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Castlevania: Dracula X

悪魔城ドラキュラXX

Developer / Publisher: Konami
21 July 1995
Castlevania: Dracula X [悪魔城ドラキュラXX] - cover art
Glitchwave rating
2.83 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
142 Ratings / 2 Reviews
#3,732 All-time
#93 for 1995
Hundreds of years have passed since the time of Simon Belmont, the legendary hero said to have sealed away Count Dracula. Now, once more, the wickedness in the hearts of some men has resurrected the Dark Lord of evil. Count Dracula, now revived, plots revenge against the descendant of the Belmont line, Richter Belmont. To lure Richter to the Demon Castle, he leads his new servants in an attack on the town, abducting Richter’s lover Annet, and her younger sister Maria. To rescue Annet and Maria and seal away Count Dracula once again, Richter takes up his ancestral holy whip and heads for the Demon Castle.
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Releases 6
1995 Konami  
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JP 4 988602 009736 SHVC-ADZJ-JPN
1995 Konami  
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XNA M/SNS-ADZE-USA
2014 Konami  
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2014 Konami  
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Title
Me: Mom, can we have Castlevania: Rondo of Blood?
Mom: We have Rondo of Blood at home...

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood at home:

God, I'm such a hack.
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Erockthestrange 2022-07-10T19:13:32Z
2022-07-10T19:13:32Z
5.5
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Of all the Classic Castlevania games that follow the traditional formula of the series, Dracula X is likely the most divisive, disliked of them all, with the fact of it feeling like an inferior version of the highly acclaimed Rondo of Blood, but for the SNES, immediately souring the opinions on the game for many people, especially in retrospect. Further adding to the displeasure that many people felt for the game was how it felt like a step back in a lot of respects, with reduced whip functionality, bringing back the whip controls from the NES titles, but also making the mobility be far more limited than Super Castlevania IV, along with the design of the game in terms of its approach to difficulty also feeling extremely out of whack. Nonetheless, despite me thinking that this game has a fair few shortcomings and that the Genesis got the superior game in the form of Bloodlines, there’s definitely some positives along with the negatives.

The game’s presentation here is far more vibrant than the often washed out look of Super Castlevania IV, with a much brighter colour palette, along with more detailed models across the board, many of them going on to be the signature look of them for games to come. This ultimately makes it that even during the most frustrating moments in the game, there’ll almost always at least be some eye candy on screen to keep you interested, especially with the developers seemingly wanting to push the hardware to the absolute limit with some of the effects in the game, notably the gigantic fire in the background throughout the opening level. The unfortunate downside to this is that I feel that the game ended up making the same mistake as Super Castlevania IV, overextending to the point where there are some significant performance drops in certain areas, most notably during a boss fight that continuously summons enemies as time goes on, creating an insane amount of particle effects to the point where it almost feels as if the boss is using the extreme lag as a weapon of its own. One other issue with the presentation of this game is the fact that by this point the series begins to feel formulaic, perpetuating many of the conventions within this series, but without really adding anything meaningful or interesting to them, with a lot of it, such as the obligatory clock tower stage, simply feeling like retreading old ground, making the excitement of discovery and progression from the games feel lessened here due to its predictability.

Outside of the presentation, the game’s design as a whole also feels considerably weaker than a fair few of the past titles as well, bringing back a lot of the more unfair aspects of the past games such as excessive bottomless pits and enemies placed in extremely awkward, near undodgeable locations that often force the player to either perform an extremely reckless action, or spend a great deal of time tediously inching their way through what the game throws at you. Often it just feels like the original intention of the slow movement of having to constantly think about your each and every move was lost to an extent here, with it often feeling like an unnecessary hindrance rather than anything else.

