MY BAD GAME JOURNEY WITH FRIENDS IN VOICE CHAT
MARATHON PART 1: DRACULA X

this game isn't nessesarily bad despite the title, but as a CASTLEVANIA game its a huge letdown, this isn't even like a watered down port of Rondo, its pretty much in terms of its level design is completely different, in a very bad way, the bosses were OKAY until dracula. the dracula fight is slow and every time i think about it i can only think about the sonic jam ost on the game.com specifically because my friend put that on the bot on loop.

its such a dissapointment that it caused my autistic brain to come up with a new vocal stim, every time i took an unfair hit all i could think or speak was "awesome sauce" so imagine being with me in the voice chat where every time i got hit from some bullshit or had to deal with any bullshit in the game (which happened quite often) you'd have to hear me exclaim "thats so awesome sauce".

and its not like this game is like the worst either its just that if you've al;ready played rondo then you wont have a fun time with this game.

This is the version of Rondo of Blood that did get localised, a remake carrying the Japanese denotation that Rondo and its sequel use: Dracula X. This remake is noticeably different from Rondo of Blood since the Super Nintendo hardware lacked the capabilities of the PC Engine Super CD-ROM2. The plot and mechanics are mostly the same and it does retain alternate paths. The music is good and the game plays well enough, but it is noticeably inferior to Rondo. The game is pretty damn difficult to come by, so you would have to use an emulator, virtual console, or the Castlevania Advance Collection if you do want to play it. Or you could, y'know, just play Rondo instead. 'Tis the better option.

Basically an alternative version of Rondo of Blood made for a less capable platform, expect downgraded visuals and music, though both are pretty good on their own.

Not bad at all for a few stages, but then devolves into being one of the most frustrating games out of the Classicvanias and for no good reason either seeing how much more well balanced Rondo is, and it's not like that's a walk in the park either.

If you only have time to spare to either play Rondo or X definitely play Rondo, otherwise it may be worth to give this one a try too if you're curious about the differences between the two.

"So let me get this straight, you think Dracula X is a really solid addition to the series?"
I do, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.

The music takes a hit from Rondo of Blood, obviously, but visually, it clears in pretty much every area. Some really nice pixel art in this game.
The controls are basically the same except you move a lot slower now, which I don't think gets in the way too much as you're gonna be jumping a lot, which retains a faster speed.
There are a couple screens I can't defend, but for the most part, the level design and enemy placements are perfectly fine and even interesting in my opinion, and there are fun speedrun tricks and various bits of tech to employ throughout all of the routes. The bosses are just as good as they are in Rondo, too, and I definitely prefer this game's Dracula fight compared to Rondo's boring one. Not to mention this game has the best power/usefulness balance in the subweapons out of any game in the series.
Dracula X is a fun time in my opinion. Tricky to learn, but feels great to master.

This is my favorite castlevania game HANDS DOWN BC ITS RICHTER!!!!!! (kidding)
but fr tho, i liked everything about this game.
The levels were fun and had a right amount of challenge to make it fun.
All sup-weapons have new abilites and an ultimate ability to use now which was really fun to experiment.
This is the easiest castlevania game so far with its bosses and im fine wit that because they were all great.
And THE MUSIC WAS FANTASTIC, the theme is a banger for sure.
Also to top it off, THERES REPLAYABILITY! The game has three endings and three potential routs to spend the rest of the game in.

If all you had was a Super Nintendo back in the day, this game would be alright. Now? Especially when playing it right after Rondo? Good lord. Slowdown when walking, anyone?

In all fairness, it's not like this game is a "lesser Rondo of Blood". There's tons of different things going on here, especially the levels. It's all new from what I could tell, but I didn't take all routes in the game so maybe there's some copy pasting, who knows.

Now, all Castlevanias have issues with enemy placement, it's nothing new. But MAN did Drac X give me a hard time with it; spears coming out the edge of the screen, bats cropping up ONE MILLIMETER before entering a door, the list goes on. Don't even get me started on those jumps where you have to be basically off the edge to land.

And how about that Death fight with the one move you're basically forced to Item Crash to avoid? Fun times. You know what's even more fun? A VERY slow, very tedious Dracula fight where you have like... A SECOND to hit his face before he disappears. Oh yeah, and make sure to wait until his "poofing in" animation is fully over, otherwise you'll be hitting jack and shit.

Unless you're going for a full series retrospective, don't bother. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I won't lie, it got me a bit tilted.

OH YEAH, no playable Maria. Immediate 0/5

It is wrong to say it's a lesser version of Rondo of Blood, while they are meant to be the same events, they are clearly very different games. What's not wrong is to say this game sucks.
The levels are frustating, with a lot of them being to corridors with enemies on the top who CAN attack you while you cannot. The screens barely flow into one another making it feel like you just teleported places. On the topic of screens, a few of them are lifted from older Castlevania titles and end up being ust worst version of those screens.
Richter controls terrible, he feels slow and heavy, and has really short invincibility frames, making it that you could get stun locked by some enemies.
On the topic of enemies, it has the worst Dracula fight of the Castlevanias i've played, just a bore.
With all that you could wonder why i didn't score the game lower? At the end of the day is still a Castlevania game, and has its good parts, when not being an extremely frustating game i had fun with it, as some parts of it display effort and competence, it's just a shame those parts are not that many.

