For the record, those awkward transitions you noted in DXX are
ALSO in Rondo.
Rondo's Chapel, for just one example off the top of my head, loops you to the right side of the screen when you are traveling left if you go through the exit instead of the chain elevator at the top/end of the stage. A lot of the boss rooms, which I believe are repeated on multiple paths, feel out of place visually with the levels they were in, too. Why does a swamp have a rock face with a door that takes you into a man-made brick structure with iron-clad windows and a big wooden door? (That same room is used as part of the chapel's route). Speaking of the chapel, we're going up, up, up...and suddenly we're in a cave with oversized candles resting on who knows what (they're not in the background if you fall down). And if you fell that far, wouldn't you be in a deeper cave and not in a man-made hallway and then room with windows? And that Wandering level is basically a mess visually.
When things like that happen, it's a case of using the imagination to fill in the blanks more often than not. (In the case of the clock tower teleport, the game is 2D, so if it were 3D, you have to imagine Richter perhaps came out the other end and moved to the front of the clock. In DXX and Rondo, we can semi-rationalize a lot of things, even calling on "Dracula's weird magic." For instance, when Level 1 of Rondo is on fire, and suddenly the boss battle is not, you have to figure you got out of town a good distance to fight the Wyvern. So, I don't fault either game much for "errors" like those.
Weirdness or not, I just agree with X that Dracula X had a clearer idea of what it wanted to do than Rondo, even if Rondo has better scope. Unfortunately, that scope ends up feeling a little scatterbrained for me, too.
But this thread has basically served its purpose of answering the question. I think what happened was the creators didn't think of Maria as a prisoner, but as a secret extra character to help players. But to me, Maria counts as a prisoner, and by IGA putting her in the rescued portrait of DXC select screen, it seems he thought so, too.
Hahaha I remember tiny Death! The first time I saw that I was like O_o
Huh, I've played this game almost as much as any Castlevania--it's among my very favorites--but I never noticed that until you mentioned it just now.
I assumed he was still working his way out of his dimensional wormhole.