1 review liked by alpuca
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.
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.