(This is the 92nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
My experience with the Castlevania series is still very limited. I checked out Castlevania III from 1989, but jumped off it pretty quickly due to what I perceived to be a ridiculously high and unfair difficulty. Then I played Super Castlevania IV from 1991, which still is one of my favorite games from this challenge and a great game in general. In hindsight, having learned a bit more about classic Castlevania since, I understand why fans of the 8 and 16-bit Castlevania games have some issues with Super Castlevania IV, but from an 'outsiders perspective', it is a great game, even if it isn't the 'best Castlevania experience'.
To this day, I thought that that was for the best, and that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the game if it were another classic Castlevania experience, at least based on my experience playing Castlevania III. Luckily, that fear has proven to be overblown after I recently played and beat Castlevania: Bloodlines, which is your typical Castlevania experience. It released on March 17 1994 exlusively for the Sega Genesis and would be just one of two Castlevania games to ever grace a Sega system alongside Symphony of the Night in 1997. Despite this, I'd say Castlevania Bloodlines is among the best games the Sega Genesis ever produced.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
There is the usual amount of story in this Castlevania game that you would expect. The manual does a great job of providing you with the information on the setting, though an in-game cutscene explains it as well.
It tells the often-told tale of the Belmonts fighting Count Dracula in Transylvania. It also adds that a certain Quincy Morris finished Count Dracula off in 1897, but was fatally wounded during the battle as well. His son, John Morris, and John's friend Eric Lecarde witnessed the fight and would go on to become vampire killers themselves as they grew older. Those skills would be put to the test in this game, as "Elizabeth Bartley", a 'regal countess' who was found guilty of killing a man in 1421 by biting him in the neck, was brought back to life and looks to bring back Dracula as well.
As the game starts, you pick one of the two characters to fight with, after which a great shot is shown of them looking at Dracula's castle from the entrance. Here is where the game begins. From then on, there is little story that is being told. Environmental storytelling is the main thing you will get here, as well as the typical final shot of Dracula's mansion collapsing. The introduction of these two new characters is also nice. John Morris is equipped with the typical whip, while Eric has a spear.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is your typical Castlevania experience. In a 2D environment, you move through levels equipped with a weapon, either the whip or the spear depending on the character you pick at the start, and try to defeat all the enemies and environmental challenges until you reach the boss of a stage. As per usual, this game requires the player to time their movement and strikes well in order to hit the enemy while also avoiding hits yourself. Unlike Super Castlevania, you can't strike in 8 directions anymore, your horizontal attacks are solely supplemented by diagonal attacks upwards only if you jump this time, giving this a more traditional gameplay feel and challenge.
Where the game shines in my opinion, even compared to Castlevania III which I personally didn't enjoy, is that it gets a great balance between difficutly and fairness. This is not designed like a 8-bit rental game, where aritifical difficulty was used to entice players to purchase the game themselves. The game has a higher than normal difficulty here as well, even on Easy, but nearly every challenge in this game has no BS in it and can be beaten simply by playing and learning the game.
There are four power-ups you can use in this game, which is I believe lower than the typical amount, and all of them feel useful here. There is the boomerang, which can be thrown from a pretty safe distance but only moves forward, not up or down. There is the battle axe, which can be thrown in an arc. There is the sacred water, which produces an effect that shoots through nearly the entire level if used as a special attack, making it the most powerful. It expires pretty fast though, while the other power-ups can be thrown as often as the crystals you collected allow (here used as 'ammo', like hearts in other Castlevania games).
Boss fights are great here, as well as the mini-boss fights throughout the stages. Each of them feels different and offers a unique challenge, which never felt like a daunting task like many other games of the early 90s made me feel like. The bosses have specific attack patterns which can change once you have dealt enough damage, and all of them can be dodged fairly reliably once you figure it out. The only boss that gave me real trouble was the last one, but even that one is definitely doable, it may just take a dozen or so tries.
Overall, this was one of the more enjoyable games to simply play because it flows so well, and while there are those thousand deaths you experience because of gravity (featuring enemies that push you off platforms), they rarely feel infuriating because almost all of the time, you actually feel like you can easily avoid it.
