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44 Comments
Posted by Video_Game_King
@iam3green: 
 
Get it. Right now. It is awesome.
Posted by iam3green

i remember playing that game. it was pretty good. sadly, it was my first zelda game for n64. i didn't get ocarina of time. i heard that game was awesome.

Posted by Underachiever007
@Video_Game_King said:
@Underachiever007:   Yea, those are things I said, alright.
I am only happy to serve.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Underachiever007: 
 
Yea, those are things I said, alright.
Posted by Dalai
@Hailinel said:
@Dalai said:
@Alaska_Gamer: @Video_Game_King: @Hailinel: I specifically said I didn't wanna know, guys.
When you say that, that's the surest way to get others to tell you.
You're right. I sometimes forget this is the internet I'm dealing with here.
Posted by Underachiever007

Really nice Majora's Mask review. I think it's the most atmospheric Zelda game, and that's probably why it's my favorite 3D Zelda game, period. The whole "Song-Of-Time-and-the-world-resets!" is probably my biggest problem with that game. The way you interact with the small communities you encounter is probably one of the coolest aspects of the game, and it sucks that all that resets with every three-day cycle.

Posted by Hailinel
@Dalai said:
@Alaska_Gamer: @Video_Game_King: @Hailinel: I specifically said I didn't wanna know, guys.
When you say that, that's the surest way to get others to tell you.
Posted by Dalai
@Alaska_Gamer: @Video_Game_King: @Hailinel: I specifically said I didn't wanna know, guys.
Posted by Hailinel
@Dalai: Short answer?
 
TIME PARADOX.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Dalai: 
 
I think that's how the Big Bang started: two Majora's Mask fans argued on who 100%ed the game first.
Posted by Alaska_Gamer
@Dalai said:
@Video_Game_King said:
@Dalai: 
 
But you should not fuck with me should I try to fuck with you, as I have also completed Majora's Mask 100%.
 
@Claude:  You wrote that shit down? I'm fairly sure that GameFAQs was around at the time. Also, I never really needed to write down any of the songs, because at some point, I just saw them as weird fighting moves. For example, the Elegy of Emptiness is "forward back forward, full circle forward".
I don't wanna know what would happen if two people who completed Majora's Mask 100% tried to fuck with each other.
Reverse time by 3 days? Cause the moon to fall and destroy civilization? Probably nothing good.
Posted by Dalai
@Video_Game_King said:
@Dalai: 
 
But you should not fuck with me should I try to fuck with you, as I have also completed Majora's Mask 100%.
 
@Claude:  You wrote that shit down? I'm fairly sure that GameFAQs was around at the time. Also, I never really needed to write down any of the songs, because at some point, I just saw them as weird fighting moves. For example, the Elegy of Emptiness is "forward back forward, full circle forward".
I don't wanna know what would happen if two people who completed Majora's Mask 100% tried to fuck with each other.
Posted by Alaska_Gamer
@Video_Game_King said:

Do not fuck with a man who has 100%ed Majora's Mask; they clearly have nothing left to lose.
Indeed, I have nothing to lose.
 
Especially when I've played that and DK64, which I'll throw in there as another "nightmare of a game to play to completion."
Posted by Claude
@Video_Game_King said:
@Claude:   You use Ctrl+F? I just check "search for shit when I start typing", because I don't have time for keyboard shortcuts.
I don't know any other way. Control  F is all I know.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Claude: 
 
You use Ctrl+F? I just check "search for shit when I start typing", because I don't have time for keyboard shortcuts.
Posted by Claude
@Video_Game_King said:
@Claude:   I'd tell you about searching the FAQ, but this was a time when Internet Explorer and MSN were still completely acceptable browsers.
I'm not sure how I searched a FAQ back then, but I'm pretty sure Control F was around back then too. Needless to say, GameFAQs was fucking awesome when I found it. I got stuck a lot in games, still do, but not as much as back then. 
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Claude: 
 
I'd tell you about searching the FAQ, but this was a time when Internet Explorer and MSN were still completely acceptable browsers.
Posted by Claude
@Video_Game_King: That was the year I got internet, but I didn't want to use GameFAQs to write down every song. Those FAQs were long as shit, and I wanted to go it alone. I just wrote them down as I learned them. Eventually, I memorized them without looking at my notes.
 
I never 100% the game, probably not even close. I'm not that good of a gamer. But when I got stuck, sure, I checked GameFAQs.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Dalai: 
 
But you should not fuck with me should I try to fuck with you, as I have also completed Majora's Mask 100%.
 
