The Haunted Hoard: Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Super Castlevania IV on the Super Nintendo often comes up in discussions of the best games for that system, but over on the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive, it’s own Castlevania game isn’t quite as beloved. Castlevania: Bloodlines came out around 3 years after Super Castlevania IV though and perhaps it didn’t seem like a big break away from the platforming action seen in its SNES cousin, but it might also be the odd way the legacy of the game is preserved that has lead to it being the lesser known game. Super Castlevania IV received rereleases in 2006, 2013, and 2016, but Castlevania: Bloodlines wouldn’t reappear again after its initial 1994 release until 2019. Now that it’s much easier to find a way to play it, perhaps a chance for its legacy to be redeemed has arrived as it at least feels it deserves to stand alongside the better regarded SNES title.

Castlevania: Bloodlines presents plenty of the gothic horror trappings familiar to fans of the series, but while much of the series takes place between 1400 and 1800, the story of this adventure kicks off in 1917. Part of this seems to emerge from a desire to closer connect the series’s version of Dracula to the classic depiction of the literary vampire, but this does mean one of the game’s heroes, John Morris, can be from the state of Texas. At the time of the game’s events, the vampire lord Dracula has seemingly been killed for good by John’s father Quincy, but the niece of Dracula, Elizabeth Bartley, has recently been reanimated herself and aims to bring her uncle back to life. John Morris and his long time friend Eric LeCarde thus begin to travel across Europe in search of her, starting at her Transylvanian castle, passing through places like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a German munitions plant that are filled with monsters and traps that delay their efforts to prevent the return of Dracula.

Castlevania: Bloodlines lets you pick which of the two heroes you’ll play as in this side-scrolling platformer, the player needing to tackle six decently sized stages with their vampire killer of choice. John Morris doesn’t stray too far from the typical Castlevania protagonist, the Texan wielding a whip that lets him kill the many supernatural creatures that stand in his way, but he does have a unique trick that lets him leap up and latch onto things with a diagonal whip strike so he can swing across gaps. Eric LeCarde also doesn’t have to get too close to his foes thank to a large lance he attacks with, but he also has the benefit of being able to strike upwards with it and by holding down for a bit, he can even pull off a high jump that lets him take different routes than Morris. While both heroes will experience the same levels, the divergence in their horizontal and vertical movement range means a second playthrough with the other character will take you through different areas within those levels. Overall their adventures are pretty similar and it can feel more like choosing whether you want the classic whip-wielding action of the Castlevania series or a new and more flexible fighting style that can simplify certain enemies who like to fly above you during a battle.

Levels in Castlevania: Bloodlines often have their monsters placed just so to make them the main concern when traversing a stage. Traversing spinning gears and conveyor belts is made more difficult by the pesky skeletons attacking you while you try to reach their perches, the minotaurs standing near water are happy to shove you into it, and floating medusa heads will keep appearing to hinder your climb up the constantly tipping Tower of Pisa. Even an open area can be complicated by something pesky like the lance-wielding harpies that are rather smart about how much distance to keep from you, and while the garden area looks simple at first, the pollen that reverses controls and wild swinging enemies ask you to think more about how you attack compared to usually just trying to find the moment you can strike a foe safely. You can take a fair deal of damage before dying but healing meat isn’t always easy to find, but the difficulty level does help Castlevania: Bloodlines avoid feeling too short, especially thanks to the frequent conflicts with minibosses on top of the tougher stage bosses.

Many of Castlevania: Bloodlines’s tougher foes tie into an interesting approach to the game’s level design. Castlevania: Bloodlines seems eager to toy with the technical capabilities of the Sega Genesis, almost every level featuring some attempt at an impressive display either with level gimmicks or the way a boss is animated. The fight atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa is constantly rotating for example, the Gear Steamer boss is able to move its 3D looking gears all around to change shape, but these visual tricks can impact the action too. One of the most impressive ones is an area where the screen is split into three horizontal sections that are all misaligned. Your feet can appear much further back than the rest of your body, enemies moving between the three layers are harder to track, and even your jumps will have to account for the fact that you aren’t seeing the true distance between objects.  There are definitely times where the game is just serving you up a nice visual treat, but even when it’s not relying on some impressive trick or just normal detailed sprite and monster design, Castlevania: Bloodlines does have some stage concepts that feel quite creative. One area has you climbing up a set of staircases to avoid the constant flooding only to face the sorceror responsible for it at the top, the mini-boss unable to damage you directly but they’ll try to avoid you as they attempt to take you out just by drowning you. After they’re down, you end up taking a raft down as the place drains, needing to be speedy to avoid being crushed as the screen pushes down on you if you’re too slow. While there are times you can progress at your own pace, Castlevania: Bloodlines remains a fairly kinetic game where you’re often only taking a brief bit to understand what’s at play before you start fighting your way forward to the next new idea.

