I'll admit it. I'm a Castlevania fan. Back when the Castlevania WorldWide still existed, I had been an impromptu member of it, and along the way got acquainted with some of their chief members Stateside. Nowadays, even though those days are long gone and a lot of things have changed on my half (for the better, I must say), I still retain a decent regard for the series in general. And now that I have gotten my hands on this wonderful piece of retro gaming called Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, I can thank God for another chance at beating the stuffing out of Dracula.
It's been a while since I wrote a review, so to my dear readers--all five of you--please bear with me on this one. For the sake of brevity, I'll only comment on the important parts, but knowing how long-winded my writings can get, I doubt it'll be brief.
First, the gameplay. Make no mistake: this is genuine old-school, no-holds-barred "you can only control your jumps so much so make it count" Akumajou Dracula. I have seen a number of players make pointed statements about Richter's lack of general mobility and limited moveset, some even issuing this as a warning to those who have only gotten into the series after Koji Igarashi wowed his audiences with Symphony of the Night and its technical offspring. I could understand this, having gone through SotN and the two Game Boy Advance titles (Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance) and appreciating the sheer controllability of their protagonists, as opposed to old school Castlevania. There's simply no comparing a guy who can backdash, run and do other cool stuff to a dude who jumps in a kneeling posture and walks like he's suffering from a back injury.
But here's the thing: It's a remake of an old school CV series entry. The player should always keep that in mind. There are no fancy air dashes, super jumps or slide kicks in this game; in fact, apart from Maria and her rather impressive repertoire of moves, your player character basically moves like a traditional Belmont (i.e. walks and jumps around like a disgruntled cast member from West Side Story). Sure, it may be argued how that Iga should have tried to redesign things to create a highly modified remake of the original Rondo of Blood, similar to what Konami originally did with Super Castlevania IV. I can agree with that; I persoanlly would encourage it. But this is an almost exact remake, and that's the gameplan IGA stuck to for experimental purposes. So how does it hold up?
Pretty good, actually. Richter has enough moves to fare pretty well against the toughest situations. The backflip, in particular, works really well if you put some practice into it, and when used correctly it can save your life many times. In fact, mastering the backflip is essential for defeating bosses like the Minotaur and even Dracula. His walking speed? Just enough to get you around and about while avoiding enemies.You don't need the dash move in this game. In fact I think it can be argued that any faster and Richter might either get killed easily in levels 3, 4', 5 and 5' by accidentally running into a pit, or would breeze through the levels so quickly the entire game would lose its challenge (I've read once that playing as Maria is basically an "Easy Mode" of sorts for the game--I tend to agree, sans her somewhat difficult double jump).
And that's the point. The challenge of Castlevania's early platforming schema was pitting your limited moveset against the level designs and enemy placements. Gaming has always been about sticking to the rules and how far you can get with what you've been given or allowed to do. And this game delivers just that. In fact, here's a golden thing about this game: you can jump on and off stairs. Yes, you heard me. If you're the least bit familiar with how irritating the first few Castlevania games were for not giving you extra mobility while climbing stairs (ref: the in-joke from the Hideo Kojima game "Snatcher"), you'll love this feature.
On the innovation side, I have to admit; this is where the gameplay does fall short, and I must confess that the coming of Symphony of the Night and its descendants has literally changed the landscape of Castlevania and how players, especially the current crop, perceive and appreciate it. While I have whipped through my share of first- and second-generation Castlevania games, it must be admitted that the Metroidvania entires have helped redefine the series in general from linear platformer to castle crawling RPG. In other words, the classic style of Castlevania platforming now seems to be way past its bedtime. Don't get me wrong here; I found it very enjoyable, and I can hazard a good guess that after many years have come and gone (Lord willing), people will still be returning to this genre. But I found it to be likewise dated, and the Metroidvania engine itself is now entering its 11th year in the industry. Iga, of course, recognizes this, and claims that he is still trying to find a way to innovate the series yet again. We just hope he succeeds.
Graphically, the scenery and level designs are beautiful. I have played through the original ROB packed in with the game, and it's easy to see where ROB's original early-90's tiled graphic scheme pales in comparison with what the remake did with it. The levels were reproduced faithfully (apart from some extra changes), but they were also touched up beautifully by the 2.5D graphics. Being a person who has reservations about the use of 2.5D (I'm a sucker for 2D animation), I must compliment the designers for the amount of detail they have packed into the scenery. There is amazing depth in the backgrounds, which becomes even more apparent in lush levels like the Clocktower, the river rapids in Stage 4' and the hidden Stage 5'. One can't help but notice, for example, the mists flowing down from the battlements in the Sword Lord area of the clock tower, the frozen armored knights in the background of the Dullahan boss battle, the bloody torture chambers of Stage 4 or the decrepit old mansion ambience prevalent in Stage 2's Behemoth chase.
