Rondo is the most stylish Classicvania and a generation ahead of its contemporaries by way of artistry and scope. It also made me realize I just do not find Classicvania fun.
Not enough can be said about the art production - it's on par and beyond some Saturn and PS1 titles. There's an animation and limited color theory prowess on display that gives human believability and dimension to its universe, supported further by tons of ambrosial expressions and flourishes. But I think it seeps too deep into enemy composition, as their patterns feel more obnoxious than threatening. Even with all the visual windup they have, it's really hard to anticipate where hitboxes start and stop. Flying enemies were a huge nuisance, pestering you while trying to take down larger targets. Their movements are erratic and unreadable - closer to realism than their primitive NES counterparts' sinewaves and such, but those mathematical traits are part of what makes them learnable and readable. Richter's moveset was a main grievance for me: The backflip and fixed aim movement are fun to use but didn't feel circumstantially effective. Fixed aim is super finicky given you have to hold attack, then release and press again to trigger it - it's not the game's fault and more a limitation of the PCE gamepad, but something that should've been fixed for Dracula X Chronicles and Requiem. Backflipping is satisfying when used as a reverse retreat tool against big soldiers or for finding goodies, but every boss that expects you to use it is miserable. It feels extremely unnatural to move backwards, release the d-pad, then backflip towards a boss to evade a hit. And damn what's up with the i-frames in this game? They're barely there. You get hit once and just careen off 3 other things and die.
Maria's extremely fun to control. On paper, her and Richter are the best execution of multiple characters in a Classicvania: A lead Belmont as the intended challenge and a side character that breaks those rules for a smoother romp. Maria's double-jumps, bird projectiles and slides are a perfect summation of tight NES/SNES-era character control, like a coked-out Sir Arthur with slide-dashes. But damn, I really wish some of her toolkit was implemented back into Richter's. Replaying stages after death just to retry the boss is a miserable slog, and I would've loved to just slide-dash my way back instead of having to re-do puzzle-like encounters that I've already proven I can pass.
Running Rondo on the PS4 Requiem collection also had some annoyances - no savestates was the big one, but also the readability of some events. The Death fight was near-impossible until I realized his schythes have a 1-pixel-wide point showing where they'll spawn - something that would pop and pulse out on CRT, but looked like a particle effect on HD with original aspect ratio. Dracula's easy compared to past outings, but trying to read the narrow timing on his fireballs and 2nd-phase jumps was a nightmare until I switched to fullscreen. My understanding is this is an emulation of the PSP source code ports included in Dracula X Chronicles off of Sony's own PSP emulation kit - hence why it's PS-exclusive. I couldn't notice any more lag than normally expected from a Dualshock, but with how often I was fucking up simple bits, I swear there must've been a frame or two extra (totally not a scrub, totally not a scrub, totally not a scrub). I've also heard there's issues in the SotN port specifically because of how the emulator interprets directional inputs, but I couldn't say one way or another if they also apply here.
This was a great experience for the cool factor but I admittedly wanted to stop by the time I reached stage 5. Just couldn't tell you why it doesn't click the way I expected it should. I'd like to go back to one of the NES Castlevania's soon so I could formulate a better case on why Classicvania is something I get in abstract but don't actually like playing.
Not enough can be said about the art production - it's on par and beyond some Saturn and PS1 titles. There's an animation and limited color theory prowess on display that gives human believability and dimension to its universe, supported further by tons of ambrosial expressions and flourishes. But I think it seeps too deep into enemy composition, as their patterns feel more obnoxious than threatening. Even with all the visual windup they have, it's really hard to anticipate where hitboxes start and stop. Flying enemies were a huge nuisance, pestering you while trying to take down larger targets. Their movements are erratic and unreadable - closer to realism than their primitive NES counterparts' sinewaves and such, but those mathematical traits are part of what makes them learnable and readable. Richter's moveset was a main grievance for me: The backflip and fixed aim movement are fun to use but didn't feel circumstantially effective. Fixed aim is super finicky given you have to hold attack, then release and press again to trigger it - it's not the game's fault and more a limitation of the PCE gamepad, but something that should've been fixed for Dracula X Chronicles and Requiem. Backflipping is satisfying when used as a reverse retreat tool against big soldiers or for finding goodies, but every boss that expects you to use it is miserable. It feels extremely unnatural to move backwards, release the d-pad, then backflip towards a boss to evade a hit. And damn what's up with the i-frames in this game? They're barely there. You get hit once and just careen off 3 other things and die.
Maria's extremely fun to control. On paper, her and Richter are the best execution of multiple characters in a Classicvania: A lead Belmont as the intended challenge and a side character that breaks those rules for a smoother romp. Maria's double-jumps, bird projectiles and slides are a perfect summation of tight NES/SNES-era character control, like a coked-out Sir Arthur with slide-dashes. But damn, I really wish some of her toolkit was implemented back into Richter's. Replaying stages after death just to retry the boss is a miserable slog, and I would've loved to just slide-dash my way back instead of having to re-do puzzle-like encounters that I've already proven I can pass.
Running Rondo on the PS4 Requiem collection also had some annoyances - no savestates was the big one, but also the readability of some events. The Death fight was near-impossible until I realized his schythes have a 1-pixel-wide point showing where they'll spawn - something that would pop and pulse out on CRT, but looked like a particle effect on HD with original aspect ratio. Dracula's easy compared to past outings, but trying to read the narrow timing on his fireballs and 2nd-phase jumps was a nightmare until I switched to fullscreen. My understanding is this is an emulation of the PSP source code ports included in Dracula X Chronicles off of Sony's own PSP emulation kit - hence why it's PS-exclusive. I couldn't notice any more lag than normally expected from a Dualshock, but with how often I was fucking up simple bits, I swear there must've been a frame or two extra (totally not a scrub, totally not a scrub, totally not a scrub). I've also heard there's issues in the SotN port specifically because of how the emulator interprets directional inputs, but I couldn't say one way or another if they also apply here.
This was a great experience for the cool factor but I admittedly wanted to stop by the time I reached stage 5. Just couldn't tell you why it doesn't click the way I expected it should. I'd like to go back to one of the NES Castlevania's soon so I could formulate a better case on why Classicvania is something I get in abstract but don't actually like playing.