My point about CDX is that within its own series, it's not an especially difficult game; there are loads of Castlevanias far more difficult, so what makes Dracula X so tough? (Besides maybe mastering its broken controls and no invincibility frames.) Games like SCV4 and SOTN are the exception to the rule, not the example. X68000, the OG Game Boy games, Bloodlines, and the NES games are much more challenging than CDX.
I suppose at the end of the day it's all subjective, but the game seems to be building a reputation as being balls-nasty and I just don't see it.
I mean, it IS building that reputation, and the thing is, it's not unfounded.
so what makes Dracula X so tough? (Besides maybe mastering its broken controls and no invincibility frames.
Seems like some light No-True-Scotsmanning going on here so if I may, a slightly reworked version of that:
So what makes Dracula X so tough? Its broken controls and no invincibility frames.
Like, broken controls (which I
personally have not really noticed, but I've seen a LOT of other people complaining about it so maybe I'm just blind here) and a lack of invincibility frames can't really excluded with a word like "besides" seeing as they're central to the difficulty argument. It's discounting central evidence.
Yeah, if the controls were snappier and the game had invincibility frames, it would be considered one of the easier games in the classic series.
That's... kind of exactly the literal argument being made by detractors. And the thing is? They're right. A lot of the game's difficulty can be traced back to these roots which I think can rightly be called "unfair difficulty", which is one of the things that make people call Rondo of Blood the superior game (but just one).
Most Castlevania games from the period, including the harder ones, don't often FEEL that much harder because they're
fair about it; any hits you take are your fault for not being observant enough and failing to plan effectively. Dracula X FEELS a lot harder because its difficulty is derived from how scummy it is, by punishing you two or three times in rapid succession for a single mistake, costing you half your health in the process. This is also why
The Castlevania Adventure has such a sour reputation -- it does a lot of those same things, but even worse: having controls that are
truly broken, and making you
actively less powerful by sapping your avatar strength with each hit you take.
The common thread between Dracula X and Adventure is they feel hard because the game draws attention to its inherent unfairness and punish you disproportionately to the mistake being made, leaving the player almost zero room for error. Other Castlevanias are much more chill about it, and the punishment you receive feels more or less about equal to the magnitude of your screw up, so even if the difficulty is truly higher, it doesn't really feel that way. It's the sort of thing where it falls under the principle of
"if you're doing it right, the player will never notice."Dracula X and The Adventure do not do it right (neither does Haunted Castle but who gives a shit about Haunted Castle?). And we noticed.