One of the best Castlevania games
The story is emphasised more than previous Castlevania games, with cutscenes being used in the intro, in certain levels and at the end (two endings-one for each character). The animation in each cutscene is great for its time, and so is the addition of voice acting, which gives the characters more personality and depth than before (which Konami would emphasise more in Policenauts). The voice acting here is in Japanese only, so one must either know Japanese or use a translation guide somewhere on the Internet to actually understand what is going on as the story progresses. The cutscenes also enable players to understand their mission without having to read the manual. Here, a cult dedicated to Dracula has sacrificed a female to resurrect Dracula, who has led an attack on a village-it is up to Richter Belmont, descendant of Simon Belmont to defeat Dracula and restore peace (again).
Being a 16 bit game, Rondo of Blood is another side-scroller, with all the standard features in the Castlevania series-special weapons (requiring hearts to use), the Vampire Killer (the Belmont family whip) and obviously, Dracula. The controls are simple to get used to, and I haven't had any problems with the controls being unresponsive or the like, so you'll have no problems adjusting to the control scheme at all if you've played any of the side-scrolling games before.
When it comes to fighting enemies, Richter is armed with the Vampire Killer whip, whilst Maria Renard (the secret character) uses two birds as her weapon. Obviously, Maria beats Richter when it comes to range, and she can even jump higher and slide on the ground, giving her much more agility than Richter. It's not surprising that the game is much easier to beat with Maria than with Richter, but beating the game with Richter is more satisfying as a challenge, and he's stronger than Maria as well. With the secondary weapons, the characters now have a new ability called an 'Item Crash', which uses up more hearts than usual to perform a much stronger attack. For example, Richter using an Item Clash with holy water equipped causes holy rain to fall on the whole screen, which is very effective on not only normal enemies (easily clearing the screen of them) but also on bosses. The diversity of the Item Clashes along with a new character is a very welcome addition to the series, and one of the reasons as to why I have ranked this game so high.
Linking back to enemies, all the standard enemies in the old Castlevania series are back, along with some new enemies, although most of the enemies in this game are from the older series. At the end of each stage, you'll have to fight a boss-the further you progress in the game, the harder the bosses will become (with the final boss being Dracula-in two forms!). Only in this game can you defeat a Wyvern, a floating head that uses the Devanagari script in its' attacks and Death himself! It might take some time to get used to the bosses at first, but they all can be defeated with varying tactics (i.e. using axes on the Wyvern), and the whole difficulty is what makes the fights so great-full of nerves and the determination of the player to avoid failure (lose a life and you go back to a checkpoint-lose all lives and it's game over). For newer players, the difficulty of this game is unfortunately a negative point, as it will take most beginners a while to get used to the steadily rising difficulty of the game.
In conclusion, Rondo of Blood is easily the best Castlevania game on a 16 bit console (yes, better than Super Castlevania IV, even though I love both games) and one of the best in the series. Veteran fans should definitely check this game out to avoid missing one of the series' best games, and newer fans who want a challenging game should also play this.
Final score: 9.5 out of 10.