Get ready for some edgy, hot takes!I decided to pull out the ol' PC Engine Super CD-ROM² drive for a playthrough of
Rondo of Blood yesterday. It's possibly still the CV game I've spent the most time on, yet I think it's been well over 10 years since I last played this game, it's crazy!

Considering all the talk I've seen of the game recently, and the almost unanimous praise it's been receiving, I was kind of surprised how easy it actually was. I recall both Death and Stage 7 (the clocktower) as being a bit of a challenge, but aside from some starting issues on the Bat Bridge™ they went down completely effortlessly. It's hard for me to say if it's just the old muscle memory at work though.
Meanwhile, Ghost Shaft was strangely a lot more difficult than I remember, and managed to take me down quite a few times before I got the hang of it. Dracula, too, is not entirely the pushover I recalled. Though, eventually figuring out that you can just jump over the fireballs took the difficulty of the first form from a 6/10 to somewhere around 1...
The second form can be ridiculously dangerous though, if you aren't extremely careful, and getting trapped under him can easily cost three full hits.
Overall, I know my next playthrough will be a 1CC. The game simply deals out way too much meat and 1ups for it to go any other way. And I figure with enough patience I can probably get a no-death run in, too.
If I recall correctly though, the upper path is a tad more challenging, so maybe I'll spend some time with that today before going for a better run.
The fact that it's one of the easier 'vanias doesn't mean it's not a great game though. Rondo is still absolutely top tier. One thing that did stand out to me however, was just how different this game is from basically any other game in the series. I love it as its own game, but it is very hard to compare directly to other Castlevania games!
You got much more lenient controls, less traversing of hostile architecture, and more going to the right tackling enemies, and often larger ones, one at a time. For example, one thing that stood out is the near lack of those rooms where you need to wrap around, playing the bottom part first, and then going back around the upper one. Despite very recently
recalling that Rondo does this a lot, there is in fact almost none of it. Oops. It
is all over XX however, and I find it curious how much more XX feels like a classic Castlevania game, when compared to Rondo - remarkably closer to the NES titles that I also love.
At the end of the day, returning to this title not only confirmed my memory of how good it is, it also managed to cement just how different XX really is from Rondo (you guys were right about
that). However, definitely not in a bad way. In fact, I'll readily admit there are aspects unique to XX that I actually prefer. It's generally much more tight and methodical, like a true Castlevania game. If you continue to believe "it sucks because Richter walks slower", just open your mind and give it a few more runs. Stop comparing the two games.
A few days ago I also pulled out
Castlevania Chronicles. I've only played the x68K version shortly on emulation long ago, like probably more than 15 years ago here, and I didn't really have fond memories of it. But the recent praise it's been getting around here (mostly from Squire I think?) made me want to revisit it. I know Chronicles isn't the best version of the game, but it's a lot more accessible, so I just popped it in to get a fresh impression of the game.
And unfortunately it's completely like I remember it. It's very classic Castlevania, so it's got that going for it, even if its level design makes it feel like a bit of a hybrid between the classic NES games and Castlevania IV. In fact, in a lot of ways it felt like sticking a traditional Belmont into IV, which I'm not entirely opposed to.
That said, Simon moves absurdly sluggishly. If XX is a worse game for Richter being a little slower, then what does that make this? Castlevania games have always had a slow pace, but this one just makes me impatient. And the fact that it's shock full of level design that makes you wait around even more doesn't help.
Full disclaimer though, I only attempted one playthrough, and I ended it on the fourth stage, so this isn't a complete and well researched opinion piece, it's just my first impressions after not having touched the game in over a decade. But I don't really feel inclined to continue the attempt, which is sad.