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PaletteSwappedNinja posted:The original untranslated game is on Wii Virtual Console for about $9. If that's the original Wii, I'm set!
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Oct 1, 2014 08:21
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I thought the Wii's online went down. Is the store still operational?
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Oct 1, 2014 08:30
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PSWII60 posted:I thought the Wii's online went down. Is the store still operational? Yeah, you can't play online anymore but the store still works. You can also buy it on Wii U via the Wii BC mode, but you'll need a Wiimote to play it, you can't use the gamepad or Wii U Pro controller.
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Oct 1, 2014 10:25
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Dracula X is by far the best game in the series and all three generations (SNES, TG16, PSP) have their charm. Personally, I feel that if you think the music is better on the SNES version, you're wrong. There are some neat things it's got going for it - It's completely unique, even though the level designs aren't always the greatest. It changes the final fight with Dracula. The backgrounds for some reason boast a great deal more detail, whereas the TG16 version kind of looks like CVIII with more horsepower. It does have tighter gameplay, better structure, cinemas, CD quality audio (this was a big thing in the early 90's) and Maria, though. Don't get me wrong, if you can only buy one, get the PSP version - you can unlock a translated version of the original TG16 game and you get symphony of the night (A fantastic game in it's own right) on top of all that. But the SNES version is completely unique and is interesting enough in it's own right if you're a fan of the original series. And yeah, I want a version of Circle of the Moon that I can see.
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Oct 1, 2014 15:41
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The level design of Dracula X on SNES was total dogshit though and the last boss against Dracula was flat out unfair and unfun. It's not the worst Castlevania game exactly but it's pretty low down there at least.
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Oct 1, 2014 15:49
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Mr. Fortitude posted:The level design of Dracula X on SNES was total dogshit though and the last boss against Dracula was flat out unfair and unfun. It's not the worst Castlevania game exactly but it's pretty low down there at least. I actually like that new last fight a lot but the level design in general is pretty uninteresting compared to the original. Plus while some of the backgrounds look nice on the SNES almost all of the actually interesting ones from the original aren't there. The comparison to CVIII makes sense though since I feel like Dracula X was designed as more of a "Castlevania IV" than the game they ended up calling "Super Castlevania IV" in the US. If you have a Wii definitely get that version. It's not translated but the colors on the PSP version are a little darker/washed out compared to the original. If you're on a Vita rather than PSP it's not as bad though because of the Vita's way nicer screen. Still wish they made a full game out of the mini-game you got if you put the wrong system card in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2a3OAmqEEY Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Oct 1, 2014 16:03
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The best choice is obviously getting Dracula X Chronicles and playing it via PPSSPP.
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Oct 1, 2014 17:47
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HenryEx posted:The best choice is obviously getting Dracula X Chronicles and playing it via PPSSPP. Seriously, go get DxC. It's great, the song arrangements are pretty drat good, it's faithful and Dracula has a new third form that's so much fun to fight.
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Oct 1, 2014 18:19
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Does Lords of Shadow get any better? Bought it a good while ago on Steam, and it's just a garbage button masher.
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Oct 1, 2014 18:37
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Orgophlax posted:Does Lords of Shadow get any better? Bought it a good while ago on Steam, and it's just a garbage button masher. If you don't like the combat, then it won't get better. But I felt the game picked up its stride once you made it to the castle.
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Oct 1, 2014 18:41
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This is kind of an odd question but hopefully someone can chime in- The first time I played SotN, it was via the XBLA version. I sold my 360 a while back though, and don't really ever plan to get another. I have a PS3, but I notice the SotN on the PSN is a PS1 Classic, so I assume it's just basically a ROM of the PS1 version? Am I losing anything by playing that version over the XBLA version? And obviously I'll be gaining the ability to actually use the spells with any consistency. It's been a while since I played the XBLA version so I don't remember if it had widescreen support or anything, I just wanted to see what the differences are. Also, since it's on sale, is Harmony of Despair fun/worth it for single player alone? Is there even a story at all?
