>SCIV
>Rondo
>Bloodlines
>X
I don't want to make a collage. Pick one and explain your reasons.

>>11895662 (OP)
>Bloodlines
Grew up w/it. If I had to rank: Bloodlines > IV > X
Never played Rondo

>>11895662 (OP)

>>11895674
Thanks for your contribution

>>11895662 (OP)
4, the new ideas feel the most fleshed out of all of em. rondo is close though, has some pretty good combat even if you can trivialize a few fights with the holy water item crush.
4 > rondo > x68000/chronicles > bloodlines > x

>>11895662 (OP)
>SCIV
The only Classicvania game where you feel powerful and dominant over the enemies and obstacles. Yeah it's easier than the others but I wouldn't consider it "easy". Especially towards the end. I also love the jazzy music and the graphics. The castle has this dingy lived in quality. It looks like something out of a Hammer movie.
All these games are excellent though.

>>11895686
Oh I also love all the cheesy mode 7 effects - it screams "first gen SNES game"

I'm a medically crazy person and I like X. I recommend ending your sessions on Game Over and starting over from stage 1, feels really good building familiarity with levels in that game.

>>11895662 (OP)
best game: sciv
coolest game: rondo

x and bloodlines are both good entries but do not have much to claim fame for other than minor stuff like 'cool spear' or 'funny key'

didn't read thread yet btw, but i hope no one falls for the eternal 'x bad' bait from the rondo fags. the game might have some style but if you come here to post that shit you need a life

>>11895662 (OP)
If I seriously had to pick I'd pick Rondo, but they're all great and each excel in their own way
IV is my favorite for pure gameplay
Rondo for overall presentation and music
Bloodlines for cool bosses and technical effects

>>11895662 (OP)
IV. I like the level design and general sense of atmosphere. It's set further apart from the NES games than the others. I don't think it's necessarily a better overall game than X68000 or Rondo, but if I only had to keep one for the rest of time (assuming I also got to keep the original and III) it would be IV no question.

>>11895678
o7

>>11895662 (OP)
There's zero reason to play X.

Bloodlines.
Rondo controls like some autistic in-between of IV/X68K and Bloodlines. It just feels like shit. Boring, flat levels and damage sponge bosses don't help.

>Bloodlines
This is not only the best game of the bunch, it would be the best game in the series if it didn't a SotN in the way
Think about it this way - if Bloodlines was a little, let's say, flawed in some area, whatever it was, espcially if it was sound related - wouldn't Ninnies and even Sonyfriends shit all over it all the time? They would, the game would be constantly shat on because the Genesis doesn't have legion of defenders the way Sony and Nintendo do (the Dreamcast kinda does but even then). The point is that Bloodlines is so kino that no one can throw shade at it, which is impressive because all the other games get shat on sometimes. To conclude the rant, what I'm saying is Bloodlines is the vulnerable and yet still hangs with the rest, and that means it's way better than the rest. Does that make sense?

>>11895662 (OP)
>Bloodlines
because the rest are shit

>>11895662 (OP)
Rondo of Blood wins as an action game with tight combat and badass music to accompany it, but IV's atmosphere is just fantastic with fun level variety, it's more like an adventure instead of an arcade game.

CV4, the only game with a control scheme that has held up

Bloodlines is jank and gives me a headache.
Dracula X on snes is way too difficult.
I can see rondo being good.

Honorable mention to Chronicles on PSX, artistically superior to st least CV4.

Actually, can someone please explain why they like bloodlines?
Do you prefer its audiovisual presentation? It's fast pace? The spear?

Either X68k/Chronicles Original mode or Rondo. The former is just classic CV action perfected in my opinion, it's like the NES games except even better. The latter is just an all around great adventure, gameplay-wise it may not be the greatest CV game but it's still very fun and the presentation is just top notch
>>11895715
>I recommend ending your sessions on Game Over
This game is balls to the wall hard, I can't imagine doing that. It's probably the hardest CV game from the 90s, I remember it being even harder than X68k
>>11896549
>Dracula X on snes is way too difficult.
Yeah that's what I'm saying, especially if you're going for the best ending which requires you to reset stage 4 a lot because of one nasty platforming part. Also the hardest final boss in the series. People surprisingly don't talk about how hard this game is

>>11896557
Good music, good gameplay with two characters, good graphics, good levels, cool setting and traveling diferents parts of Europe makes it feel more epic.

>Loading passwords in the Japanese version gives you a full set of lives and continues, instead of the amount of lives and continues you had before getting the password in the North American version.
>The Japanese version's normal mode is less difficult than the North American versions', equivalent to the latter's "easy" mode.
>In the Japanese version, the Expert mode requires a Konami Code in the title screen to unlock. A sound will play when done. This mode is equal to "Normal Mode" of North American version, that Death still has one card providing lots of pot roasts. In the Expert mode of North American version however, Death shows no mercy by having three flame blast cards instead.
What the fuck is this baby shit

>>11896578
>The American version is harder than the Japanese version.
This was actually pretty normal in the 16-bit gen

For me it's Ludovania: Dracula X. It combines the expanded moveset and combat focus of Rondo with level design and challenge close to the NES games (3 especially), and recontextualizes many elements of Rondo in new and creatives ways, like using the key to free Maria turned into a relentless gauntlet across an entire stage.

