It's weird. I remembered this being way harder than it actually is, and I feel like a lot of that was due to my only real memory of the game being its shitty and tedious final boss.
The level design doesn't really do anything too new or interesting, and because very little of it stands out, all you're left to remember it by is some irritatingly placed enemies who all just so happen to be standing in the worst spots imaginable. I can appreciate that they tried to vary up the stages in comparison to Rondo of Blood with more verticality, more stairs, and more moving platforms... but it doesn't DO anything with these gimmicks. It's all just different types of moving platforms. Sometimes they're sideways, sometimes they're up and down; if a stage's got some platforms, it's 50/50 whether it moves. It's a shame, because I can see they wanted to make something more in line with the NES entries, but it's just not very creative. Not that it would matter if it was, because very large chunks of the levels can just be skipped with backflips!
A lot of the enemy types are reused from Rondo, but there's not really a lot to go around- it seems like they just took what they knew would be general-purpose and left it at that. A lot of the more interesting / challenging enemies were omitted from this game, so you're really just encountering the same Axe Armors, crows, and whatever the lance dudes were called over and over again. They're not an issue with proper spacing... and since you see them so much, you'll figure out what that was and not need to put much, if any, thought into it at all.
It kind of stings that so many of the cooler types of enemies are absent, since that game had more of a combat focus- Richter has all the same abilities here, but no real need to apply any of it since nothing difficult enough to justify it shows up. The bosses aren't anywhere near as capable as they were in Rondo either, so it's an utter curbstomp once you get to them.... and it's honestly really easy to put yourself on autopilot, walk forward, and whip them to death. I'm still reeling over how I stunlocked the minotaur boss. By accident.
I don't know. It's got some snazzy new backgrounds, the sound design is satisfyingly punchy, and the soundtrack is filled with some pretty faithful recreations of Rondo's soundtrack (Bloodlines in particular might even be an improvement over the original track!), but I left the game feeling underwhelmed by how much shorter and easier the package as a whole was. Especially compared to everything that came before it at the time...
Also, is it just me, or does Richter's walking animation feel like it's too fast? Boy you are NOT running what's going on
The level design doesn't really do anything too new or interesting, and because very little of it stands out, all you're left to remember it by is some irritatingly placed enemies who all just so happen to be standing in the worst spots imaginable. I can appreciate that they tried to vary up the stages in comparison to Rondo of Blood with more verticality, more stairs, and more moving platforms... but it doesn't DO anything with these gimmicks. It's all just different types of moving platforms. Sometimes they're sideways, sometimes they're up and down; if a stage's got some platforms, it's 50/50 whether it moves. It's a shame, because I can see they wanted to make something more in line with the NES entries, but it's just not very creative. Not that it would matter if it was, because very large chunks of the levels can just be skipped with backflips!
A lot of the enemy types are reused from Rondo, but there's not really a lot to go around- it seems like they just took what they knew would be general-purpose and left it at that. A lot of the more interesting / challenging enemies were omitted from this game, so you're really just encountering the same Axe Armors, crows, and whatever the lance dudes were called over and over again. They're not an issue with proper spacing... and since you see them so much, you'll figure out what that was and not need to put much, if any, thought into it at all.
It kind of stings that so many of the cooler types of enemies are absent, since that game had more of a combat focus- Richter has all the same abilities here, but no real need to apply any of it since nothing difficult enough to justify it shows up. The bosses aren't anywhere near as capable as they were in Rondo either, so it's an utter curbstomp once you get to them.... and it's honestly really easy to put yourself on autopilot, walk forward, and whip them to death. I'm still reeling over how I stunlocked the minotaur boss. By accident.
I don't know. It's got some snazzy new backgrounds, the sound design is satisfyingly punchy, and the soundtrack is filled with some pretty faithful recreations of Rondo's soundtrack (Bloodlines in particular might even be an improvement over the original track!), but I left the game feeling underwhelmed by how much shorter and easier the package as a whole was. Especially compared to everything that came before it at the time...
Also, is it just me, or does Richter's walking animation feel like it's too fast? Boy you are NOT running what's going on