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Oct 1, 2014 18:56
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Humerus posted:This is kind of an odd question but hopefully someone can chime in- The 360 had a bunch of screen options, filters and ran natively in HD I think and yes the PSN version is just running the PS1 disc ISO through an emulator, but the game's contents are identical.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:00
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Humerus posted:This is kind of an odd question but hopefully someone can chime in- As far as I can tell the only differences between the two were borders on the XBLA version to fill the screen and they changed the vocal songs to other songs in the series because of rights, I assume (the ending theme, for example, is the one from Lament of Innocence, which feels a little thematically weird but whatever). Go pick up the PS1 classic, have fun.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:01
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They also took the really really badly aged 3D cutscenes out of the 360 version, presumably for space reasons back when XBLA titles could only be so large.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:03
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Orgophlax posted:Does Lords of Shadow get any better? Bought it a good while ago on Steam, and it's just a garbage button masher. No. It really only gets kinda worse. It goes on a bit too long and if you don't like the combat it ain't gonna change your mind later on.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:04
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Phantasium posted:They also took the really really badly aged 3D cutscenes out of the 360 version, presumably for space reasons back when XBLA titles could only be so large. Not missing much there, they looked terrible even when the game was new.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:06
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Humerus posted:This is kind of an odd question but hopefully someone can chime in- From what I can remember I slightly prefer the PS3 version. I don't think the XBLA version had the new translation or any extra characters (Maria, maybe?), and it had those gaudy borders.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:40
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Full Battle Rattle posted:From what I can remember I slightly prefer the PS3 version. I don't think the XBLA version had the new translation or any extra characters (Maria, maybe?), and it had those gaudy borders. The only version with the new translation and the original Japanese voices and stuff was the one that came with Dracula X Chronicles.
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Oct 1, 2014 19:42
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ImpAtom posted:No. It really only gets kinda worse. It goes on a bit too long and if you don't like the combat it ain't gonna change your mind later on. Yeah the combat remains boilerplate-GoW-ey action game poo poo the whole way through. Not terrible, but kinda boring. It's a game you play more for the general corny ambiance and Patrick Stewart reading the in-between stage intro-thingys. Although that music box level is really kind of neat.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:17
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Full Battle Rattle posted:From what I can remember I slightly prefer the PS3 version. I don't think the XBLA version had the new translation or any extra characters (Maria, maybe?), and it had those gaudy borders. It had a new ending song, leaderboards, and achievements. I think that's it.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:40
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mrEkli posted:It had a new ending song What, "I Am the Wind" wasn't good enough?
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Oct 1, 2014 21:47
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Lets talk Circle of the Moon. Namely, why Iga took it out of the timeline because it's actually a really good, fun game and a lot better than some of the games that are supposedly canon. What's his issues with it?
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Oct 1, 2014 22:45
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Lets talk Circle of the Moon. Couldn't tell ya for certain, I remember it was because he didn't make it or something like that? Shame though, it and Aria are probably my favorite Castlevanias.
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Oct 1, 2014 23:26
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XBLA SotN also cuts out the loading times.
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Oct 2, 2014 02:19
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Orgophlax posted:Does Lords of Shadow get any better? Bought it a good while ago on Steam, and it's just a garbage button masher. I ended up enjoying the game a bit, despite initially thinking it was total poo poo. It's basically the best God of War style game I've ever played (including the actual GoW games) which isn't huge praise since that style of game is pretty loving shallow. It does improve after the first few chapters and the environments can be incredibly beautiful at times.
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Oct 2, 2014 03:04
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Adam Bowen posted:It does improve after the first few chapters and the environments can be incredibly beautiful at times. If you treat it like a theme park ride its a pretty good experience and I got my mileage out of it just gawking at the scenery. Also like a theme park ride the actual mechanics are shallow and uninteresting and the plot is nonsensical.
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Oct 2, 2014 03:17
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As someone who can't remember how many times I have played through SOTN, I ended up caring way too much about the speed run leaderboards on the Xbox360 version. loving cheaters listed as completing the game in 14 seconds.
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Oct 2, 2014 03:30
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Ryoga posted:As someone who can't remember how many times I have played through SOTN, I ended up caring way too much about the speed run leaderboards on the Xbox360 version. loving cheaters listed as completing the game in 14 seconds. Are you sure they aren't just moving at Maxim speed?