There are Easy and Normal difficulties to choose from at the start. I beat it on Easy, but I got pretty far on Normal as well, where enemies mainly appear more often and some are a bit more aggressive. I've read that this game is considered to be one of the more difficult Castlevania games, but I surprisingly think it's not that horrible, unless it's being compared to more modern Castlevania games, which I have not played yet. You have limited Continues and lives in this game, which is a big part of the issue I imagine. I played with those, but you can give yourself 4 additional lives per continue by using a cheat you can find on GameFAQs.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. Once again, Castlevania Bloodlines gives us a banger Castlevania soundtrack. Probably the part I most looked forward to with this game was to listen to the soundtrack after Super Castlevania IV's soundtrack become one of my favorites ever. It helped that that game reused beloved tracks from the other Castlevania games, and the same is true here for Castlevania Bloodlines, but it brings plenty of original tracks forward that I would gladly relisten to outside of the game (I'm doing that as I am writing this) and has a great soundtrack overall. I wouldn't say it's quite on the level of Super Castlevania IV but I'm confident it will be among my favorites of 94 regardless.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
One of the more impressive games on the Genesis visually. You travel across Europe in this game, and that comes through not just because the game tells you that you are in Italy or Germany but because the environments are so varied. Add to this that there is the typical gothic and medieval Castlevania style here and it just works really well. Backgrounds are detailed and just bring this all together well to create the perfect backdrop for a vampiric adventure. On top of this, the sprite work is really good. For many bosses, you can clearly see how each of their limbs work independently from each other and this effect works really well once they take damage and lose their arms and the weapons they were holding until they ultimately collapse. A great graphical showing for its time.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Castlevania games have such a great atmosphere. During this time of video gaming where 95% of games would go for light-hearted tones, games like Shin Megami Tensei, Metroid and Castlevania truly are a treat for someone who likes more mature tones. Castlevania Bloodlines creates an atmosphere equally gloomy and haunting as the rest of the series, and the trip through Europe that you take in this game just adds to it really well.
CONTENT | 8/10
You might fault this game for being a bit on the shorter side, and for re-using those few final bosses for a boss-rush at the end instead of creating more unique ones, as well as the more limited number of different enemies present here, but I thought the length was pretty good from today's perspective and overall the quality of the content that is available is pretty high. Three difficulty modes and two characters to choose from which create branching paths offer plenty of time sink material in this game as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Castlevania Bloodlines does a fantastic job with its levels, both because the challenges within them are, despite their difficulty, quite fair and because the challenges themselves are very varied. No stage feels alike and offers something new to overcome all the time, while regularly fitting really well with the setting the game provides. There is the stage for example where you need to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa while it moves from side to side, or the final stage where a distortion is created which displaces the upper and lower portions of the stage and make traversal really challenging in a unique way.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
It's your typical Castlevania experience, and while I wouldn't say that it has grown stale at this point at all (though I'm looking at it from a 2023 perspective after having played just two of the games), the game also doesn't really innovate a ton here. What it does do though is provide a great Castlevania experience with great visuals, unique bosses and level design and the introduction of two new characters, one of which uses a pretty unusual weapon for a Castlevania game, the spear, which ends up opening new routes due to its special skill of letting Eric jump upwards. So while it's not an innovative concept, Konami did a great job of making it feel fresh and like its own thing that is equal to all other beloved Castlevania games in my opinion.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
You can beat this game with two characters and use their unique abilities to take two different routes and face different bosses and environments. This gives it plenty of replay value after beating it for the first time. Once you beat it (or if you use a cheat), you can go through the game again on Expert difficulty as well.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
Castlevania: Bloodlines is a great entry into the Castlevania franchise. It succeeds in its gameplay, level design, atmosphere and soundtrack, just like all the best Castlevania games seem to do, and it does so without presenting an unfair challenge for the majority of the game and while requiring the player to overcome obstacles that feel consistently different enough to make each stage feel unique and keep the gameplay interesting. I recommend it to every platformer and retro gaming fan, though the difficulty may be off-putting to players who aren't accustomed to retro games, and there is pretty much no story to speak of here, like in most platformers of its time.