@Claude: 
 
You wrote that shit down? I'm fairly sure that GameFAQs was around at the time. Also, I never really needed to write down any of the songs, because at some point, I just saw them as weird fighting moves. For example, the Elegy of Emptiness is "forward back forward, full circle forward".
Posted by ArbitraryWater
@Video_Game_King: Huh, well that's interesting. However, I can probably get the games cheaper individually at a local place than the combo cart on Ebay. *checks prices* Yep.  Gotta say though, one could reasonably get a lot of SNES games for pretty cheap. Certainly cheaper than my local places. And by that, I mean the copy of Super Mario Kart that my local Play 'N Trade is hocking at $25 because it is literally the only good SNES game they have.
Posted by Claude

I still have my notes from Majora's Mask when I played it the year it came out. 
 

 
Some good memories there. I tried playing it again, but for some reason, I hit a wall. I booted it up after I went HD recently and boy does that game look like crap.
Posted by Dalai

If it's true that nobody should fuck with someone who 100%ed Majora's Mask, then nobody fuck with me. 
 
Anyway, after Twilight Princess and it's Ocarina of Time 2.0 feel to it, I've really started to appreciate how weird and unusual Majora's Mask was. The only thing missing is "I Got You Babe" playing once Link returns to the first day.

Posted by Video_Game_King
@ArbitraryWater: 
 
You do realize that Super Mario All Stars later got a single-cartridge compilation with Super Mario World, right? Hell, if I remember correctly, it features a correctly drawn Luigi.
Posted by ArbitraryWater
@Video_Game_King: If I were to ever get a Genesis I would seek those games out. Sadly, my current old game console agenda consists of getting a SNES with Super Mario Allstars, Link to the Past, and Super Mario World and moving ahead from there. I'm probably going to do that this week too.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@ArbitraryWater: 
 
You should play more Genesis games. Here, let me give you a list of the good ones:
 
  • Aladdin
  • Gunstar Heroes
  • Dynamite Headdy
  • Actually, pretty much anything by Treasure
  • Every Phantasy Star except III (oddly enough, this somehow includes Phantasy Star I)
  • Strider
  • Mega Man: The Wily Wars
  • Castlevania: Bloodlines
  • Contra: Hard Corps
  • Vectorman
  • Shinobi anything
  • Streets of Rage anything
  • Toejam & Earl
  • Not Ecco the Dolphin (I say this because people have given me crap for not liking a game about a time traveling dolphin)
  • Hyperstone Heist
  • Beyond Oasis
  • Landstalker
  • Warsong
  • Mean Bean Machine
  • Anything Sparkster
  • Anything Earthworm Jim
  • Bio-Hazard Battle
  • Ranger X
  • Pulseman
  • Battletoads
  • MUSHA
  • Atomic Runner
  • Twinkle Tales
  • Panorama Cotton
  • Crusader of Centy
  • Ghouls & Ghosts
  • Road Rash
  • I wish I could say anything Valis, but sadly, no.
  • The Adventures of Batman and Robin, which might as well be a Treasure game.
  • Wiz 'n Liz
  • Steel Empire
  • Sunset Riders
  • Marble Madness
Posted by ArbitraryWater
@Video_Game_King: I think it's telling that Lunar is the only game of the list you mentioned that I vaguely recognized, and even then my knowledge of Lunar consists of: "It's a Japanese RPG that some people probably like". I'd probably call Sega my weak point in terms of video game knowledge, as the Dreamcast is probably the only console of theirs that I have a decent knowledge of. All I know is that the Genesis had Sonic, but before Sonic it was Altered Beast and then that Shining Force was a game where you tactically murdered people. Oh, and Moonwalker. As for the Turbografix, yeah. Still not entirely sure if they had any standout titles.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@ArbitraryWater: 
 
Yea, I used a guide for this game, but how...shit. Your point has been made. However, the scarecrow still stands. It's kind of hard to avoid the guy, since he's part of a very early sidequest and until you get your ocarina back, he's one of very few ways to fast forward time. Speaking of which, why is there so much dead space at the beginning of the game?
 
