Castlevania: Bloodlines is a weird game I have weird feelings about. Sega certainly does what Nintendon’t, for better or for worse. I feel like this is going to be one of my more contentious reviews, so let’s just dive into it.
I’ll start off with what I liked: This game is fucking bonkers! It’s the twentieth century, and Dracula’s previously-unmentioned niece, Elizabeth Bartley, is trying to resurrect the big man himself. Her plan to do this? By starting World War I and generating enough dead souls to bring Drac back early, of course! That’s right folks, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand wasn’t motivated by complex geopolitical machinations, but a secret plot by fucking vampires! As the player, you take control of either John Morris or Eric Lecarde, the former of which is stated to be both a distant descendant of the Belmont clan as well as the son of Quincy Morris from the Bram Stoker novel. According to the manual, John and Eric were even present for that book’s final showdown, just slightly to the left off-screen, Lion King 1 ½ style. Insane move on Konami’s part to canonize the Dracula novel this late into the series, only to turn around and claim one of its major characters as part of their lineage of video game OCs. Definitely not as insane as asserting vampires orchestrated World War I, but insane nonetheless! After some cursory googling it seems Elizabeth Bartley is also based on Hungarian noblewoman Erzsébet Báthory, a real-life alleged serial killer rumored to have murdered over 600 women. Very cool detail to add to your game that probably sat on the shelf next to Ristar and Sonic 2. You can go to Atlantis in this one! Shit’s crazy!
Bugnuts lore aside, the actual selling point of Bloodlines, in my mind, is that it looks and sounds amazing. Castlevania games tend to be a cut above the rest in that regard as a given, but even still Bloodlines sticks out as something special. That distinct Genesis color palette and sound chip are pushed to their fullest, lending the game a very unique flavor among its franchise peers. The globetrotting conceit is really what sells this adventure, each stage jam-packed with unique iconography to remember it by. Romania has those huge windows and that sicknasty hellhound. “Atlantis, Greece” has those beautiful rising purple tides and the giant statue heads you can THWACK. Italy lets you climb up the Tower of Pisa, here reimagined as a constantly-teetering mode 7 dutch angle nightmare. The munitions factory in Germany is like a typical clocktower level cranked to 11, full of whirring cogs and gears and treads and skeletons in little army helmets. Versailles has that cool-as-hell blood fountain and fucking MOTHRA like holy shit dude it’s MOTHRA as the end-of-stage boss. And then you get to the final level and there’s exploding bridges and more stairs and boss fights than you can shake a whip at. There’s just so much to marvel at here–I’ve talked a lot about how these games emphasize spectacle, but Bloodlines really has no equals in that department. Seriously impressive showcase for the system.
Unfortunately, beyond that is where Bloodlines… kind of loses me. This game has a reputation for being difficult, and it definitely is, but not in the ways I was anticipating. The first thing I noticed is that unlike every other game in this series, you do not have infinite continues. Game over 3 times, and it’s back to the beginning. This is just really dumb in my eyes, it totally disincentivizes the kind of trial-and-error mastery Castlevania thrives on by attaching such a harsh penalty to failure. But whatever, with some passwords and save states it’s an easy enough problem to circumvent. It’s not ideal, but it’s not a dealbreaker. But then you get past that and…hm.
Look, I got nothing against hard games. Obviously not, I’m doing a Castlevania marathon. And with all the other games in this series, I’ve risen to the challenge and had a great time doing it! But I think with Bloodlines we may have reached my personal threshold for how much ball-busting I can tolerate. Maybe it’s franchise burnout, but it just felt like this one had a much higher degree of bullshit than usual, particularly in it’s second half. There’s only six stages, but they’re six looong stages, each one absolutely swarming you with enemies and obstacles. That wouldn’t be so bad on its own, but it feels like they all take a million hits with uncharacteristically erratic attack patterns. I usually scoff when people dismiss the difficulty of this series by saying “you have to read the game’s mind to beat this” but like… it felt kinda true with Bloodlines! Stage 4 is pretty bad, but stage 5 is where I really reached my limit, with its control-reversing spores and superfast swinging plants and low-visibility chandelier hallway and that stupid wheel knight that takes like a full minute to kill and that dumbass statue head boss that you can only damage when he’s NOT on screen???? By the time I got to the final stage I was so annoyed by the experiecne that I was savescumming like crazy just to get it over with, something I normally avoid doing with these. The final bosses aren’t even that bad really, Belmont’s Revenge was way worse, but I was just so tired and frustrated by then I needed an easy out.
I feel bad because Bloodlines really does do so much that I love. The music and visuals are spectacular, the levels are incredibly memorable, and it takes the series into some refreshingly weird directions. From what I understand this is a fan-favorite, and I totally get why! I mean hell, it's got MOTHRA in it! But if I'm being entirely honest with myself, this was really a slog to get through. Can’t say I’m a hater, but I can’t say I’m a fan.
