Game #1253: Castlevania Requiem

  Third time's the charm!

 No, Castlevania Requiem is not a new Castlevania game, but rather a port of Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles, albeit missing the main game, the Rondo of Blood Remake. In other words, these are the PSP versions of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. It's kinda disappointing, since I really enjoyed the remake, and if they ported these two, why not port the main game? But alas, I digress.

 This is the third time I'm covering Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and guess what? It's still really friggin' good. The game that made 'Metroidvania' a genre is still a fantastic game and a great entry-point into the genre. I love this game, honestly, and this port gets everything right. That said, it is the PSP version, so it has the new translation and the re-dubbed voices, so purists will be annoyed. It also has the PSP additions, such as playable Maria and a new familiar. The Saturn additions are still lost to time, bummer.

 This also marks the second time I played through Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and having played through a ton of Classicvanias not so long ago, I can now affirm that Rondo of Blood is one of the finest Classicvanias, if not the best. It has a ton of stages, alternate routes, alternate stages as well as two playable characters. Richter is stronger and can tank more hits, but has a larger hitbox, is slower and has the classic stiff jump arc, Maria, meanwhile, can take fewer hits and deals less damage, but is much faster and can double jump. In general, Maria has an easier time with stages, thanks to her mobility, but a tougher time with bosses, since you can't make as many mistakes as with Richter. That said... Maria can decimate large bosses thanks to her attack speed, so Dracula falls faster to her than to Richter. In other words, Maria is the game's easy mode.

 The ports are relatively fine, although I did notice a few things. In SOTN, sometimes it won't mark explored rooms on the map right off the bat, but after a few seconds, and one time one minute or so, they appeared marked on the map. Plus, since it's a straight up PSP port, Mist Form doesn't have a dedicated button, unlike the PS1 original, so you have to hold down L1 and R1 to use it. Pretty minor, if you ask me. In ROB, however, when you take damage Richter turns a shade of red for a second or so, which I'm not sure it should, but I could be wrong. During Dracula's Boss fight, when he transforms, I think the graphical effects aren't quite right, but once again, I could be wrong. All in all, relatively minor stuff too.

 It's not the perfect rerelease, as it's missing features such as some sort of rewind, in-game cheats or save states to make replaying this older games more comfy, but I felt both ports are pretty good, and I had a grand ol' time going through two of the best entries in the series.

 9.5