Takes my favorite game in the series and dumps all over it, with a sort-of "reimagining" that's inferior in basically every way. Now to be fair, despite some recycled assets and music, Rondo of Blood and Dracula X are actually fairly different games, so comparing them might seem unfair, but even on it's own merits Dracula X is a pretty bad game. I think the most glaring flaw with the game is it's level design, which is mostly just boring but has some really unfair difficultly spikes thrown in. Enemies have been placed in these levels at what feels like complete random, leading to rooms that that feel impossible to get through without getting hit. It doesn't help that your post-hit invincibility frames are a fraction of a second, meaning you're constantly taking multiple hits from the same attack/enemy. Another big issue I have is that for some reason in this game, Richter's jump is massive and floaty, making it feel like he's on the moon or something. It completely threw off my instincts and I found myself missing some of the most basic jumps because I'd overshoot them. Even stuff this game does ok, like some of the music remixes and sprite work, I still generally think Rondo does just as well if not outright better. If all that wasn't enough, this game ends on one of the most bullshit final boss fights I have ever seen. If you've ever managed to beat Dracula without abusing save states, then hats off to you, because I sure can't.

Reviewed on Sep 29, 2022


2 Comments


I keep fucking getting whiplashed over Dracula X entries cause it uses the same cover art as RoB, which I always remember for obvious reasons, and each and every time I take a second look I go "right, there was that janky ass SNES conversion made"
Yeah I wish the cover was different. I'm making a list ranking the series and it looks like I have the same game at the top and bottom lol