Quite a few of the levels, however, look pretty bland, such as the first level's flaming background and the irritatingly bright cyan sky in Stage 2', harking back to the fact that this game is basically a touched-up remake and that the developers tried as much as possible to remain faithful to the original's layouts. But this isn't too much of a problem, as the designers thought to keep the player's eyes busy enough not to notice the flaws. Good luck trying to guess who the caped figure in the far background at the beginning of Stage 3' is; I haven't figured it out myself.
Then there are the cinematics. Boss and midboss fights are graced by an intro movie showing your character gawking at the incoming baddie. In style. Yeah, they may be gawking, but at least it's in style. Some of my favorites include the Dogether, Skull Lord (?), Hydra and Death intros. What were just real time in-game features in RoB (that still looked cool in themselves, BTW) were turned into full fledged cutscenes. The lack of 3D detail becomes apparent during these scenes, however; you would have wondered if this wasn't a PS1 game you were playing--case in point is the intro for the Serpent boss of Stage 1, and the lack of mouth movements for the characters (shades of MGS1...try saying "Meryl! No!!" with your mouth closed). But this is more likely a deliberate design choice: any more polygonal detail and not only would it have severely muddled up the graphics at the distance and perspective the game is being played in, it also probably wouldn't have saved enough space for the inclusion of the two pack-in games, SotN and the original RoB.
The music is a mixed bag. Those who have played the original RoB will immediately notice that most of that particular game's music ("Cross a Fear" from Stage 2' comes to mind) is heavily influenced by late 80's-early 90's retro rock and electronica--think Sonic the Hedgehog BGMs for Genesis, and you'll get the idea. In this game, however, the legendary Michiru Yamane of SotN and LoI fame has stepped in to score and remix the music. Some of it is amazing, such as the Stage 4 BGM "Dreams of Triumph", which is a power metal rendition of the level 1 BGM "Beginning" from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and her version of "Vampire Killer" is nonetheless very good--although it seems a bit too Scooby-Dooish at the beginning, it transitions into a heavy guitar and organ riff near the end of the loop.
She didn't skimp on the classical end, either. The suspenseful boss music "Tues Deus meus", rife with ecstatic strings and a choir singing in Latin, screams "Castlevania" at you; it's actually MUCH better than both "Death Ballad" and "Festival of Servants" from Symphony of the Night. And let's not forget the highly improved version of "Illusionary Dance", the Dracula battle theme, which this game boasts of. In this version, a choir blends in nicely with the screaming pipe organ and the loud strings, and gets you really pumped up fighting the Prince of Darkness.
However, there were some strange musical choices in this game. The graveyard's music in particular is a little forgettable, and the choice to use "Moon Fight" from Akumajou Dracula X680000 ("Castlevania Chronicles" for the PS1) for the seventh level, instead of the music medley "The Den" which was used in the original--and which I liked--seems to be itself unwarranted. If I had to personally choose, I'd pick "Tower of Dolls" for this level. The version of "Divine Bloodlines" found in this game is pretty plain, as well; it seems that nothing much has changed between the version in DXC and the one in RoB. And the retro feeling the original "Cross a Fear" had seems to be missing now for some reason, in favor of improved synthesized music...but I could be wrong there.
Oh, yes, you can swap and reassign music files from the original RoB and SotN to replace the ones found in the remake. Good thing they thought of THIS one. Imagine replacing the weird version of Moon Fight in Stage 7 with the ever venerable "The Tragic Prince" (renamed as "Pitiful Scion" in this game--dunno about you, but I like "The Tragic Prince" better), and the intro level music with the heavy metal "Prologue" theme. Smart move, Iga. Smart move.
Now, the story and dialogue. If there's anything that has been solidly drummed into my head for the past 11 years, it's this: Castlevania is not known for having a well-written plot in particular, with the probable exception of the Sorrow series (and even then, it's still only a probability; having the main character tell his lady friend "I'm a lot cooler now!" doesn't exactly translate as "well written"). Either it's so surprisingly shallow--as is the case of most Castlevania games, wherein the basic theme revolves around Dracula rising from the dead at least once every century and a Belmont descendant striving to stop him in true dualistic fashion, as is the norm with any storyline influenced by Eastern mysticism--or it's so blatantly riddled with holes, such as the extremely disjointed Curse of Darkness and its multiple unresolved plot elements (hey, I've never heard of these "Devil Forger" people before. When did Dracula hire these punks and how much did they earn per annum?). And the character development? I mean, come ON now. How much character development did Jonathan and Charlotte get in Portrait of Ruin, anyway?