Wait, what about the two Lunar games? Or Vay? Or Sol Feace? Or the (apparently) bad version of Popful Mail. And for the TurboGrafx-16, you had Bonk, Legendary Axe, R-Type...uh...Neutopia...eh, that's about it, unless you count Ninja Gaiden.
Posted by ArbitraryWater
@Video_Game_King: By "Get it Legitimately" I was referring to someone getting it without use of a guide. The sheer volume and breadth of pointless masks in this game is well documented, and I'm sure you used a guide to achieve that goal. Not that there's anything wrong with that (I use guides perhaps more than I am willing to admit in certain old game cases), but that's half of the content of the game that requires reliance on a guide. That, or you're really clever because you spent far too much time playing Majora's Mask. Either way, my point stands. Also, the phrase "not in any sort of coherent fashion" was in reference to the scarecrow. Because, as a 10 year old, that made no sense to me. And I beat Ocarina when I was like 10 or 11 sooo.... yeah. 
 
As a general rule of thumb, the CD addon for any console was never a good purchase, especially if you lived in the US. While one could reasonably make a case for Sonic CD, that's one game for a piece of hardware that cost like $150 in 1992. Other than that, the Sega CD is a bunch of decent to bad ports of DOS games and the venerable wasteland that is Full Motion Video (still waiting for your Night Trap blog.). Turbo CD is, as you said, pretty skewed towards Japan. Then again, the same could be said for the Turbografix 16 as a whole. 5 player Bomberman has to get old eventually. Jaguar CD is probably just as awful if not worse than the Jaguar itself. 
Posted by Video_Game_King
@ArbitraryWater: 
 
I don't think there's anything wrong with a lot of sidequesting in a game. Granted, it's not the focus of a Zelda game, but it could've worked a helluva lot better if not for that fucking three day system. Grrr.
 
What do you mean "they didn't get it legitimately?" Is there some glitch I'm not aware of? The only ones I know are "be Fierce Deity Link anywhere" and "get into a glitched Sakon's Hideout pretty damn early." Also, the game does tell you about the Inverted Song of Time. You get it from a scarecrow, which can easily be found in the Observatory, which, need I remind you, is hard not to stumble across early in the game.
 
The Turbo CD has a few good games, I think. The only problem is that a lot of those games are Japan only, and this being a system that loved to use some pre-rendered cutscenes...
Posted by Yanngc33

Tingle proves that Majora's mask was a blurry ass game. Still like that game, the idea of the moon crashing into the earth sounded like the most epic thing ever back when I was 10

Posted by ArbitraryWater

You 100%ed Majora's Mask? You poor fool. One of the reasons I (and everyone I've ever met) don't like that game is the absolutely obtuse amounts of sidequesting involved in proportion to the dungeoneering involved. It already loses right then and there, making the stuff that would be ancillary in any other Zelda game the main attraction. Don't lie. Nobody who ever got the Fierce Deity mask got it legitimately. With the song that slows the passage of time (once again, something the player is never really told about in any sort of coherent fashion) the timer becomes less of an issue. However, if you were to not know about that, it'd suck horribly.
 
Rondo of Blood (whatever, that's what it's called in the Dracula X Chronicles) is something I'd be interested in if I either owned a PSP or a Turbo CD. Obviously, I own neither, as a PSP has never really interested me and a Turbo CD would be worse than a 3DO in terms of me not having anything useful to do with it (because despite not being that great, at least the 3DO had some pretty decent ports of a few games). I guess I could play that port of Might and Magic III with the weird soundtrack, but I already own that game. Oh failed consoles. There's a reason why you failed.

Posted by Video_Game_King
Posted by Aronman789

That SirRonLionheart dude is.....wow. 
 
How the hell do people watch that?

Posted by Hizang
@Video_Game_King: 
My backlog is to intense to play a Zelda game at the moment.
Posted by Tireyo643
@Video_Game_King:  
 
I just liked the look of the 2D better, that's all. More classic looking. I didn't much care for the vehicles and mine cart thing. (The vehicle looked a bit retarded bouncing around, but the mine cart was neat but I didn't care for it too much. Donkey Kong 64 pulled it off nicely though, so it may not have been too bad if Earthbound 64 existed.)
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Hizang: 
 
I'd suggest going back to it, this blog listing off quite a few reasons.
Posted by Hizang

I never really got in Majora's Mask, Its not that I hate it, it's just I never really spent to much time on it,
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Tireyo643: 
 
How? It did quite a few things that could pretty much only work in 3D, like racing around in vehicles or that mine cart thing.
Posted by Tireyo643
@Video_Game_King said:
@Tireyo643:   Interfere? If anything, 2D interfered; keep in mind that the game was originally designed for the N64, and it only became a GBA game much, much later.
It looks like it was meant more for 2D than 3D, even though the GBA version was made later.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Tireyo643: 
 
