On the first glance one might think that Rondo of Ruin is simply a reskin of Portrait with few additional hazards scattered here and there across the maps. That’s what I’ve thought and how wrong I was.

Rondo’s main feature is, of course, a new storyline. Well, it’s not entirely new, it follows the beats and structure of original game, but authors put enough thought in it to feel like something, that could be part of the whole Castlevania saga. New duo are a great team and their dynamic is actually quite wholesome, kudos to writer.

Rondo of Ruin overhauls and tinkers with so many game mechanics in a way, that initially I didn’t even notice, but after finishing a playthrough of Rondo, staggered me with all the differences it has. Rondo is faster, allows for greater control over your characters, while some rebalance tweaks make game a lot more enjoyable. Contrary to some other opinions, I’ve found an addition of platforming-heavy sequences to be refreshing, helping to take a break from usual gameplay loop (maybe it’s result of 1.10 update, removing annoyances of previous versions). Challenges being fair and doable also enhances the experience.

And I can’t not address new portraits of the sisters. They are awesome.

For purposes of a fair review I should probably write about cons too. The most annoying for me were references without subtlety. I’ll just list two examples:

First – Wesker Glasses. Pretty obvious reference from name alone isn’t it, especially since it’s sunglasses, especially with new main menu sounds. Yeah, but description decides to treat you like a fool and starts nagging you further, referencing “Evil Residence”. Please, have some restraint, some subtlety. Either leave “Wesker” or “Evil Residence”, please. The lack of subtlety is so painful at times, that I know it’s a reference without even knowing what the item is a reference to, quite a few such cases;

Second – Skeleton Gunman’s sprite was replaced with some futuristic soldier, probably a Metroid enemy. Why? Also, why is Whip memory a meme enemy? You could put Simon, Trevor, Christopher in there, make something awesome as you did throughout the hack, but instead it’s just this joke.

For the life of me, couldn’t find a way to pick up HP and MP upgrades in eastern side of Nation of Fools. Am I a fool, or did one of your portals misfired?

Some typos (in a scene after defeating Loretta, one sentence has uncapitalized first word, some others I don’t remember) and strange flow of conversations, like one with Alucard. Curing the sisters, Richter tells him about awakening the whip, then, after revisiting Alucard, Richter tells him he was just told about such an option by sisters. The conversation with Dracula also could do with a bit of a rewrite, to sound more natural.

Richter’s Tailcoat sprite isn’t quite as good as his Saturn appearance.

You may think that since the rumblings of displeasure are longer, it somehow makes hack worse, but honestly, I mention those only in hope of authors further improving their creation. If you consider whether or not to play this hack you only have to answer two questions: “Do you want to?” and “Did you play the original?”. First is self explanatory, while second may determine how much you would enjoy the hack, since I would recommend finishing original first.

Feature request? Rebind backflip to L and power first flight to down+L, please. I would also suggest authors to make a rebalance mod for the original game without the new storyline or level additions, these changes alone are worthy of separate hack.