 Sega Godrunq The past couple Genesis reviews I've done have been Konami games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hyper Stone Heist, which is a good enough game but not really worth playing today since it's just a mishmash of Turtles in Time and Turtles the Arcade game, and also Contra Hardcore, a game with a lot of strengths, some spectacular visuals, but ultimately inaccessible because it's just such a difficult game. But at last, Konami struck gold on the Genesis with Castlevania Bloodlines. Now to some people, a lot of the old Castlevania games look like the same old stuff, but what makes the Castlevania series special is that each entry brings something new to the series while still having the look and feel of a Castlevania game if that makes any sense. Whether it's Super Castlevania IV or Dracula X or Aria of Sorrow or Symphony of the Night or Bloodlines, each one of these games are all fantastic and unique from each other while still distinctly feeling and most importantly playing like a Castlevania game. In Castlevania Bloodlines, you have two playable characters, John Morris and his best friend Eric LeCarde. John has the traditional whip, but Eric has a spear, which is a welcome addition. Despite the new weapon, it still has the speed and range of motion you're used to from a Castlevania game, plus you can do these badass long jumps using the spear as a pole vault. There's six stages total, but they may differ depending on which character you picked. Each stage has a mini boss and a final boss at the end. This is just my opinion, but the game is so much fun using Eric and the spear. Yeah, it's still just fine with John and the usual whip, but I just love using the spear and all its power-ups. Using a new melee weapon with the familiar feel of the Castlevania controls is just really satisfying. Even still, John's full power is pretty cool, and definitely unique for Castlevania. Speaking of which, there are the usual special weapons here like holy water and these boomerang things, but instead of collecting hearts, you collect jewels. But a bigger aspect that sets Bloodlines apart is that you don't spend much time in Dracula's Castle. Instead, you're traversing around Europe in the early 20th century. So yeah, interestingly, they centered the story around World War I. The scowl Elizabeth Bartley was executed 300 years ago for vampirism, but she's back, and she's the one responsible for killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and causing the subsequent war. So she can use the souls of the hundreds of thousands killed in the war to revive Dracula somehow, I guess? So you have to track her down across the continent, and yeah, the scenery in these levels is freaking great and really shows off what the Genesis is capable of, especially stages like the platforms that rotate around this tower, leading to this great looking boss fight, and of course I have to mention the music. And again, the soundtrack here is refreshingly original and representative of the Castlevania universe without seeming derivative of any previous Castlevania games. Every track is really sharp. Anyway, yeah, Castlevania Bloodlines is freaking awesome, and it absolutely lives up to the lofty standards of the 8 and 16 bit Castlevania games. I'm not sure it's quite as good as Super Castlevania 4, but I'll definitely play it over Dracula X or Rondo of Blood. Also, it definitely has shades of the renowned Castlevania difficulty, but not to the point where the game is just too hard to get into. The first two levels are reasonable, but it definitely picks up after that. So yeah, Bloodlines has gotta be one of the 10 or 12 best Genesis games ever made. It's well worth going out of your way to play, even over 20 years later.