Dracula X (Castlevania) on Sega Saturn, short review

Another tribute to the Sega Saturn? You may be surprised to find that I didn't actually like playing Dracula X on Saturn. The game has great reviews elsewhere, but I'll tell you why I didn't like it.

Sold for 448 SEK (70$, incl tax)

Castlevania (known as Symphony of the Night on playstation) is a game in Metroid-style. The main challenge of the game is to find your way around, and to buy the right weapons and items. You use spells, buy items, and transform to an animals at times. It certainly is a great game, but I was disappointed because it will be impossible to play it without a guide. It is hard enough to find where to go, and then everything is in Japanese. All items and weapons. Unless you have played the playstation version, I don't think you would be able to play through the Saturn version without a walkthrough.

The gameplay itself isn't actually that hard. Almost all enemies are easy enough with the upgrades you'll have when you face them. There are also many save points that restore your health.

Technically, the game has great atmosphere and music. It does suffer slowdowns at times. Personally slowdowns don't bother me, maybe because I have played so much game boy and NES/famicom, but I often read that others find slowdowns very annoying.

The start is cool, where you revisit the end of a previous game to beat Dracula (or whatever his name is), and only after that do we see the intro and get the new story going.

I recommend this game to anyone who can play it or who has lots of time. I couldn't play it and soon got stuck.

Here is a video I made with some gameplay around 15 minutes into the game (not counting the intro). I entered the shop at around 04:20 and it made me confused.