the use of subweapons, which now let you choose between the weapon you already had and the one you just got. Subweapons now each allow access to a unique screen nuke move at the cost of more hearts, adding a layer of spectacle and strategy to an old mechanic. You can jump onto staircases like in Super IV, but you can jump out of them as well, making stairs actually responsive for the first time in series history. These are thoughtful, intelligent changes that streamline the way the game plays without disrupting that strict, purposeful Castlevania feel. It feels intuitive without losing any intentionality.

It also helps that these levels just rip so much ass, dude. Most of them are new spins on familiar locales—castle interiors, ghost ships, clock towers, even the village from Simon’s Quest makes an appearance—but with the production values increased and a greater emphasis on memorable setpieces. That’s the stage with the giant candles, that’s the stage where the whole town is on fire, that’s the stage with the giant bull that chases you! The whole thing feels very cinematic, in the same way that Castlevania I and III strived for but with the hardware to take it even further. The level design itself is also pitch-perfect. Enemies are a lot more aggressive than past games with more varied attack patterns, but they all have very clear telegraphs and are always placed where you can see them. It’s tough, especially considering how brief your invincibility frames are, but it never feels brutal. Haste and hesitation are the real killers here, and you’re given plenty of room to learn how to get through each level without relying on them. It’s a game that wants you to succeed and gives you all the tools to do so. It captures that oh-so-satisfying Castlevania game loop where every stage seems insurmountable at first, but with each attempt you get better and better until it becomes second nature. It took me forever to beat Dracula the first time, but when I realized I had forgotten to save Annette and had to redo the final battle to get the good ending, I took him down in only 2 or 3 attempts. Everything just feels so well-balanced, and the sense of skill progression is so, so rewarding.

And hey, speaking of replayability, that’s another huge thing Rondo of Blood has going for it! Most levels have branching pathways, secret exits to alternate stages, hidden maidens to rescue, and all kinds of little goodies buried in the nooks and crannies. I absolutely LOVE this kind of shit, scouring stages for unlockables is like my not-so-secret kink. I really like the addition of alternate stages in particular, it allows you a lot of flexibility with how you make your way to the final areas, but only as a reward for engaging with the level design first. Dracula's Curse experimented with something similar, but I much prefer its integration here since you can backtrack and see everything all in one playthrough.

Of course you can’t talk about replayability without discussing our two playable characters. Our Belmont for this adventure is Richter, and he’s handily my favorite of his clan yet. Simon has a special place in my heart, but Richter just has so much more personality. He’s as much a hero of destiny as any of his ancestors but with a more lighthearted, even dorky demeanor I find really endearing. Also that design with the headband and the torn sleeves absolutely rocks. But if you're tired of macho Belmont action, you could also play as Maria Renard, a twelve-year old girl who fights the hordes of evil using her magical animal friends. Maria is the best, aesthetically she feels like she belongs to an entirely different game (to the point she looks superimposed in her own cutscenes and her game over screen looks like Panel de Pon) which is a gag made all the more funny by just how much stronger than the Belmonts she is. She takes more damage than Richter but moves much faster, has a bird-boomerang attack that shreds through enemies, gets a double jump that makes platforming a breeze, and her animal buddy item crashes are totally busted. Her inclusion is likely intended as an “easy mode” of sorts, but it’s so fleshed out it hardly feels demeaning. You can see the entire game with Maria and she plays so differently that even if you prefer Richter’s challenge, it’s worth retrying stages to see how she fares. I tended to go through stages as Richter first, switching to Maria when I was backtracking for secret exits or to get through particularly tough platforming gauntlets. I really like how she’s implemented here, you have to find her hidden away in stage 2 to unlock her first. It’s a nice way to incentivize exploration, and happens early enough that you gain a feel for how Richter controls first while still having the option to use Maria for the much harder levels to come. Rondo of Blood is really dedicated to letting you play how you want to, and that’s something I really appreciate.

If I try to write anymore it’ll just devolve into unintelligible gushing but yeah, Rondo of Blood is a sweet ass game. Cool as fuck, super fun, and with a great amount of player freedom. It’s the Castlevania I’ve come to know and love but with so much more style and depth to really keep me coming back. Without a doubt my favorite Castlevania so far–this is the new gold standard.

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.

Rondo of Blood is my favourite classic Castlevania, and the remaining titles I’ve yet to play don’t seem likely to change that. Releasing only two years after Super Castlevania IV, also on a 16-bit console, there is a surprising leap in audiovisual quality. This was due to Rondo of Blood being one of the first games released on CD format. This is fascinating as it meant that Rondo of Blood could feature CD quality music, as well as charming anime style cutscenes with fittingly corny and compressed voice acting all while still being a 2D side-scroller. These cutscenes still look great on the small display of a handheld device despite the limited animation, the best of these is the opening montage which establishes the simple premise of the game and acts as a bit of a hype reel for our new Belmont, Richter. Watching this after booting up the game for testing purposes skyrocketed it to the top of the games, I was interested in playing next and was what got me to consider Castlevania games pre- Symphony of the Night.

