As soon as I started looking things up and understood the full scope of his strengths and limitations, the challenge became figuring out how best to approach each situation, instead of figuring out why Richter was so dumb. Mash buttons until it dies! Don’t avoid attacks until you see them coming! It shouldn’t have come as a shock that I had multiple playing sessions where I didn’t clear a single stage-I was so hung up on what Richter couldn’t do that I had a hard time working a strategy around what he could do. Without realizing I had a wide array of moves and attacks at my fingertips, I started off playing the game as a moron.
Well, aside from in Stage 5′, which looks like one of the developers let their kid play with the level editor without telling them there were more challenges available than “long, boring hallway with the same enemy over and over” and “randomly generated enemies knock you into a hole every time you jump”. There are no cheap deaths or impossible challenges, just a lack of practice and experimentation. Keep getting hit by an enemy with long reach? Try smacking them once and retreating instead of trying to take them down before they strike. Can’t move quickly enough to dodge projectiles? Try knocking them out of the air with your whip. The game is all about pattern recognition and good timing, with a dash of creative problem-solving-it’s a puzzle game that plays out like a platformer.
Rondo is tough as nails in a coffin, but it is surprisingly fair: our less-than-nimble hero suffers from what I like to call “Richter mortis,” but quick reflexes aren’t the focus of the gameplay. Fortunately, the words “GAME OVER” are written in English, so the part of the story where you’re an utter failure will be clear enough. There’s also a kindly ferryman who speaks in Japanese text, so I guess I have no basis for determining he’s kindly. Even without having a clue what anyone is saying, it’s obvious that Richter’s quest also includes rescuing a little girl, a nurse, a nun, and his girlfriend picking up chicks, as far as I can tell. The story is told primarily through Japanese voice-acted cutscenes, with a little bit of German thrown in (no doubt to cater to the “I want to feel doubly alienated by only speaking English and Spanish” crowd). The game’s not really named Castlevania: Rondo of Blood that’s just what we call it in parts of the world where we can’t pronounce Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (literally, “The Mojo of Dracula 10: Rondo of Chi”).Įvidently, this town buries its dead without pants. It’s hard to tell when the game is inconsiderate enough to speak a language not everyone on the planet can understand. As Richter Belmont, descendant of whichever Belmont it was who passed down his hereditary robot legs, you’ll take on a resurrected Dracula and his army of monsters-gargoyles, bats, ghosts, golems, harpies, a minotaur, a sea serpent, even Death himself-who are terrorizing the populace out of contractual obligation.
On the surface, Rondo (I’ll call it Rondo, rather than RoB, to avoid confusion with Dracula’s other curse) is your typical classic-style (read: nothing like Metroid) Castlevania game. Such was the case with Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which started as a lazy Monday evening conquest and ended a full two weeks later. Nowadays, I can blaze through most standard-length platformers in a single sitting-my blind playthrough of Mega Pony is proof enough of that-but every once in a while, I’ll be reminded of what it took to get this far. I sometimes forget that I only became as good as I am at videogames because of the formative butt-kickings of my youth.