

Rondo of Blood was remade for the Super Nintendo and launched a couple of years later under the title Castlevania: Dracula X. The game casts players in the role of protagonist Richter Belmont as he sets out to save his lover from Dracula.
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The Castlevania Advance Collection is still worth owning, and it is nice to have even this lesser title preserved, but there are plenty of better ways to slay Dracula than Dracula X.In brief: Limited Run Games is working on a physical retro release of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, an earlier entry in the Castlevania series that never got an English release in its original format.Ĭastlevania: Rondo of Blood launched in Japan on October 29, 1993, for the PC Engine’s CD-ROM add-on. The core of the game is still Rondo of Blood, but with so many beloved parts stripped out, this version can’t be recommended when Rondo of Blood itself is available elsewhere. The spritework and soundtrack are great, and its extra difficulty may be appealing to some. Anyone familiar with Castlevania’s penchant for knockback, stiff jumps, and flying enemies can probably tell how Dracula X gained its reputation. Even the final fight with Dracula is suspended over a pit. The game also has only two alternate routes instead of four, one of which will doom players to a bad ending and is accessible via a regular-looking bottomless pit. Richter is slightly slower than he is in Rondo of Blood, later enemies are placed in earlier levels, and the redesigned stages are riddled with bottomless pits.

The game is considered one of the most difficult Castlevania titles for all the wrong reasons. Between that and Dracula X saying it takes place in the Middle Ages with Simon Belmont’s adventures having been several hundred years prior, it’s safe to say this game is not an essential part of a Castlevania historian’s library.Ĭanon incongruity is far from the only issue Castlevania: Dracula X is guilty of. Annette, the heroic Richter’s kidnapped girlfriend, can transform into Carmilla if not saved, and will share Shaft’s attacks. The dark priest Shaft, a climactic encounter in Rondo and the main villain for most of Symphony, was removed entirely. The story differences seem minor, but conflict with Rondo of Blood’s immediate sequel Symphony of the Night. The story was also altered enough that it became incompatible with the Castlevania timeline, which did the game no favors in fans’ eyes. Due to the smaller storage capacity of SNES cartridges, voice acting was removed, the game became more linear due to overhauled level design, the difficulty was ramped up, and Maria was no longer playable. The game remixed enough to be almost completely different, only sharing some enemies, bosses, and mechanics with the original game. RELATED: The Best Studios to Handle New Castlevania GamesĬastlevania: Dracula X is an SNES remake of Rondo of Blood, and was also the first version of Rondo to reach North America. While Dracula X has been rendered non-canon and is considered a worse version of Rondo, its story is still interesting enough to discuss. Because Rondo of Blood was already called Dracula X in Japan, the SNES game was dubbed Dracula XX. Dracula X released in 1995, two years after Rondo of Blood came out in Japan only on the PC Engine Super CD-ROM (an upgraded TurboGrafx 16). This is notably not a GBA game, but appears to have been included in this collection to ensure all of Castlevania’s major 2D games have been re-released. However, Castlevania: Dracula X doesn’t fit with the rest.Īs a counterpart to the PlayStation 4-exclusive Castlevania Requiem, this collection includes the SNES title Castlevania: Dracula X. All three are classics, and worth trying for those who have already beaten Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This multi-platform collection follows up on two Castlevaniacollections released in the past few years, this time focusing on titles from Game Boy Advance.The Advance Collection’s offerings consist of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow. The recent Nintendo Direct came with a big surprise for Castlevania fans: a surprise release of the Castlevania Advance Collection.
