thingta42 reviewed Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP...

...and gave it a 9.0!

The original Devil's Castle Dracula X: Rondo of Blood was never released outside of Japan. The SNES received it's own version of the game known as Castlevania: Dracula X. However this version was vastly different from the original japanese version, as it was missing alot of content and a extra playable character known as Maria. Now several years later the game has gotten it's westen release complete with english script. Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles not only contains the original 2D Rondo of Blood, but also a fully remade 3D version complete with remade soundtrack and everything else. But that's not else it contains. The PSP version also contains Symphony of the Night, which is often regarded as being one of the best 2D Castlevania games.

With three games packaged into the box, Dracula X Chronicles offers a huge ammount of gameplay for such a great price. Myself i've never been able to sit down and play a Castlevania game before, yet i've alot about the series from several sources. So when i finaly was able to buy a PSP this was one of the first games i wanted to get. And ohh boy, is it geat. Castlevania is you're traditional 2D action sidescrolling game. You play as Ritcher, a member of this family who has been cracking whips at the forces of darkness for years. And while the story is easy to understand, playing this one game doesn't do the series story any justice, but it does gives you a good idea about whats been going off.

The gameplay is hard but rewarding, you'll die plenty of times before you finish stages on just the smallest amount of health, but with challenge comes great self reward, nothing beats beating that one boss that you've struggled with for several hours while you play the game just before you go to bed. Or when you go through an enitre level without taking damage. While Dracula X is hard, it never feels cheap. And often if you die, then it's because you didn't do good enough. So it always offers the right amount of challenge.

Sound & Music is top notch, the songs are great for each of the stages, and you can unlock more by finding hidden music disks scattered around on the stages, allowing you to play and mix other tracks from different stages to play on others, so this gives a nice insentive to keep playing. While Dracula X Chronicles comes with three games, you'll have to unlock the other two, while this might disapoint people looking to jump stright into Symphony of the Night which has also recieved some changes. The two unlockable games are easy enough to find with a small smount of effort. So you don't have to worry about spending hours to unlock them.

This is one of my favourite PSP games, and i've spend about a week just playing the 3D remake of Rondo of blood, and i've still got two more games to playthrough. If you own a PSP and want a good challenge and some great 2D style sidescrolling action then this is a highly recommend game to get for your collection.

Get the full article at GameSpot

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