Castlevania: Bloodlines

Released on March 17, 1994 in North America for the Sega Genesis by Konami, Castlevania: Bloodlines brings 2D Castlevania action-platforming to a Sega console for the first time

Many moons ago, I played the Super Nintendo's Super Castlevania IV for the first time, and it blew my mind. The incredible, highly-detailed graphics, the atmospheric, all-timer 16-bit soundtrack, and the finely-tuned, incredible gameplay immediately made the game an instant favorite. I couldn't beat SCIV back then, but revisited it after college in the mid-00's and finally defeated Dracula. The game blew my mind all over again when I was in my 20s, and much stronger technology was available, but that time I heard a small, dissenting voice from several people: Castlevania Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis is better. Before I started hearing these rumblings, I didn't even know the Genesis had a Castlevania game. From that point, I saw videos of the Genesis Castlevania game, and thought about it every now and then, but never gave playing it any serious thought until I saw it on a Tennessee vacation at the end of last year, in a mall video game store for a ridiculously low price. After confirming that the cartridge was real and not a reproduction, I made the purchase, brought the game home, and have played through to the end credits. Is Castlevania: Bloodlines as good as Super Castlevania IV? Is it even a good game?

And whose ribcage is this?

Longtime Castlevania, developer, Konami, wanted Castlevania's first foray onto a Sega console to be different. Thus, Castlevania: Bloodlines doesn't take place during medieval times, but in the 1910s, during World War I. The main villain is a female vampire who wants to use the war as a distraction, in order to revive her uncle...Dracula. Yes, in this side-story from the main Castlevania timeline, Dracula's return is yet again imminent, and the player has to stop it. The change in time period is a cool twist, but the setting here is different, as well. While the first of the game's six stages takes place in and around Dracula's castle, the other five take place all over Europe, as the game's two protagonists chase around the continent, attempting to prevent Dracula's resurrection, reaching such locales as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Versailles Palace, and a munitions factory in Germany, among others.

Texas, USA! 

I did indeed say "protagonists" in the above paragraph, as Bloodlines offers players the choice of two quite different characters. The first is John Morris (from Texas! I), the slower, stronger, whip-wielding, Belmont-descended, more traditional Castlevania character. The second is the Spaniard, Eric Lecarde, a faster, but slightly weaker character, who carries a more long-range spear. While Bloodlines contains difficulty mode options of EASY, NORMAL, and EXPERT, using Eric is indeed easier. Eric's speed is quite handy, as is the longer range of his weapon, and his ability to strike upward. The easiest mode here is EASY with Eric. I did not do that. While I tested Eric's playability quite a bit for this review, I did my main playthrough here using John Morris on NORMAL mode.

I came here with the Belmonts, and I'm leaving with the Belmonts

Castelvania: Bloodlines looks great. The sprites are big, the backgrounds are detailed, and environments feature plenty of cool animations, like spinning cogs, rising water, scrolling clouds, and shafts of light. The player character, enemies, and bosses are all well-animated and well-designed as well. The color scheme is a little odd and limited, though admittedly, quite Genesis. Likewise, the soundtrack is very Genesis, in a very good way, making the best of its sound chip. Michiru Yamane, just three years before her storied work on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, presents some very solid work, her first for the series, enjoyable, sophisticated, Bach-inspired pieces that are short, and might not all stick in the head, but that are highly effective and perfectly fit the game. Sound effects are what Castlevania on the Sega Genesis would and should sound like.

The Indiana Jones-like map screen with the traveling dots before each level is quite cool

With firm productions values in place, including a well-done cutscene before the start menu that explains the game's story, all that's left is for the gameplay to take things home. On that front, Castlevania: Bloodlines mostly succeeds. From the start, Bloodlines feels like a classic Castlevania game. Walking and jumping. Whipping enemies. Getting knocked back by a previously unseen enemy into a pit and dying. It's all here. In the case of Bloodlines, it's all here for better or worse.

Here comes a medusa head. Whatever you do DO NOT JUMP.