>>11895662 (OP)
rondo cuz playing as maria is fun__________

>>11896632
>unlocking easy mode turned into a relentless gauntlet across an entire stage.
Isn't that a bit ass backwards retarded

>>11896653
Maria isn't playable in Dracula X. That's for the best ending.

>>11896578
>>11896595
yea thats common
streets of rage 3 vs bare knuckle 3, is probably the biggest difficulty gap
contra hardcorp, the US vs the JP version they have a fucking health bar in contra? pussies
ninja gaiden 3
etc

they say the rental market was the reason for it, but i reckon it was actually revenge for us bombing the devs dads and grandmas a few decades back

theres outliers that buck the trend, like megaman 2, which only has hard mode compared to US ver. but a lot more often its the other way around. esp so in 16-bit era, for whatever reason

>>11896661
>theres outliers that buck the trend, like megaman 2
This is the reason why everyone claims that it's easy compared to the rest of the series and I've always said that if you are playing normal mode you basically aren't playing the real game

>>11895662 (OP)
They're all great for different reasons.

>>11895662 (OP)
I've still not gotten around to playing Rondo after all these years, but I probably should, particularly given that I like the music and graphics of X a lot, even if Super is a better game in a lot of ways.

>>11895674
Thanks for Thrilling me!

>>11895682
>4, the new ideas feel the most fleshed out of all of em.
Kind of, though I feel like they should have changed the subweapons some to make up for the fact that you are now much more mobile and flexible. The Axe is still really useful because it gives you that high reach and arc, but it's not quite as vital in some ways because of how you can more easily reach around with your whip.

>>11896562
>This game is balls to the wall hard, I can't imagine doing that.
You get better each time, ideally, and not exactly a super long game. Not gonna beat it in one session but a good way to fill off time for a few days. There's a sort of rhythm to the stages that you pick up as you go and makes replaying them a lot of fun.

>>11896731
You can 1CC Dracula X?

>>11896743
Not him but I can, it only takes some practice.

>>11896743
I'm a total shitter, but I think I can do it eventually. You just gotta practice, which I feel is fine with really short arcade style games like these, and Dracula X really isn't very complex either, so it's a matter of just habit.

I'll let you in on a retarded secret: it's really easy to farm extra lives in Dracula X because there's no time limit, you can just continue smacking Medusa Heads or Bats as they continue spawning, and every 10000pts you get an extra life.
This would be fucking tedious to do, but if you're finding that you're out of lives and you badly don't want to give up, then you could grind for that.

The less retarded approach is to just write down passwords for levels after you beat them, then enter those in to practice those levels individually.

>>11896686
it IS ez mode
isnt it literally by a factor, both ways?
like you do 2x damage and take 1/2?

Rondo, it has the highest production values

>>11896743
I didn't 1cc Drac on my run, I gave myself a concession to clear the game when it came to continues on the last stage. But I 1cc'd everything leading up to him when I first got there.

The other anon who made the comparison between DX SNES and the NES games is right on the money. It might be branded CV5 in the US, but design-wise it's like if a CV4 was designed for the NES but ultimately found life on the SNES. It got a lot of flak back when for being under-ambitious compared to its peers in the same series, but now when classic-style games are a relative minority, it can be a breath of fresh air. It's a hard game... It's difficult to say whether its difficulty is under- or overstated, really. Like it's hard, but it not so much so that it should put somebody off from actually playing it, like Haunted Castle-hard or anything. Like I said in the previous post, there's a sort of rhythm to the stages, a sort of flow to the patterns that you can adapt to well just from playing it and paying attention.

Rondo because it has the best enemies and bosses. Right at the start when that skeleton jumps out the window and has several attacks he can do, that's when you realize it's not like the previous games. Everything has more movement and reactions than the rest of the series, even Richter has a sweet back-flip that's factored into the boss movesets. The game even rewards you for beating bosses with no damage taken, because it's actually likely you'll be able to do it if you play enough.

>>11896812
I think its difficulty is overrated. It doesn't come close to being as hard as Castlevania 3 for me.

rondo has the best music, best art, best belmont and has branching pathways.
only IV surpasses it on atmosphere, bloodlines is good but not as good as IV or rondo.
X is a legitimately bad game.

>>11896908
Dracula X is bad by the virtue of being a really paired down port, but in a vacuum it's literally adequate.

>>11896557
some of the best music on the genesis
varied locales vs. different areas in the same castle
spear guy is the most satisfying character to play in all of classicvania. his subweapon ult absolutely melts bosses (even though it lags the fuck out of the game)
the game has ridiculous difficulty spikes though (fuck you versailles, fuck you final level that ruptures the screen)

>>11896908
Dracula X is Rondo's leftovers, but those are still not half bad leftovers.

I'm going to go by Gameplay/Stages/Music.

>Gameplay
Gonna go with Castlevania IV, it feels so good to play, and wrecking bosses quickly with x3 cross is always fun. As far as Classic Castlevania goes it's definitely the best for that.
>Stages
I'd say it's a tie between Rondo and IV. Hard to choose, they both have great stage design. Bloodlines is dragged down by Stage 5 being one big straight line, though the stage itself is absolutely gorgeous looking.
>Music
Bloodlines. I know Rondo has a good soundtrack, but I don't find it as memorable. I also have a big bias towards Michiru Yamane so of course i'm going to pick Bloodlines.

So uh, yeah, I can't just pick one. I love them all for different reasons (except Dracula X). Chronicles/X68000 is great too.