Welcome to Castlevania
Hey, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is available on the Virtual Console. If you’re not familiar with Rondo of Blood, it’s the game that most obnoxious game snobs consider to be the best of the Castlevania series, which is almost definitely because nobody’s goddamn played it. It was only ever released in Japan, and only on the PC Engine system. The PC Engine was released in North America as the TurboGraphx-16 — which is a terrible name — but without the CD-ROM peripheral, which meant Rondo of Blood never made it over.
I’ll tell you this: the best Castlevania game it ain’t, but it’s pretty good. It has a lot of "homage" moments where you pass through areas reminiscent of other Castlevania games (and then some that would later be reincorporated into Symphony of the Night), and those are fun to watch for. It plays like Castlevania 3 on the NES, with the same old stiff Belmont movements and all the whips and such, and uses the same linear platform level style with choice of paths. And it’s hard.
The mobs don’t flinch when hit. That bugs me. Richter, on the other hand, sure damn does — frequently flinch-launches right into damn pits. Which is odd, since there don’t appear to be altogether very many pits in this episode; maybe there are more later where I haven’t been (since the game’s hard and I’m bad).
The menu screen music is the same as that used in Circle of the Moon. I support this.