The first Castlevania game is hard. There are notorious moments in that game where the player will try to jump over a pit from one platform to another, only to get hit by a bat and knocked back into that pit, to their death. The thing about that first Castlevania game is that if the player experienced a game over in any of the levels in that game's six stages, they had the infinite opportunity to continue from the beginning of that stage. In Bloodlines, there are only two continues, and three lives per continue. I was overjoyed to find that there are passwords for each level, but when I reached the second stage down a continue, I was dismayed to find that the password actually saves exactly how many continues and lives the player has...meaning the player has a limited amount of lives to get through the game...and that's it. Run out, and you've got to start over from the beginning of the game. Bloodlines is more unforgiving than the NES' original Castlevania!

I. Hate. These. SIRENS!!!!

Thankfully, I eventually noticed that in the options menu, the player can change the amount of lives from three to five (or one, if you're a sicko). This saved my playthrough and opinion of the game. With the limited continues and inability to save or start a stage over with continues intact, playing with five lives on NORMAL mode is a must (I refused to play through on EASY mode). Like in the the original Castlevania, Bloodlines is broken into six stages, though these aren't broken up into three distinct levels apiece as in the original. While six stages may not sound like many, these stages are long. Extremely long. Early in the game, I don't know how many times I survived a section, hoping the next screen would bring the final boss, only to have to get through several more highly difficult screens. Each stage also features at least one, and often many mini-bosses throughout. I need to make it clear, I am not penalizing the game simply for having a tough difficulty level. Anyone who has been reading my reviews over the years knows that I appreciate a tough difficulty...I just reviewed Batman for the NES! However, I dislike when difficulty feels like it is covering up a lack of content, like in old, quarter-munching arcade games that could be beaten in under ten minutes if the difficulty was simply moderate. Bloodlines doesn't quite reach that point, but it does encroach upon it at times. I feel like the ideal version of this game would actually extend these levels even longer...but include either infinite continues or passwords that didn't save the amount of lives and continues the player had remaining from their previous playthrough. As it is, Bloodlines is fun, and quite challenging, but that challenge feels just a bit unfair, a relic of older, less sophisticated times in the 16-bit age. Some may actually view this as a feature, a bonus, and not a bug. However, I think that 16-bit technology should mean the elimination of such tactics...Super Castlevania IV doesn't need them, and its difficulty feels balanced, while the gameplay length feels just right.

 

Super Castlevania IV brought my dead cat back to life! What have you got, bat boss?

While I'm complaining, I guess I'll get the rest of my negativity out of the way. Certain gameplay elements here are extremely finicky. Even I'm at the point where I'm tired of negatively comparing this game to Super Castlevania IV, but I'll do it one more time. Castlevania IV is famous for Simon Belmont's elastic whip, which can lash out in eight directions. In that game, any time I see a place that I can whip and swing from, I get excited because of how fun that gameplay mechanic is. Here, I dreaded having to whip across chasms. John can only lash forward, unless he is jumping, in which case he can whip up, diagonally. Unlike in Castlevania IV, where whipping points are clearly marked, there are times that John just needs to whip and swing from the ceiling, and nothing is marked...it's just the ceiling. Sometimes the whipping mechanic works, but sometimes it doesn't. The developers seemingly realized that the mechanic wasn't working right, and make sure that there are only a few moments that swinging across a chasm is necessary...but I held my breath every time, and loudly yelled at the TV when it didn't, knowing that I'd just lost one of my few, very precious lives.

Spear boy, on the other hand, doesn't need to whip anywhere

With all that said, Bloodlines is actually pretty fun most of the time. Yes, it's difficult, but I often found myself trying to play a stage nearly perfectly, to where I only died once or twice, restarting from my previous password until I beat the level that way. This ensured I always reached the next level and got a password where I still had many lives remaining. Like with any good game, the more I played, the better I got. I'd often continue through a stage, even after I'd died several times (continuing starts the player off at the beginning of the exact screen at which they died), with the intention of starting over if I got to the end, so that I could go through again with the intent of dying less. A stage...particularly the nightmarish, siren-filled Stage Three, would often drain all of my lives and continues before I even got halfway to the end for the first few tries. Eventually, I'd get good enough to almost make it through without dying. The controls, while again limited a bit from Castlevania IV and other future Castlevania title, are pretty tight, excluding the whip-grappling mechanic. Jumping follows the more realistic style of earlier games, meaning once the player has committed to a jump, they can't turn around and correct it in mid-air. A jump forward is always a jump forward, no matter what, unless an enemy flies into the player, in which case, it's a jump forward, then a knock back. The controls became more and more familiar and more and more intuitive the more I played. The Sega Genesis controller's three-button scheme works out well here, as there's an attack button, a jump button, and a secondary weapon button. Like in most Castlevania games, the player can pick up a secondary weapon throughout the game (an axe, holy water, etc.) to use on enemies, collecting jewels as ammunition. This mechanic works just as well as it does in other Castlevania games.

