Maria has a slide, a double jump, she can attack while running, and has much quicker attacks with longer range than Richter’s whip. She is 12 years old and dresses kind of like Princess Peach here. Rondo of Blood doesn’t have multiple difficulty settings, but it does have Maria Renard. It goes a little higher than a normal jump, so it can help you jump onto ledges or avoid attacks you normally couldn’t with a regular jump. It’s is kind of like a backdash and a high jump at the same time. You do a backflip by double tapping the jump button. Richter also has a new move, the backflip. For example, the Holy Water Item Crash makes it rain holy water and the Cross makes giant crucifixes fly up the screen. The Item Crash allows you to use a bunch of hearts to do a special move that will do a lot of damage and hit everything on the screen. All the sub-weapons are the same as in Castlevania I, but there is a new way to use them, the Item Crash.

The old whip upgrades are gone, but you still use hearts to use the sub-weapons. Your movement is a little slow, you have very little control during your jumps, and whipping has a slight delay between button presses and actual damaging animation frames. Rondo of Blood plays a lot like the NES Castlevania games. Now Richter must save the kidnapped villagers and kill Dracula once again. Dracula has his minions kidnap 4 girls from a nearby village, including Richter’s girlfriend, Annette, and Richter’s distant relative, Maria Renard. Dracula has been resurrected once again and decides to take his revenge on Simon Belmont’s descendant and heir to the Vampire Killer whip, Richter Belmont.

The game takes place in 1792, 101 years after the original Castlevania and 5 years before SOTN.

Rondo of Blood is the first part of the story of Symphony of the Night. The original version of the game never made it outside Japan, but it is now available on Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP/Vita and on Wii Virtual Console, which is the version I played for this review. The other two were Castlevania for the X68000 (Castlevania Chronicles on PS1) and Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It was one of 3 Castlevania games being developed at the same time.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (AKA Dracula X: Rondo of Blood) was originally released in Japan on the PC Engine (Japanese TG16) in 1993.

Dracula rondo of blood pc