Interfere? If anything, 2D interfered; keep in mind that the game was originally designed for the N64, and it only became a GBA game much, much later.
Posted by Tireyo643
@Video_Game_King said:
@Tireyo643:   So you're essentially asking me if I'd like Mother 3 if somebody made a 3D mod of it? Given that nothing would change, probably not.
I think that in some instances, 3d just doesn't really need to interfere. So, I agree with you.
Posted by Video_Game_King
@Tireyo643: 
 
So you're essentially asking me if I'd like Mother 3 if somebody made a 3D mod of it? Given that nothing would change, probably not.
Posted by Tireyo643

If you think that Earthbound 64 actually came out, do you think it would of been a good game?

Posted by Video_Game_King

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

( What, you thought I was kidding with that minor joke in my Half-Life 2 blog?) Turns out that I wasn't. When I was doing the research for that joke (hey, can YOU name a mask in this game without resorting to a FAQ? Exactly.), I became pretty damn nostalgic for this game. How? I have no idea; I'm pretty sure that this blog is supposed to be an assassin to nostalgia. Unfortunately, it turns out that nostalgia is some type of immortal super being, leaving me with one option: grab Majora's Mask off my shelf, give it a blowjob, and jam that thing into my N64.
 
Yes, for once, I was playing this with a controller in hand, which leads me to my first unfair criticism: this game is blurry as shit. Yes, it's one of the best looking games for the N64, but good luck seeing it through what looks like about ten years of Gaussian blur. Then again, it could be my TV; after all, when I went into the Bomber's Notebook, I saw some suspiciously crisp sprites alongside portraits about as blurry as the rest of the game. Things only got worse for that criticism when I watched the ending and heard popcorn baking. You know what? I embrace the blur. Otherwise, I would have seen things more clearly and things would be even more horrifying than they already were. This has to be one of the most terrifying games in the Zelda series. Don't believe me? Look at shit like this. Or this. Or this. Scared yet? No? How? This was the game that introduced TINGLE. It seems to have been specifically designed to turn your ass into a roomy and clean storage space for all the demons permanently lurking behind you. I'm not even sure that it's a Zelda game, at times. If anything, it resembles Earthbound 64. I know that this sounds weird, but hear me out: five man band. An alien subplot right out of nowhere. Those not-Goron things that you see near the beginning of Ikana Canyon. Hell, just look at this and explain to me how the remnants of Earthbound 64 didn't leak into this and possibly Doshin the Giant (I can't be the only person who thinks that he's just a yellow Starman).
 
 This is possibly the only game in the series with a lively drug trade.
But of course, Majora's Mask is not an Earthbound game, but a Zelda game. Odd, because Zelda herself only appears in a flashback. Also, the game doesn't take place in Hyrule, and beloved characters, like Kaepora Gaebora and Ganondorf's two moms, only get fleeting cameos. So then what the hell is this game even about? Well, it takes place after Ocarina of Time...or during it...or before it...or maybe some weird combination, because the time travel thing makes the story really confusing. Anyway, Link's searching for Navi, but Skull Kid comes along and fucks things up. Link gives chase, only to be plunged into an alternate dimension. Within this alternate dimension, Skull Kid (or should I say Majora's Mask? It's not always clear where the Mask begins and where the Kid ends) sends Link to the Silent Hill dimension, which somehow turns him into a Deku scrub. To make things worse, Link then learns that the Moon has grown a face, and that in three days (as the Star Fox font dun duns into your head), it's going to plunge its face into the Earth like it was a single titty. He has to summon the four giants so that he can retrieve Majora's Mask (if he remembers it; the game doesn't seem to) and make sure that the Moon never touches that titty. If you're looking for more story than that, good luck. All I got was "Skull Kid and the Giants were once friends, but not anymore." But there is hope, dear readers!
 
