Napalm Riot

Overview

Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP is a remake of Rondo of Blood. You play as Richter Belmont and Maria. The main game is quite difficult and will pose as a serious challenge to new comers of the series. If you have played the side scrolling kind of Castlevania game before you shouldn’t have too much trouble. The main feature in this game is that you can unlock the original Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. This is the first appearance that Rondo of Blood has made in the North American market. Previous to this iteration it was quite difficult to find. Although the 3d Remake only has just over two dozen stages you’ll likely want to replay them to unlock music and the other 2 games. Symphony of the Night is the other unlockable game which is one of my favorite Castlvania’s of all time. This is because it is very open ended and in this iteration they took the best of all the remakes of SOTN and put them into one.

Hours Spent: 25+
Difficulty: Hard


Story

The story goes that there’s this dark sorcerer named Shaft; Shaft steals this chick from the village to sacrifice her to bring summon Dracula. There isn’t a huge emphasis on story throughout this game except for some FMV’s. Richter Belmont sets out to defeat Dracula and shaft, (I think); on his quest he meets Maria who joins him. Maria has power that involves dragons and doves (I don’t get it really).

The Symphony of the Night story starts off in the year 1797 you play as Richter Belmont and defeat Dracula. Although four years later Richter disappears, this is due to an encounter he has with shaft. Because of this Alucard son of Dracula is awaken from his sleep because the balance between good and evil has been disrupted. He finds the entity of chaos known as Castlevania. This is when you start to play as Alucard and the game begins. Along the way you find Maria in the castle, she is looking for Richter; she aids you throughout your journey.


Graphics

The Graphics in this game are fairly good for the PSP in the remade rondo of blood there are 3d characters and 2d backgrounds. The cinematic sequences in the game though are CG and thus have almost the same quality as something on a console. For Symphony of the night the graphics are as good as a DS game. The graphics are detailed and mostly 2d although there is some 3d.


Gameplay

Gameplay for Rondo of Blood is fairly straight forward sidescroller as Richter you have your whip attack, back flip, jump, and secondary item. As Maria you have the same except instead of a whip you shoot doves and instead of back flips you double jump. You progress through stages fighting enemies and then you eventually reach a boss at the end of each stage.

Gameplay for Symphony of the Night plays sort of like an action RPG. You have your main and secondary action which you can bind to item/equipment I use a sword and shield but you can also use a 2h or dual wield. As you progress you’ll pick up chest and head armor you also have 2 slots for accessories. You press Triangle to do a sort of fast moonwalk type move. You can also jump and bring up a map. Another big feature is spell casting how you cast spells is like doing a fatality you press like up, down, left, left then square or circle and you’ll shoot a fireball and teleport or life drain or something. Overall there are roughly 8 or 9 spells. You also collect Relics as you move through the game these are items you can enable or disable which work passively. They do such things from allowing you to double jump to letting you call familiars. Familiars are essentially little creatures that follow you around and help you. You can only have one active at a time and there are roughly 6 or 7 available. They gain XP when you kill things with them and they grow stronger. For example the Pixie heals you and sometimes resurrects you it also can make you resist an element which is attacking you. There are also offensive ones like the imp which basically just jabs enemies with a stick to inflict massive damage. Transformations are another big part of this game you can transform into a wolf, bat and Mist you unlock them as you progress, you can also upgrade them using relics.


Sound

I love the sound for both games; they have a kind of classic video game music tone to it. There is even a mode which you can just listen to the music in the game although you have to unlock it piece by piece via finding them in stages.

Extras

Extras include two fully playable versions of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the night. There is also unlockable OST and unlockable modes such as boss rush.