This is one of my least favourite things about some Metroidvanias. The music was just worse arrangements of the songs from Rondo of Blood.
I'd rank this game easier than Bloodlines but more difficult that SCIV and Rondo of Blood. Both of these levels annoyed the shit out of me. Maybe the most boring/least fun Dracula fight yet. Instead of chasing after Dracula, I just stand in one place throwing my axe because it's not worth the risk of fucking up a jump and falling to my death. The developers adding pits to a Dracula fight disincentives the player to be aggressive in the fight. The last stage was pretty annoying too, and I hated the Dracula fight in this one. Spear Guards camping every staircase making it incredible annoying to climb the clock tower - I must have spent an hour in this room trying to figure out the ideal strategy.
RONDO OF BLOOD PC ENGINE SLOWDOWN DURING BOSS SERIES
The Clock Tower room of Stage 6, particularly, had one of the most frustrating rooms in the entire series in my opinion. It's just feels like a version of Rondo that has been neutered. From the boss encounters to the layout of the stages to the enemy variety. So many callbacks to Rondo of Blood, but everything is just worse. Incredibly boring stages that are forgettable. A significant part of this game is just whipping away at these enemies at a distance hoping that you don't get hit by their massively long range. The enemy placement is so cheap and annoying at times that I can't believe that it's intentional design. Welcome to Dracula X - where every hallway and staircase are camped by knights and shield guards. Item crash is okay, but still not my favorite aspect of these 16-bit Castlevania games. Also the added backflip didn't really add much to my experience - I found it pretty worthless and not very fun to use. I appreciate that they added the ability to jump off of stairs, but I didn't realize you could do that until pretty far into the playthrough because it was such a change of mechanics. It feels like you can only jump at a certain interval which makes platforming really frustrating and janky. I hate how Richter propels forward at such a fast rate when jumping. This game controlled the worst out of all the 16-bit titles. It's doesn't bring anything original into the mix, and I guess this is expected as it's essentially a reimagining of Rondo of Blood. In terms of the art style, I just felt like this game was super bland - enemy designs/stage designs and all. Didn't have as noticeable slowdown as SCIV and felt like a smooth experience. Now in terms of performance - I felt that Dracula X was pretty stable. Bloodlines still looked and ran the best out of the bunch though.
But I still think SCIV's grittiness/darkness makes it more charming. It's probably a step up from Super Castlevania IV in terms of graphical fidelity. All the videos in my Castlevania: Dracula X playthrough are now up on YouTube - so I'll write my overall thoughts on this game!
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