Bloodlines is finished, and holy hell was that an uphill battle. I haven't tried Eric Lecarde yet, but looking at the opening demo with him, I get the distinct impression this game was really made for him and not poor John Morris because Morris is just not agile enough to deal with some of the trout this game throws at you. Versallies was easily one of the worst levels with an obnoxious mini-boss placed right before the actual final boss whose sole purpose is to beat you up as much as possible before dealing with them. The final level does this annoying but visually cool trick where the screen splits into three positions to show the full stage but technically the stage is still mapped to one of them but now you can't quite tell where its safe to jump to. The next part featured the whole area being upside down which made the platforming really obnoxious and brought back sweet memories of Mega Man V's Gravity Man stage.

What awaited me was an annoying seven stage boss rush as I met up with Death who forced me to re-fight three of the game's bosses before tackling him. He was fortunately a watered down version of his SCIV fight pattern. Before I could take on Elizabeth Batherly, I had to face up against Medusa, and Batherly would have been obnoxious if I hadn't farmed crystals until I got the super homing ball sub weapon to nail her teleporting ass in place. Dracula wasn't too bad. His first form is his basic fight structure from previous games of teleporting and then launching some fireballs. His second form turns him into a mini version of Death who loves to fly around and launch fireballs at. Not too bad. His final form is some demon like creature that feels like the unholy love child between his final form from the first game and his final form from the third one. He was obnoxious and I thankfully had enough of the super homing ball attack to take out most of his health. The ending was pretty subpar for a Castlevania game, but it's apparently because the full ending is unlocked in Expert Mode.

Overall, I enjoyed Bloodlines a bit more than SCIV, but neither of them hold a candle to Rondo of Blood on the PC Engine. Ranking the Classicvania titles:

1. Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
2. Rondo of Blood
3. Castlevania
4. Simon's Quest
5. Bloodlines
6. Super Castlevania IV
7. Belmont's Revenge
8. Kid Dracula
9. The Castlevania Adventure