Bosses often have a handful of attacks they execute in a reliable pattern, meaning even though sometimes you’ll reach them with fairly little health, it is possible for you to learn them and avoid losing too many lives. Oddly enough, Castlevania: Bloodlines decides to use a password system once you’ve run out of lives and continues, and while you can just jump back in on a Game Over and pick up where you left off, the main loss will probably be the jewels you’ve collected. John and Eric can both find special sub-weapons around the levels, usually by busting open candles on the wall. A bladed boomerang gives you greater horizontal reach without needing to approach, the axe is thrown upwards in arc so it’s great for hitting flying foes or monsters on platforms above you, but the sacred water feels a little odd in that you throw it in a spot and it send some flames across the ground. Usually the boomerang will do whatever you’re aiming for with the sacred water, but you don’t get to pick what you find and deaths wipe out your subweapon and jewels. Jewels are the fuel for your subweapons, meaning you can only use them as long as you’ve picked some of them up. You can hold up and press the subweapon button to unleash a more powerful attack with them that often covers different ranges as well, and if you grab a third upgrade for your whip or lance in a level, you even get very costly special abilities that will often wipe out most any standard enemy on screen or heavily damage bosses. It’s understandable the jewels would be limited to restrict these powers, but at the same time, there are battles in Castlevania: Bloodlines that feel like they leave you a little high and dry.

The game’s final set of boss encounters is a particularly demanding gauntlet with few resources to help you out. On the bright side, most of these bosses have patterns that aren’t too hard to figure out, making it so you can retry the sequence of fights and make it through some sections unscathed, but it still feels like the game goes a bit overboard piling in so much near the finale. For the most part, Castlevania: Bloodlines does have a good sense for where it places mid-bosses and helpful items that both clue you in danger is ahead but give you some resources for it in case you’ve had a rough time in the lead-up. Bosses like the Golem who you have to break apart to even reach his weak spot feel like they shake up how you handle such fights too, so outside of the rough final string of fights, they are mostly exciting battles to cap off stage sections. There is an Expert Mode unlocked after you clear the game with one character if you want to spice up the run with the other character, but it appears beyond taking more damage, the biggest change is just having more pesky bats fly across the screen to be a nuisance. Castlevania: Bloodlines mostly has a handle on making its areas tough but fair, but Expert feels like a bit of a weak way to bump up the challenge level while also not such a drastic alteration that it feels like you’re missing much if you play the game normally.

THE VERDICT: When Castlevania: Bloodlines isn’t being creative with the level designs and boss concepts, it instead provides a visual treat as this action horror platformer delights in creating unusual and impressive sights. It’s not all flash thanks to a difficulty level that is mostly tuned well to test both John and Eric’s battle styles and having the two traveling slightly different routes through levels makes it a game worth playing through a second time. A smart sense for how to pace its challenges is eroded a touch by the end, but it’s still a macabre delight to see which new creature or set piece shows up next in this trip across a monster-filled Europe.

And so, I give Castlevania: Bloodlines for Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive…

A GREAT rating. Castlevania: Bloodlines isn’t free of some of the issues Super Castlevania IV faced, mainly when the game happily tries to shove you into instant deaths, but it also brings a lot of fresh ideas to the action platformer format the series had run with since the original Castlevania game on NES. The castles and creatures are sometimes familiar, but then you’ll enter a room with a strange new trap or enemy, and even when it’s something as simple as a skeleton, successfully navigating an area to overcome enemy placement remains the most common challenge. Bosses don’t feel like they fit into one simple mold and the stages like to present new ideas that ensure progress doesn’t feel like its retreading concepts often. It could have been more interesting if John and Eric were on separate paths for longer, but even boss fights can feel quite different between them as many locations include spots for Eric so he can navigate a situation differently if you like.

Perhaps its indulgent use of graphical tricks means that people tend to remember the sights more than the substance in Castlevania: Bloodlines, and with it not breaking too far away from Super Castlevania IV’s focus on level difficulty achieved through enemy placement, it can blend in a bit with its SNES cousin. Having two excellent games that both have their own unique ideas for how to handle the same gameplay formula isn’t something to complain about though, the two making a great pair of companion experiences for someone in the mood for some action horror that isn’t too frustrating but still puts up a strong fight. Castlevania: Bloodlines would still probably need some deeper mechanics or more room to explore its imaginative ideas to really rise above the other side-scrolling Castlevania titles, but it is still an enjoyable action game that deserves to be part of the conversation of the series’s history because most everything it attempts it pulls off well.