I’ll start off with what I liked: This game is fucking bonkers! It’s the twentieth century, and Dracula’s previously-unmentioned niece, Elizabeth Bartley, is trying to resurrect the big man himself. Her plan to do this? By starting World War I and generating enough dead souls to bring Drac back early, of course! That’s right folks, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand wasn’t motivated by complex geopolitical machinations, but a secret plot by fucking vampires! As the player, you take control of either John Morris or Eric Lecarde, the former of which is stated to be both a distant descendant of the Belmont clan as well as the son of Quincy Morris from the Bram Stoker novel. According to the manual, John and Eric were even present for that book’s final showdown, just slightly to the left off-screen, Lion King 1 ½ style. Insane move on Konami’s part to canonize the Dracula novel this late into the series, only to turn around and claim one of its major characters as part of their lineage of video game OCs. Definitely not as insane as asserting vampires orchestrated World War I, but insane nonetheless! After some cursory googling it seems Elizabeth Bartley is also based on Hungarian noblewoman Erzsébet Báthory, a real-life alleged serial killer rumored to have murdered over 600 women. Very cool detail to add to your game that probably sat on the shelf next to Ristar and Sonic 2. You can go to Atlantis in this one! Shit’s crazy!
Bugnuts lore aside, the actual selling point of Bloodlines, in my mind, is that it looks and sounds amazing. Castlevania games tend to be a cut above the rest in that regard as a given, but even still Bloodlines sticks out as something special. That distinct Genesis color palette and sound chip are pushed to their fullest, lending the game a very unique flavor among its franchise peers. The globetrotting conceit is really what sells this adventure, each stage jam-packed with unique iconography to remember it by. Romania has those huge windows and that sicknasty hellhound. “Atlantis, Greece” has those beautiful rising purple tides and the giant statue heads you can THWACK. Italy lets you climb up the Tower of Pisa, here reimagined as a constantly-teetering mode 7 dutch angle nightmare. The munitions factory in Germany is like a typical clocktower level cranked to 11, full of whirring cogs and gears and treads and skeletons in little army helmets. Versailles has that cool-as-hell blood fountain and fucking MOTHRA like holy shit dude it’s MOTHRA as the end-of-stage boss. And then you get to the final level and there’s exploding bridges and more stairs and boss fights than you can shake a whip at. There’s just so much to marvel at here–I’ve talked a lot about how these games emphasize spectacle, but Bloodlines really has no equals in that department. Seriously impressive showcase for the system.
Unfortunately, beyond that is where Bloodlines… kind of loses me. This game has a reputation for being difficult, and it definitely is, but not in the ways I was anticipating. The first thing I noticed is that unlike every other game in this series, you do not have infinite continues. Game over 3 times, and it’s back to the beginning. This is just really dumb in my eyes, it totally disincentivizes the kind of trial-and-error mastery Castlevania thrives on by attaching such a harsh penalty to failure. But whatever, with some passwords and save states it’s an easy enough problem to circumvent. It’s not ideal, but it’s not a dealbreaker. But then you get past that and…hm.
Look, I got nothing against hard games. Obviously not, I’m doing a Castlevania marathon. And with all the other games in this series, I’ve risen to the challenge and had a great time doing it! But I think with Bloodlines we may have reached my personal threshold for how much ball-busting I can tolerate. Maybe it’s franchise burnout, but it just felt like this one had a much higher degree of bullshit than usual, particularly in it’s second half. There’s only six stages, but they’re six looong stages, each one absolutely swarming you with enemies and obstacles. That wouldn’t be so bad on its own, but it feels like they all take a million hits with uncharacteristically erratic attack patterns. I usually scoff when people dismiss the difficulty of this series by saying “you have to read the game’s mind to beat this” but like… it felt kinda true with Bloodlines! Stage 4 is pretty bad, but stage 5 is where I really reached my limit, with its control-reversing spores and superfast swinging plants and low-visibility chandelier hallway and that stupid wheel knight that takes like a full minute to kill and that dumbass statue head boss that you can only damage when he’s NOT on screen???? By the time I got to the final stage I was so annoyed by the experiecne that I was savescumming like crazy just to get it over with, something I normally avoid doing with these. The final bosses aren’t even that bad really, Belmont’s Revenge was way worse, but I was just so tired and frustrated by then I needed an easy out.
I feel bad because Bloodlines really does do so much that I love. The music and visuals are spectacular, the levels are incredibly memorable, and it takes the series into some refreshingly weird directions. From what I understand this is a fan-favorite, and I totally get why! I mean hell, it's got MOTHRA in it! But if I'm being entirely honest with myself, this was really a slog to get through. Can’t say I’m a hater, but I can’t say I’m a fan.