Just found out today Rondo of Blood came out before Bloodlines..

neat.

In my failed attempt to play the Castlevania games in order, I played Bloodlines before that one (I also accidentally skipped Belmont's Revenge but I didn't like Adventure very much so I'm not too concerned, will play that and CV Chronicles next.. I should've looked at the wiki lol)

Otherwise, this is the best CV game I've played thus far in my go-through of the CV franchise, enough that I wanted to write about it.

Castlevania Bloodlines (known in Japan as Vampire Killer) is the Genesis's take on Castlevania. Unlike Super Castlevania 4, which is more focused on really tricky platforming and atmosphere, this game is more focused on action setpieces and really big levels. What I learned from this game is that I like this style way better for Classicvania.

This game is only 6 levels but all six are super memorable taking place in different locations over the world, and the bosses are top notch (The boss in stage 3 made me want to die as Eric, but he's pretty easy as John). Despite both John and Eric being pretty similar, I like the little distinctions in their playstyle. Though after playing a bit of both I prefer John, I think being able to jump and whip diagonally is a lot more useful then standing still, plus his whip ceiling ability is NUTS.

I also think of the franchise so far this as by far the best bosses, they all feel very balanced while challenging. The Dracula fight perfectly encapsulates this for me, it's still a challenging 3 phase battle, but when you learn how to approach it, it becomes a fight you can almost do damageless. His moves aren't very tricky to dodge when you know how to time or when to plan, in contrast to something like Castlevania 1 where your jumps to get over dracula's fireballs and hit him are nearly frame-perfect.

The level design is awesome and the setpieces are so interesting and memorable, my favorite being the Leaning Tower of Pisa level! This game definitely sticks out to me more than CV4 did even if 4 had more levels.

The lowerish difficulty imo, I'm one of the weird ones who thought Castlevania 4 was really hard due to it's constant insta-death and super tight platforming, and the nice bosses and character variety makes this one of the castlevanias I plan to revisit more often, along with Dracula's Curse on it's easier routes.

9 Spear Vaults/10

This game had such a bad reputation I played it expecting like, Bubsy 3D, when instead I got one of the best cyberpunk action games I've ever played. Owes a lot to System Shock, but puts it into a Souls-like context.

Fucking phenomenal world-building and level design, and really exciting weighty combat. The parry mechanic in particular, a knee-kick, is super satisfying to do. I would call this my absolute favorite Souls-like, it has everything I like in a game. This and The Surge 2 rendered the Souls games completely obsolete in my library, they are just way more fun to me.