DXC is no such exception. The plot doesn't move any further beyond the fact that Dracula has risen again, is wreaking havoc in the Eastern European countryside, and for some unexplained reason has taken several women hostage, including the daughter of a doctor, a really weird nun, Richter's fiancee and her bratty, overpowered little sister, and that Richter, following the dictates of his bloodline, sets out to school him. Granted, the characters are rather charming, and with good evidence: the playable RoB characters are, by far, among the most memorable of the entire Castlevania roster, getting to star in 3-4 different games. But what basically happens in this game storywise is largely gilding. Sure, you'll feel for Annette when you see her turned into a vampire should you fail to save her. But...well...
...um...
...there's that, I suppose. Nothing really deep in how the plot works out; don't expect anything on the level of MGS or Silent Hill in this game. I'm beginning to think the entirety of the game's message and philosophy was bottled up in the final confrontation and dialogue with Dracula. What's worse is that the end dialogue in the original Rondo of Blood actually made more sense than the remake's rather postmodernist version, as cheesy as the original Rondo was with its anime cutscenes straight out of the early 90s (Dracula looked like he could fit comfortably in with the entire cast of Slayers, as opposed to his DXC counterpart's Spaghetti Western look). Listen to it for yourself and you'll see what I mean.
My worst gripe about the dialogue can probably be summed up in one name: Tera. Remember the weird nun I mentioned? Her dialogue was simpler and more straight-up in the original version, where she simply mistook Richter for a guardian angel. It had one of the funniest cutscenes in the entire game, too, where Tera asks Richter what his name was and he replies with "I'm Richter Belmont, vampire hunter!" while flashing a peace sign. I didn't know the peace sign existed in the late 18th century. All's well and good in that version, but here...it might have been an attempt at comedy, but her constant referring to Richter as an incarnation of God Himself
* made me wonder if she had been taught any serious doctrine at all in whatever Wallachian convent she lived in. With theology like that, it's no wonder Dracula keeps rising again and again every 100 years.
Overall, I really loved having this chance at playing the remake--as well as the original version--of the missing link in the Castlevania timeline, and getting to mess around once more with the most popular Castlevania of all time, Symphony of the Night. It has its flaws, and you definitely can't have it all, as they say, but I'm satisfied with how this one turned out. Of course, it's a great opportunity and impetus for me to develop Twilight Oratorio in a different direction, but I could not have done it without Konami. Thank God for them, even though their games have been in the theological, ethical and philosophical gutter in recent years.
As a side note on what they did with the remastered version of Symphony of the Night: the voice acting and script this time around sounds a little more natural, a bit more straightforward than the first incarnation. Richter sounds more serious, manlier and less of an over-the-top goofball ("You steal men's
souls!"
), while Maria sounds more believably like a 17 year old, rather than a mid-20s woman in the original. Shaft and Death sounded particularly nice this time around, although I have a soft spot for their old voice actors' work, too, which weren't shabby in themselves unlike Richter's.
My two gripes were that Dracula sounded less like a megalomaniac and more like somebody trying to capture the feeling of being a visceral threat--yet not entirely getting there--while Alucard barely betrayed any emotion in his acting except during the first meeting with Richter in the Colosseum ("
YOU'RE A BELMONT!!!!" Good thing my volume was low at that time or he and Rick would have torn my ears off with thir yelling) and the Nightmare sequence. It might have been deliberate, but in my opinion it wound up feeling flat. Hearing that adolescent voice made me miss the old "This CD contains sensitive digital data..." baritone that gave Alucard a special place in my heart, right next to the left ventricle. Good thing they included an option to listen to the original Japanese voices for all three games.
Heck, they even took out the Scripture reference in the SotN remake's ending. Although the dialogue became a little more straightforward that way, I still miss Dracula's quotation of Matthew 16:26--one of my first few Scripture verses committed to memory, thanks in part to this game, and a rather sharp point on Dracula's part about his being a sellout. Signs of the times, I guess. At least they kept the Edmund Burke quote in the ending.
In the end, I'll have to voice the concern (no pun intended) of perhaps a lot more fans than I think--while it gets points for being more natural-sounding than the original, the remastered version just doesn't have the same charm as "Die, monster!"
* See my earlier comment about Eastern mysticism and dualism. For all I know this could have been simply a passing hint at the dualistic yin-yang cyclical nature of the game's plot, a hallmark of certain important schools of Eastern thought such as Buddhism and Taoism. In this case Richter would be the agent of God, and Dracula would be the agent of the devil, and everytime an imbalance in the forces of evil arises (i.e. Dracula gets resurrected), a Belmont would return it to normal. This sort of worldview is made even more apparent in the Sorrow titles, both of which feature a dualistic view of good and evil. But then again, I could also be reading too much into that statement, and therefore be wrong.Groups I'm In
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