The worst offender of a lot of these issues is the final stage however, which feels straight up a mess in multiple ways that ultimately makes the game unsatisfying. For one, a lot of the stage feels conventional and unadventurous to the point where I genuinely didn’t realise it was the final stage until I got up to the Dracula fight, since very little outside of the initial stair climb really resembles anything too climactic, the obstacles either being incredibly easy or downright obnoxious to deal with, but nothing really having the spectacle you’d expect from the grand finale of the game. However, while the game being quite anticlimactic is definitely disappointing, where this game truly fails is by having undoubtedly the worst boss in the series, and it’s not even close. A large part of the problem comes down to the fact that the arena is set up on thing pillars of varying heights over a death pit, effectively making most hits taken from the fight an immediate death. While this alone is absolutely awful, the nail in the coffin is really how aggravatingly tedious the fight is, with certain locations making it impossible to get hit by all but one attack, but RNG potentially making the battle last from anywhere between a minute to 5, especially depending on whether or not the player makes effective use of the axe subweapon or not. What this does is make the already underwhelming final stretch of the game end up leaving a bad taste in your mouth after either struggling for an incredibly long period of time against the final encounter, or just giving up on account of it not feeling worth the effort in the slightest, making an already flawed game even less fun by the end.

Honestly, this game just feels really formulaic and mediocre in a lot of ways, despite some good aspects definitely making it feel at least somewhat worth a try. It feels like there was a serious issue with creativity in this game on the whole unfortunately, just going through the motions again but with a really nice looking coat of paint, with some aspects, such as the boss fights feeling greatly improved for the most part, while others just felt like creative bankruptcy. This is highlighted to me in the OST for this game, with all of the tracks being really great, with a more upbeat feel than any previous game, but with 3 of the stages out of 7 being reprises of the main themes from the original trilogy of games, and the final stage feeling like a mishmash of them that didn’t end up sounding quite right. Ultimately, while this game does succeed in some ways, as a whole it often feels more like a botched love letter to the games of the past, but rather than building upon the ideas of these games, it just feels like taking them without much additional thought put into it, which makes the game really feel like a step back form the progression the series was seeing from game to game.
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Kempokid 2021-06-26T09:46:17Z
2021-06-26T09:46:17Z
2.5
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Catalog

foiebump 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-03-06T21:29:44Z
2024-03-06T21:29:44Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Raising_Heart Castlevania: Dracula X 2024-02-29T23:10:12Z
SNES • XNA
2024-02-29T23:10:12Z
2.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
DaggerDraven Castlevania: Dracula X 2024-02-20T10:15:33Z
SNES • XNA
2024-02-20T10:15:33Z
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
DaggerDraven 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-02-20T10:15:14Z
2024-02-20T10:15:14Z
2.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Coldplaz 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-02-19T23:02:25Z
2024-02-19T23:02:25Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Joe_Kloos 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-02-10T19:30:17Z
2024-02-10T19:30:17Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
TheBloodhail 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-02-03T18:06:50Z
2024-02-03T18:06:50Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Limpdisko 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-01-31T07:58:24Z
SNES • JP
2024-01-31T07:58:24Z
5.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
MashedPotatoes 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2024-01-02T07:02:50Z
2024-01-02T07:02:50Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
raegazel 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2023-12-28T22:32:38Z
2023-12-28T22:32:38Z
5.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
FamiliarFez 悪魔城ドラキュラXX 2023-12-18T17:20:27Z
2023-12-18T17:20:27Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
vnianpurks Castlevania: Dracula X 2023-12-07T16:47:24Z
SNES • XNA
2023-12-07T16:47:24Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Player modes
Single-player
Media
1x Cartridge
Also known as
  • Akumajō Dorakyura XX
  • Castlevania: Dracula X
  • View all [2] Hide

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  • slib 2020-12-24 22:27:00.799119+00
    It's not unplayable by any means, just a worse version of Rondo of Blood
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  • MisTurHappy 2021-10-17 02:47:36.034124+00
    Yeah, it's really not atrocious, it's just that Rondo does literally everything about it better. I guess it may have served a purpose for people who had a SNES and wanted a Castlevania that played more like the NES games than Super IV, but that's about it. There are one or two unique setpieces in here that might make it worth a single playthrough, since CV games are pretty short, but its biggest crime is just being completely redundant.
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  • MisTurHappy 2021-10-17 02:48:10.135561+00
    Also it's really funny to me that when Nintendo announced Richter for Smash they claimed he came from this game instead of from Rondo.
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