Instead of focusing on the overall story tying everything together, Majora's Mask focuses on the smaller events. You wander from land to land, very literally assume the personality of some random dying hero (Dekus are an exception; in that case, you're just some Deku fuck), and heal that which plagues the land. Now that I think about it, Majora's Mask takes the Fragile Dreams approach to storytelling: set up a depressing world and hook the player with some deep emotional attachment. Who cares if the plot tying all these events together is pretty weak? It gets pretty easy to care for these people when you're rescuing a monkey from the death penalty or helping a pedophile marry a child. (What, nobody ever noticed that major plot element? Kafei is never shown as an adult (the ending cleverly refuses to show him at his own fucking wedding), so technically, part of the game has you going out of your way to help a pedophile catch her prey.) The only sad thing about it is that none of this will ever matter. No, not because it's a video game (fuck you for even thinking that), you asshole. It's because of the three day cycle. Remember that thing about the Moon wanting to have a face full of titty? Unless you're insane, there's no way that you can complete the game before the Moon crashes into the supple breast that is Termina. In enters the Song of Time, which, for whatever reason, now sends you back in time.
 
 Shit. It looks like the final day is approaching fast.
And this is where a lot of the problems with the game start. For some reason, fucking with the spacetime continuum resets all the quests you were doing and empties your inventory. That hard quest where you had to arrange a pedophile marriage? Gone. The high score you got in that really hard mini-game (I'm not going to specify, because there are quite a few hard mini-games)? Lost in the timeline. All those rupees? Actually, there's a bank for that, and nothing else. But do not despair! Your important equipment doesn't fly off into nothingness (I guess masks are invulnerable to time fuckery), and you don't have to go through dungeons over and over again to rebeat a boss if a particular sidequest requires it. It seems like Majora's Mask goes out of its way to make the three day feature as non-intrusive as physically possible, which just begs the question: why is it even here in the first place? I've already told you how much it takes from the game (your rupees, progress, potential emotional attachment), but what exactly does it add? All I noticed was that a few story events change up a bit depending on what day you see them, because that makes total sense, right? I'd say something about artificial lengthening, but I'm not into uncreative dick jokes. Besides, I don't think there's an hour count or anything, so if somebody wanted to make the game longer, somebody else probably didn't get the message.
 
Actually, that last part holds pretty true for the entire game. You don't even have to get into the actual game to see it (although it helps); the game requires the N64 Expansion Pack, but when you pop it in, you see only two saves. Wait, something doesn't add up: the game that requires a hardware expansion has less saves than the one that came out in 1998? And it has less dungeons? Yea, remember how there were a billion dungeons in Ocarina of Time? Guess how many there are in Majora's Mask? Four. Oh, and I might as well throw in the fact that the special items in each dungeon are all some variation on "arrow." So what about the rest of the stuff? You pretty much buy it whenever. I thought that the dev team got all of their laziness out of the way when they reused the Ocarina of Time engine. Now I can see why that game is so much more beloved. Actually, that's not fair, as the dungeons are pretty well crafted. Each one makes the best use of whatever form you used to get there, and working out all those weird puzzles gives you a noticeable feeling of satisfaction. The difficulty scales pretty nicely, too, going from the "it would actually be slower to speedrun this place" Woodfall to the "OK, you lost me" Stone Tower Temple. Look, I know that I'm not making a lot of jokes right now, but that's because there aren't a lot of jokes to be made. Yes, it's quite illogical for Gorons to build a temple that houses an artifact that they can't use; what do you want me to do about it?
 
Wait, I know: talk about masks. Remember how that was a tiny part of Ocarina of Time? Not anymore. You're going to collect a ton of masks over the course of the game, along with things that logically shouldn't be called masks (a hat, a hood, another hat, another hood, etc.). How many of them will actually be useful over the course of the game? Uh...five or six? Making these masks last isn't exactly one of the game's strong points. In fact, a lot of masks have only two purposes: get you the super awesome Fierce Deity Mask, and net you a Piece of Heart one time. That's it. This may sound as lazy as "more RAM means less dungeons", but remember that four dungeon thing? That means only four guaranteed hearts, which means an absolute fuckload of Pieces of Heart. At some point, you just have to create masks whose only purpose is to collect a Piece of Heart. Throw in some upgrades that aren't Pieces of Heart, and it's hard to see anybody 100%ing this game. So what did I do? 100%ed it. Every last Stray Fairy was returned to the Sega Saturn, every random mini-game was beaten to perfection, and every ounce of sanity was thrown into a furnace and slowly roasted into a fine turducken. Do not fuck with a man who has 100%ed Majora's Mask; they clearly have nothing left to lose.

Review Synopsis

  • Imagine Fragile Dreams, only with an angry moon that's just begging for titty. Now you have a vague image of Majora's Mask in your mind. Or maybe you're just thinking about boobs now. Pervert.
  • How can the three day thing simultaneously leave you with too much time AND not enough time?
  • All the Zelda stuff is as decent as ever.