 

The glass breaking throughout this fight is an epic touch

Once I gained more confidence in my Bloodlines abilities, as well as in my chances at progressing through the game's marathon-length levels (particularly after discovering I could up the life count to five), I started to eagerly anticipate whatever crazy thing the game would throw at me next. From a ghost knight with a machine gun, to a weird 90s glitch/steampunk mini-boss, to rooms that play completely upside down, Bloodlines is great at keeping players on their toes. Imagination and ingenuity are on display here by the bloody truckload. The attention to detail is also great. I loved revisiting Dracula's castle in the first stage and seeing how much of it was smashed to bits or banged up from time and the last violent Belmont visit. Despite my qualms, a lot of thought, care, and skill went into this game and it shows.

Used to be a nice room...used to be.

As in all Castlevania games, the levels have secrets. There are big juicy mutton chops hidden in some of the walls (generally the wall will show cracks), which refill a player's depleted power meter. There are also extra lives hidden in some particularly devious places, though these often require the player to risk a life in order to grab them. There are a few Mirrors of Truth hidden throughout the game, which kill every enemy on screen. I really like those. There are Coat-of-Arms, which, when the player has upgraded either their whip or spear to the maximum amount (generally done quickly, right when a player has started a stage, or restarted on a screen), combine to not only create a super-powered whip or spear, but replace the secondary weapon with an awesome, screen-clearing supermove. Each of the regular secondary weapons also has its own supermove, which requires the player to hold "up" when hitting the secondary attack button, though this uses more jewels. Overall, there's enough depth in gameplay to keep the player invested, even if they're struggling with the difficulty (or annoying grappling mechanic). Bloodlines is a good game...

 

Upon reflection...

But claiming that it is better than Super Castlevania IV is frankly ridiculous. These two games are not on the same level. For one, Bloodlines, is a high production value ode to a previous generation in gaming, that is at times held captive by that previous generation's flaws. Super Castlevania IV transcends, makes use of its 16-bit technology to carve out a spot among the greatest 2D action-platformers of all time. In my humble opinion, gaming peaked at the 16-bit generation. Developers could now create games that were large enough to where the difficulty didn't have to be artificially inflated to extend gameplay. Functions like file-saving became commonplace because the ability to save a game now didn't mean that the player could get through it so quickly, the game didn't have value. Music and graphics could be highly appealing given the proper development and care. Games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Streets of Rage 2 redefined gaming excellence (though as I think about it, the Genesis titles only furthered the production value angle--those games don't feature any save option, and you have to play straight through them...the newer Super Nintendo most definitely had a leg up in this department). Super Castlevania IV features so many stages, the password system doesn't need to hold players to limited lives and continues to artificially inflate gameplay. While Bloodlines' graphics and sound are good, SCIV features layered, painterly 16-bit graphics, and a soundtrack that would make a gothic film envious (and anyone who would point to the slowdown during some moments in SCIV as its Achilles heel must have somehow never tried to do a Coat-of-Arms supermove in Bloodlines). However...some people just prefer the Genesis aesthetic. They prefer the graphics and sound generally inherent in a Sega Genesis game versus that of a Super Nintendo game. If  that's the case, and you haven't played Bloodlines...head to a shopping mall in Tennessee and pick up this game, now! They had two copies, and I left a copy on the shelf (CM Games in Knoxville)! And if you're a Castlevania fan in general and haven't played this game, I highly recommend it. Even if Bloodlines is not my 16-bit preference, it's more than worth playing.

I felt like I had to take a picture of the screen when I beat the game to prove my bonafides(I wasn't using screen capture on that playthrough),,,because after all the griping I did here about difficulty, I beat Dracula on my first try...on my last life...with one hit left...

Go back to sleep, you blood-sucking bastard

Graphics: 8.5/10.0
Sound: 8.5/10.0
Gameplay: 7.8/10.0
Lasting Value: 7.5/10.0
Overall (Not an Average): 8.0/10.0