1.5/5 ★ – Chunderclap's review of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.

Good: The art direction and visual design is really well done, though it does not stand out as substantially different or elevated from earlier castlevania games. The soundtrack is pretty good, and has certain high points, though the arcadey style feels repetitive on stages where I constantly die and restart. Bad: The controls are horrific, and lack the crisp responsiveness that could keep the gameplay satisfying and compelling throughout an incredibly boring, uninteresting cast of stages. The level design is completely uninteresting, and lacks either depth or coherence that grounds it well in the themes of the game setting. Gameplay is completely linear without any notable shake ups that compel the player to explore more and more of the setting. Additionally, the level progression is nonexistent, lacking in either a progression of difficulty and complexity, or a logical progression through draculas castle (why do I cross a moat, only to end up on a boat 5 stages later, that somehow end me in a clock tower). While much of the level design was uninteresting and boring, levels such as stage 4 and stage 7 were the worst designed levels in have ever seen. In stage 7, you are chased on a falling bridge by bats that take two hits to kill, and move faster than you. The only way to kill them would be to do the jump spin whip, which would often fail. Even if it worked as intended, because you had to hit them twice, it was completely rng dependent. If two back to back bats spawned with alternating tracking, so they line up and you can hit both at once, then you would be fine. If they did not, you could only possibly kill one, and the second would reach you before you could get off 3 or 4 attacks total. It was an uninteresting, thematically nonsensical bridge chase that did not challenge a players resource management, patience, timing or reflexes, instead was completely luck dependent. The poor controls, namely the limitations in your vertical control and lack of any vertical aiming, was made so much worse by the combat design. Enemies only proved to be threats when they abused the lack of vertical controls, namely by the way that attacks would often come from below you or above you, in ways that required you to run for your life until the projectile finally came into one of the three lanes that you could consistently strike into. If you were unfortunately near a pit, pool of water, or edge of a stage, you were completely out of luck and would be hit without any chance to dodge. One early example was the way that birds, if you failed to kill them the second they popped onto your screen, would swoop onto you. If you missed an initial window to hit them, they would hover above you before swooping, where they would be so close to your head that did not allow you to strike them, and did not allow you to jump strike them without jumping into them. To that end, difficulty of enemies primarily came from either rng/inconsistent player controls, or stun locking the player. An example of the former would be when using the exact same input of jump right, aim left and strike, would result in two seemingly random events. Either, richter would jump right and in air, while continuing right, would spin and flick the whip to the left, or would step right before jumping back left and flying right into an enemy, with no ability to change direction and avoid collision. An example of the latter would be when, if you happened to miss on of the axes from an axe thrower, they would return behind you while throwing another axe at another level at you, meaning whether you blocked the projectile in front of you or dodged the one behind, the other would be guaranteed to hit you, and another would be thrown before repeating a cycle. As a whole, enemies often would have to be dealt with perfectly, or you would find yourself in an unlucky position to be guaranteed to take damage, more often than not getting stun locked. In boss fights, often time projectiles such as Shafts fire balls, or deaths scythes, would spawn and behave completely randomly, meaning often times they would spawn on top of you while you are in air, giving you literally no time to react, guaranteeing a hit no matter what. As a whole, the game lacked any depth, be it a progression of difficulty, complexity, thematic or story progression, or a progression of character abilities, which made the game uncompelling and unrewarding to progress through, and would make for a boring slog were the game easier. At its unfair and unreasonable difficulty, it made it a painful, regrettable affair. The finale of the game was awful and dracula, in both forms, was uninspiring and uninteresting to fight and defeat. With the level design, character abilities, and thematic progression being near zero, the end felt completely anti-climatic and unrewarding. Overall (3/10): Rondo of Blood was a painfully frustrating and incoherent mess of a game that lacked any depth or growth, failing to compel, inspire or reward a player for what is unfun and boring gameplay.