My experience with the Castlevania series is still very limited. I checked out Castlevania III from 1989, but jumped off it pretty quickly due to what I perceived to be a ridiculously high and unfair difficulty. Then I played Super Castlevania IV from 1991, which still is one of my favorite games from this challenge and a great game in general. In hindsight, having learned a bit more about classic Castlevania since, I understand why fans of the 8 and 16-bit Castlevania games have some issues with Super Castlevania IV, but from an 'outsiders perspective', it is a great game, even if it isn't the 'best Castlevania experience'.
To this day, I thought that that was for the best, and that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the game if it were another classic Castlevania experience, at least based on my experience playing Castlevania III. Luckily, that fear has proven to be overblown after I recently played and beat Castlevania: Bloodlines, which is your typical Castlevania experience. It released on March 17 1994 exlusively for the Sega Genesis and would be just one of two Castlevania games to ever grace a Sega system alongside Symphony of the Night in 1997. Despite this, I'd say Castlevania Bloodlines is among the best games the Sega Genesis ever produced.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
There is the usual amount of story in this Castlevania game that you would expect. The manual does a great job of providing you with the information on the setting, though an in-game cutscene explains it as well.
It tells the often-told tale of the Belmonts fighting Count Dracula in Transylvania. It also adds that a certain Quincy Morris finished Count Dracula off in 1897, but was fatally wounded during the battle as well. His son, John Morris, and John's friend Eric Lecarde witnessed the fight and would go on to become vampire killers themselves as they grew older. Those skills would be put to the test in this game, as "Elizabeth Bartley", a 'regal countess' who was found guilty of killing a man in 1421 by biting him in the neck, was brought back to life and looks to bring back Dracula as well.
As the game starts, you pick one of the two characters to fight with, after which a great shot is shown of them looking at Dracula's castle from the entrance. Here is where the game begins. From then on, there is little story that is being told. Environmental storytelling is the main thing you will get here, as well as the typical final shot of Dracula's mansion collapsing. The introduction of these two new characters is also nice. John Morris is equipped with the typical whip, while Eric has a spear.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is your typical Castlevania experience. In a 2D environment, you move through levels equipped with a weapon, either the whip or the spear depending on the character you pick at the start, and try to defeat all the enemies and environmental challenges until you reach the boss of a stage. As per usual, this game requires the player to time their movement and strikes well in order to hit the enemy while also avoiding hits yourself. Unlike Super Castlevania, you can't strike in 8 directions anymore, your horizontal attacks are solely supplemented by diagonal attacks upwards only if you jump this time, giving this a more traditional gameplay feel and challenge.
Where the game shines in my opinion, even compared to Castlevania III which I personally didn't enjoy, is that it gets a great balance between difficutly and fairness. This is not designed like a 8-bit rental game, where aritifical difficulty was used to entice players to purchase the game themselves. The game has a higher than normal difficulty here as well, even on Easy, but nearly every challenge in this game has no BS in it and can be beaten simply by playing and learning the game.
There are four power-ups you can use in this game, which is I believe lower than the typical amount, and all of them feel useful here. There is the boomerang, which can be thrown from a pretty safe distance but only moves forward, not up or down. There is the battle axe, which can be thrown in an arc. There is the sacred water, which produces an effect that shoots through nearly the entire level if used as a special attack, making it the most powerful. It expires pretty fast though, while the other power-ups can be thrown as often as the crystals you collected allow (here used as 'ammo', like hearts in other Castlevania games).
Boss fights are great here, as well as the mini-boss fights throughout the stages. Each of them feels different and offers a unique challenge, which never felt like a daunting task like many other games of the early 90s made me feel like. The bosses have specific attack patterns which can change once you have dealt enough damage, and all of them can be dodged fairly reliably once you figure it out. The only boss that gave me real trouble was the last one, but even that one is definitely doable, it may just take a dozen or so tries.
Overall, this was one of the more enjoyable games to simply play because it flows so well, and while there are those thousand deaths you experience because of gravity (featuring enemies that push you off platforms), they rarely feel infuriating because almost all of the time, you actually feel like you can easily avoid it.