I'm a huge fan of Rando of Blood, and had always heard horror stories about this version of it.
Overall, I don't think it's bad and I actually had more fun than I anticipated I would. But some it's level design is so rough.
A lot of vertical rooms with very uncertain enemy patterns. They love doing this thing where if you miss a jump, you have to go outside your current room and back around to get back to it, respawning all of the enemies and making the punishment much more annoying as a result.
I kept saying "wow this game is mean." Rather than feeling it was a more deliberate challenge they wanted me to figure out.
It's been a minute since I've played the original Rando, but I can't recall having that many moments like that.
I ended up using a few save states towards the end, just to save me the pain and time of retreading an entire stage to learn one obnoxious vertical section of the level design.
But the worst offender of this is the final boss. A shit show of a boss fight. Small hurtbox windows, a lot of RNG and littered with pits to, invetibility, get tossed into by some attack from offscreen you couldn't react to.
And that's just the first phase. The second phase is an onslaught of barley reactable projectiles. With such small platforms to keep yourself on, it makes almost impossible to get right your first time; meaning you're playing through that tedious first phase with each attempt to learn.
It's obnoxious and shudder to imagine that 10 year old kid in 1995 slaving over this for hours on a school night.
Even a perfect run of this fight on youtube takes 5 full minutes.
I absolutely did not have the patience for this,
Ended up amusing save states heavily, and felt extremely underwhelmed as a result.
Just a real wet fart to end the game on.
And the lack of Maria kinda stings. She is huge part of why I love that original game so much.
I guess that's why this game has this reputation, it doesn't do its own thing at all, so it just ends up being in the shadow of its older, cooler, brother.

Completing this without savestates (and aiming for the best ending as well because of Death, but even without that) was HELL.

I recorded every time I played this game. One hour and 23 minutes to get through Stage 1 to Stage 5' (rescuing Maria and Annette on the way), spending a chunky 40-50 minutes approximately on retrying Stage 5'. 30 minutes of Stage 6 and failing to beat it on October 10. A total of 1 hour and 50 minutes

Then I played in two separate occasions trying to beat Stage 6 (and Death) again.
October 12 - 58 minutes
October 18 - 36 minutes
- And both came up unfruitful.

October 24 - 1h33min + 1h39min

It's 12am as of writing this which is why this might appear written at October 25, but I finished this session BEFORE 12am. But in any case, this fresh session...

Spent 1 hour and 33 minutes ONLY in the Stage 6 and Death fight, then 1 hour and 39 minutes repeating Stage 7 in order to beat Dracula.

This made for a game that I ended up playing for a total of 6.6 hours, and HALF THAT TIME WAS SPENT IN THE DEATH AND DRACULA FIGHTS.

This is a game that was clearly made to be difficult, very likely for Rondo players that thought that game was too easy (I think on both the Japanese name being "Akumajou Dracula XX" and the interview of the developer that stated Rondo being 5 times more difficult before being adjusted), and there's a lot of good that carries from Rondo (Item Crashes, Richter, the music) and even some of the first half does some few interesting ideas with their stages.

But it is limited in enemy variety because of the cartridge space, telegraphs less often enemies so it will be a lot of trial-and-error until you memorize certain stages (Stage 5' onwards for me), Death is a bastard and a half to defeat with how one of his attacks is unavoidable if you were too far from him before he executes it (the spinning one) unless you item crash for invuln, and Dracula is less demonic and more so of a CHEAP boss: It would be easier to keep track of the fireballs and whack his face in if it was on even ground, but the pits make it so that one wrong hit on the wrong side on the ledge means an instant death.

Oh, and RetroAchievements didn't recognize what I did today because apparently those cheevos don't unlock if you complete stages/clear the game from a password. Having gone through the entire game state-less and only reloading with my passwords when I didn't want to keep playing in one ginormous session because I was too angry only to result in that is...insulting. But not enough to deter me from the fact that I completed this forsaken game.

3 stars which I would say its...average or good? I say that if the difficulty wasn't so wack at the very end (Dracula pits), I would rate it higher, but it does comply with what some would expect to be a hardcore challenging Castlevania game that requires you to stay alert at all times and remember where to whip spawning enemies. And it has that cheeky pass of having half of Rondo's DNA with the presentation.

Not playing this ever again without savestates though. No way. Quoting @Gibdorf from their review:

"Watching the credits for this game and realizing there were no play testers made me the most vindicated I've ever felt"

And I didn't notice that myself (was too busy listening to victory music)...but that sure is insanely relatable right now.

Another part of the 400 follower celebration, Dracula X, as I've been told, is much better in the famicom version and though the animation is as fun as Super Castlevania IV, but not as well polished and the fun wiggling with the whip is missing too. Something that remains missing in future games it seems.

Again it's fairly linear, apart from one area where I fell down and ended up in a whole new location. That said, there wasn't much else going on with this game tbh and though it's fun, it's not a impressive enough game to recommend picking up. At least, this version.

Gameplay + Stream