The first stage immediately makes an impression on you with a flashy confrontation with Death on top of a moving chariot, a significant step up in sprite work is clear, from the galloping horses pulling you along to the expressive animations of Death himself as he goads Richter, wagging his finger before vanishing from sight. God, I love parallax scrolling, Dracula’s castle just visible in the distance above the trees. The detail in this scene alone is astonishing, pure 16-bit perfection. After a fade to black you make it to the burning village in the opening, another beautiful intertitle slides in, reading “Dinner of Flames” before it dissolves away and the triumphant Blood Relations of Heaven and Earth kicks in, you step forward watching Richter’s Chad walk animation cycle gloriously, you whip the skeletons in front of you and smile, this is Castlevania at it’s peak.

The game ceases to lose this momentum one bit, as each successive stage introduces new locales that are colourful and distinct, alongside new enemies and exhilarating boss battles, which are some of the best designed encounters in any 2D game, certainly the finest in the series. The level design is excellent with lots of verticality and secrets to uncover, enemy placement is challenging but the stages are the perfect length for you to lock in for, without it feeling exhausting, this also mitigates frustration if you get a game over on a boss and have to restart the Stage, as it cuts down on the run back to attempt the battle again. Another improvement Rondo makes is in the removal of frequent insta death pits present in other entries, which can be extremely easy to fall into thanks to knock back and poor enemy placement which often times cannot be reacted to without foresight. Now in Rondo a lot of these ‘would be’ insta death pits lead to alternate paths, adding an element of exploration absent in previous titles, investigating these alternate paths, whipping suspicious blocks, can lead to entirely different alternate stages with hidden maidens to rescue and new bosses that are exclusive to them. I found myself liking the return to the two directional whip as it encourages you to learn effective sub-weapon usage and diagonals aren’t aways consistent on certain D-pads, because of this there is a form of resource management as you collect fuel for these in the form of hearts dropped from candlesticks, conserving hearts is important in giving yourself the upper hand against the concluding boss of each stage as the more your enter the arena with, the more Item Crashes you can unleash. Item Crashes are ultimate moves that you can perform with enough hearts, they launch you into the air where you perform an attack that reflects the current sub-weapon in your possession, these last a long time and deal lots of damage, and depending on the sub weapon can hit the boss when he is out of reach, they can also be used tactically to deal damage while avoiding incoming damage from attacks that cover a large area or are hard to avoid. Some more minor improvements Rondo makes is the ability to jump on stairs and pick up sub-weapons after they’ve been replaced, these changes sound small on paper but they make a huge difference, especially the latter as it allows you to be more tactical in what sub weapon you bring along with you whilst letting you optimise heart collection from candlesticks without worrying about losing you current sub-weapon.

In conclusion Rondo of Blood is a great entry point for the fans of the succeeding non-linear Castlevanias willing to explore the series roots. Rondo of Blood is one of the finest games of its era, sadly overlooked due to it lacking a worldwide release until many years later, with truly incredible stage design, boss battles and a spectacular soundtrack that is one of only two in the series that isn’t constrained by hardware limitations. It’s absolutely an essential play.

primeiro os elogios: visual bonito, trilha sonora muito boa e as ideias de gameplay são ótimas

a parte ruim: game design questionável com um sistema de game over que envelheceu mal, várias fases chatas e os bosses são ruins, além de desnecessariamente punitivo (o que é diferente de ser difícil, porque gosto bastante de jogos difíceis). O problema tá em mim? Talvez, eu queria de verdade ter gostado e entender o hype desse jogo, na parte técnica ele é impecável, mas o jogo em si achei muito mid, real não vejo essa qualidade que falam. Por enquanto desisto com 5 fases jogadas, mas quem sabe algum dia eu volte

Truly a great game. Fun, smooth innovative and has that special sausce that makes a great game. It never feels to tedious and I found myself replaying levels to 100% without any sense of time wasted. Music is great but not the best the series has to offer. The remixes are better than Super Castlevania IV. I got a little confused first when I didn't realize that in the main menu you could go back to levels to try different paths and I was woried of a repeat of Castlevania 3 and having to replay the whole game to get the full experience.
What I really liked:
The multiple endings and cut scenes were really nice.
What I wish was different:
A way to go to change levels and characters mid game without a system restart.
What I didn't like:
I didn't like the movement controls going backwards. No whip tricks, crawling.
I felt the backflip was cool but Maria proved they could have had a cool movement set for both characters.
Next review I am going to try a new format.