W...what?
  
  

Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo

( You know, I should really make some type of special banner for these revisits.) I know that this is only the second one, but I need some way to tell you guys that I'm talking about not-obscure games that I got out of the way years ago. I'd say that this would be a decent way to attract readers, but...hold on....Well, I've done some research, and it kinda works. But enough talk! Have at you!
 
By which I mean "let's talk about Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo." Notice how I'm using the Japanese title. That's because I'm not quite sure whether rondo means "the one song you didn't see in Ocarina of Time" or "some Buddhist concept of death and rebirth", probably because the title uses both, somehow. The actual plot doesn't really help; it doesn't feature any rondos or Buddhists, but it does feature random German. Ich kann nicht verstehen Deutsch, but from what I can tell, evil is lurking about Europe, and the citizens are summoning Dracula in the hopes of driving off said evil. Again, I can't understand Germans. Richter can't, either, because being a Belmont, he decides to find Dracula and whip him into submission. (Did you hear that? Five pornographic fan arts were created in that instant.) Also, there are two princesses that need rescuing. Like Majora's Mask, this is pretty much all the story you're getting. Yes, I know that this is the game that introduced the "pretty cool, but we're still going to remind you that this is a video game" anime scenes, but you don't get a lot of those throughout the game. Hell, there's only one special (IE not the beginning, not the end, not when you rescue either of the ladies) cutscene in the entire game, and it's just Dracula saying "hey, humanity's just as bad as I am, maiden I randomly captured."
 
 The name of the final stage? Chi no Rondo. Effing lame.
Actually, that's a bit of an unfair characterization. Dracula's one step above your typical "I am evil, bwa-ha-ha", reaching a level of culture and high class that you don't see in a lot of villains. Granted, he doesn't do a lot to hide his asshole status, but at the same time, it's hard to argue with what he's saying. The only major flaw he has is that he hired a guy named Shaft. I know what you're thinking, but unfortunately, he's white. You can't have a white Shaft. That would be like Dracula hiring a black skinhead. Actually, that scares the hell out of me. To shift focus away from this hypothetical person, I'll talk about something completely different: the characters. I'd say that this was the first game in the series to have multiple playable characters, but Dracula's Curse beat Chi no Rondo to the punch. It also did it a lot more efficiently, for several reasons. First, remember how there were multiple characters, Alucard included? Not counting Richter, you only get one: Maria. Not the grown-up version you fight in the Saturn version of Symphony of the Night, but the ten year old version who fights Dracula alongside her woodland friends. I'm not sure how it works, either, but that's the least of my problems. Here's the biggest one: you can't switch to Maria mid-game. If you want to play as a little girl, go back to the title screen. How could this game add less than Dracula's Curse?
 
Hold on, I forgot something that Chi no Rondo adds: all the cool music. Wait, that's not a valid addition! Granted, it's pretty damn cool (even when you hear the TurboGrafx-16 generated music), but that's not enough to validate the gimped character selection. What else do you have, Chi no Rondo? Levels? OK, that makes sense. If there's one thing that this game does well, it's the levels. You'll find yourself plummeting down waterfalls at high speeds, running away from a giant behemoth, and...what's that? You plunged into a hole? Not a problem! Like the awesomeness that is Sonic 3, falling down a hole does not mean instant death; instead, you unlock a completely separate part of the level. Are there any other games that reward idiocy? Probably, but I can't think of any. Besides, do any of those games have branching levels? I don't know, but this one does. If the little girl wasn't enough motivation to play the game again, this probably should be, especially since beating the game unlocks a new secret level. I'd go on about how you can now do backflips or how this is the game that introduced the "waste a bunch of hearts by tossing knives really fast" feature, but I think I made my point: Chi no Rondo is a pretty cool take on the Castlevania formula, even if people have been somewhat lying to you about all the cool features (if you want a ton of awesome anime scenes, try Lunar: Eternal Blue or something). Hell, it's probably the only reason to get a TurboGrafx-CD. Yes, I'm willing to fight you on that point, probably Japanese fans who aren't reading my blog.
 

Review Synopsis

  • Dracula's a pretty cool villain in all of the two or three cutscenes he appears in.
  • I imagine Maria would be pretty cool if it was easier to play as her.
  • You know what's actually cool without any conditions or prerequisites? Everything else about the game.