There are Easy and Normal difficulties to choose from at the start. I beat it on Easy, but I got pretty far on Normal as well, where enemies mainly appear more often and some are a bit more aggressive. I've read that this game is considered to be one of the more difficult Castlevania games, but I surprisingly think it's not that horrible, unless it's being compared to more modern Castlevania games, which I have not played yet. You have limited Continues and lives in this game, which is a big part of the issue I imagine. I played with those, but you can give yourself 4 additional lives per continue by using a cheat you can find on GameFAQs.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. Once again, Castlevania Bloodlines gives us a banger Castlevania soundtrack. Probably the part I most looked forward to with this game was to listen to the soundtrack after Super Castlevania IV's soundtrack become one of my favorites ever. It helped that that game reused beloved tracks from the other Castlevania games, and the same is true here for Castlevania Bloodlines, but it brings plenty of original tracks forward that I would gladly relisten to outside of the game (I'm doing that as I am writing this) and has a great soundtrack overall. I wouldn't say it's quite on the level of Super Castlevania IV but I'm confident it will be among my favorites of 94 regardless.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
One of the more impressive games on the Genesis visually. You travel across Europe in this game, and that comes through not just because the game tells you that you are in Italy or Germany but because the environments are so varied. Add to this that there is the typical gothic and medieval Castlevania style here and it just works really well. Backgrounds are detailed and just bring this all together well to create the perfect backdrop for a vampiric adventure. On top of this, the sprite work is really good. For many bosses, you can clearly see how each of their limbs work independently from each other and this effect works really well once they take damage and lose their arms and the weapons they were holding until they ultimately collapse. A great graphical showing for its time.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Castlevania games have such a great atmosphere. During this time of video gaming where 95% of games would go for light-hearted tones, games like Shin Megami Tensei, Metroid and Castlevania truly are a treat for someone who likes more mature tones. Castlevania Bloodlines creates an atmosphere equally gloomy and haunting as the rest of the series, and the trip through Europe that you take in this game just adds to it really well.
CONTENT | 8/10
You might fault this game for being a bit on the shorter side, and for re-using those few final bosses for a boss-rush at the end instead of creating more unique ones, as well as the more limited number of different enemies present here, but I thought the length was pretty good from today's perspective and overall the quality of the content that is available is pretty high. Three difficulty modes and two characters to choose from which create branching paths offer plenty of time sink material in this game as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Castlevania Bloodlines does a fantastic job with its levels, both because the challenges within them are, despite their difficulty, quite fair and because the challenges themselves are very varied. No stage feels alike and offers something new to overcome all the time, while regularly fitting really well with the setting the game provides. There is the stage for example where you need to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa while it moves from side to side, or the final stage where a distortion is created which displaces the upper and lower portions of the stage and make traversal really challenging in a unique way.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
It's your typical Castlevania experience, and while I wouldn't say that it has grown stale at this point at all (though I'm looking at it from a 2023 perspective after having played just two of the games), the game also doesn't really innovate a ton here. What it does do though is provide a great Castlevania experience with great visuals, unique bosses and level design and the introduction of two new characters, one of which uses a pretty unusual weapon for a Castlevania game, the spear, which ends up opening new routes due to its special skill of letting Eric jump upwards. So while it's not an innovative concept, Konami did a great job of making it feel fresh and like its own thing that is equal to all other beloved Castlevania games in my opinion.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
You can beat this game with two characters and use their unique abilities to take two different routes and face different bosses and environments. This gives it plenty of replay value after beating it for the first time. Once you beat it (or if you use a cheat), you can go through the game again on Expert difficulty as well.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
Castlevania: Bloodlines is a great entry into the Castlevania franchise. It succeeds in its gameplay, level design, atmosphere and soundtrack, just like all the best Castlevania games seem to do, and it does so without presenting an unfair challenge for the majority of the game and while requiring the player to overcome obstacles that feel consistently different enough to make each stage feel unique and keep the gameplay interesting. I recommend it to every platformer and retro gaming fan, though the difficulty may be off-putting to players who aren't accustomed to retro games, and there is pretty much no story to speak of here, like in most platformers of its time.
OnyxPriest
8 months ago