Game:

Castlevania: Dracula X (1995)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 2:19:07

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2

Another Castlevania down, thought this was worth logging as this was my first playthrough of this game, which I did on stream. It's a decent game, but one of the weaker Castlevanias in my opinion. It's a re-imagining of Rondo of Blood, which is one of my favorite games of all time. It uses the same concept, Richter Belmont travels through Castlevania to kill the newly resurrected Dracula, it's the same story as almost all the others haha. The difference comes in the stages, they made all new levels for this Super Nintendo version.

To put it simply, they aren't as good as Rondo of Blood. It often uses cheap shots, with enemies knocking you into pits, bats spawning so close to you that you can't react, and spamming monsters, and it gets too overwhelming. It's also missing some features from Rondo, as far as I know, Maria is not in this game, the cutscenes are gone, and there are less branching paths. This is fair, Rondo used the CD format, which can hold a lot more data than the Super Nintendo's cartridges, so I'll forgive this.

The music is ripped right from Rondo, and it's good stuff, but again, not as good as Rondo. Rondo, like I said, is on a CD and uses CD quality audio, while Dracula X uses the Super Nintendo's MIDI sound chip. But they did a great job with the limitation, this game still sounds great.
As per usual, Dracula X ends off with a fight with Dracula, the man is in the title after all! They really messed up this final fight, and that's for one reason only, bottomless pits. The entire arena is filled with narrow pillars surrounded by pits, and if you get hit, there's a good chance you'll be blasted right into a hole. I found a strategy pretty early on, which involves going to the lowest pillar and throwing axes when Drac gets in range, you can duck most of his fire attacks this way. But once phase 2 starts, you just gotta pray for the best.

Overall, again, not a bad game, but I see why everyone sees it as a shell of Castlevania Rondo of Blood. Worth a shot for the unique stages, it has value, it's mostly its own game because of the new levels, but the comparison is obviously gonna be made.

X:
https://twitter.com/ChidNutson

Discord:
https://discord.gg/x6YuHu943x

Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/chid_255

Streamed live on 11/16/23

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