Lurker > refureeman

I would go with VIII. It has the best balance of being a great, standard JRPG and being a good representation of what the whole series is about.
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Sahuagin posted...

are Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania: Dracula X not the same game?

I played one of them a long time ago, it was ok

No, Dracula X is the snes port of Rondo of Blood. Super Castlevania IV is much better.
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papercup posted...

I've only played through it once, but I remember it being okay. Not terrible, but not great.

I'll concede, I am more disappointed than I am saying the game is actively bad. Another SNES castlevania game that I finally get to play and it just has so many stupid instant deaths it just was a mediocre experience.
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Wow. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I've played most console castlevania games from the nes to ps2 eras and I will say this ranks as among my least favorite.

Super Castlevania IV was a really solid game. I do feel it's overrated, but I grew up with it and have played through it recently and it is still quite a fun game. I thought this would be the same (if not better) and honestly it felt like it took ten steps backwards. The controls were unbelievably clunky. Among the worst/slowest jumping animations I've experienced in a 2d platformer. I am also a firm believer that in a game with a life bar, instant deaths should be a rare occurrence (if not completely nonexistent). I can safely say that I died far more often to getting knocked off a ledge than by health loss. The final boss was just two forms of utter stupidity where I died almost exclusively from being knocked off the edge. The few times I died to health depletion was because of another glaring flaw: no hit recovery. Both you and the bosses can take hit after hit in succession and it makes some bosses super easy and some lesser enemies suddenly super dangerous. I honestly feel there are a lot of good ways to make a challenge (higher health/damaging enemies, more enemies, more varied attacks, etc.). This game went about it entirely the wrong way in my opinion.

On a plus side, it still "felt" like a castlevania game and had cool graphics, music, and theme. The few stages that didn't involve pitfalls were actually pretty fun but the game took me a long time to complete because it was so frustrating I could not play it for long.

TLDR: I felt the game was decent but a disappointment, particularly coming after Super Castlevania IV, and there were far too many stupid deaths from no hit recovery, bad jumping mechanics, and pitfalls.
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I'll take that as a compliment. As well as this, they, you and every other pronoun.