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Oct 2, 2014 03:35
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Lets talk Circle of the Moon. It's not in the timeline because they made up a bunch of characters that aren't connected to anything, don't really do anything and weren't worth the effort to slot into canon. Leaving them out of the timeline wasn't supposed to be an indictment on the game's quality or the fact that it wasn't an IGA game or whatever.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:21
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PaletteSwappedNinja posted:It's not in the timeline because they made up a bunch of characters that aren't connected to anything, don't really do anything and weren't worth the effort to slot into canon. Leaving them out of the timeline wasn't supposed to be an indictment on the game's quality or the fact that it wasn't an IGA game or whatever. And then he did this for every GBA/DS game right after. I do wish Circle of the Moon let you use those other character sprites for thief and magician mode, it seems like something that would have definitely been done if they had time. CotM in general is REALLY cool. I love love love the level design in it because, while not immediately noticeable, the platforms are spaced so that as you get more jumping/running/wall jumping/etc. abilities you can navigate the same areas faster and faster. Harmony of Dissonance really dropped the ball with this as it has a large number of huge rooms partitioned into small corridors you have to go through the entirety of repeatedly. It also runs pretty poorly because he made a strong effort to make it "like Symphony of the Night." Igarashi definitely took offense to Circle of the Moon though in some way. There were a few interviews where he spoke apologetically of it and acted like Harmony of Dissonance was going to be the REAL handheld Castlevania game and the real successor to Symphony of the Night and so on. He's capricious in general regarding his feelings on the series, like even though Castlevania Legends is a very boring, uninteresting game,* he ended up de-canonizing it despite its purpose being to be an origin of the canon because he retroactively couldn't wrap his head around the Belmont clan being started by a female character (I guess Belmonts reproduce asexually or are from the planet Zeist). The 360 version of SotN is pretty good but has a couple of glitches that can cause it to crash while changing areas or going in and out of the menu sadly. It has a really weird one too where the Vandal knights in the clock tower don't spawn the ghost version of themselves after beating them, making it impossible to get that enemy (or the items it drops) until much later in the game. It's not a horrible port but it has a bunch of oddities like that that turned me off, though I am spoiled from being obsessed with the series for a long time and having SotN itself on PSX/Saturn already. If the download cost is cheap it's a great great game in general though like I can't even imagine not having SotN in my possession and it's not even my favorite CV game. *They do the ultimate bait and switch because the first level has a pretty good GB mix of Bloody Tears, and then the rest of the game has the blandest soundtrack in the history of Castlevania. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 05:49
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PaletteSwappedNinja posted:There's nothing inexplicable about it. NEC kept a lot of developers from directly porting PCE games to other platforms, so they'd make new games using the old assets in order to play both markets. Well gently caress NEC then. And Hudson Soft. Why not.
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Oct 2, 2014 05:50
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Former Human posted:Well gently caress NEC then. And Hudson Soft. Why not. Actually, in this specific case it was more technical limitations and fallout from Nintendo being jerks. When Dracula X was first made it was at a point where you made a unique game for NIntendo and no one else and could only make ___ number of games on their system a year, etc. Konami cheaped out on SNES Dracula X and only used an 8MB cart to get something released quick. I seriously doubt there was any interest in making a good port (and the game is in fact actually a sequel to the CD Dracula X game, just in the US it was marketed and reviewed as a port, Konami even used the prior game's artwork/etc. for the US release materials). It wasn't until 1991/92 that Nintendo loosened up a bit on their policies regarding this, but with Dracula X being released on the CD in Japan in 1993, surely by the time they were into making the game a "port" as we think of it today was out of the question. But with the SNES going strong and the PCE CD waning even in Japan in 1994~1995 it seems more like Konami just wanted to dump out another Castlevania game. Not even NEC was really stopping them from making a more expansive port/follow up at this time as they were more interested in getting visual novel type stuff out on the ill-fated PC-FX.
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Oct 2, 2014 05:59
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gently caress... Konami? I don't know anymore. This is a scan from an old EGM while Dracula X for SNES was in development and it looks like it was going to be a straight port.  And whatever happened to the Castlevania game that was planned for 32X?
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Oct 2, 2014 06:22
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I feel like they probably just used a shot from the PCE CD game for that though. It has the PCE iteration's gauges/font/color palette. The SNES version is so weird in how the backgrounds and general stuff in the game is "better" on a technical level but much less interesting to look at: I just figured The Bloodletting (the 32X game's subtitle) got canned due to the general failure of the 32X. There was some blurry scant TGS footage of it in a 32X promo clip (basically like four seconds of the character walking around hitting candles) but, unfortunately, there have been multiple fan games made with the name Bloodletting so when I search Youtube now I only see the fan game footage. You can look up some of the actual sprites though and a screenshot or two from various early blips of the game being previewed. The premise was that you played as Richter's kid, his rival and a female character that was probably supposed to be Maria. The only footage is of a red crusader looking guy but I don't know who is who. I'm assuming the guy who is Richter but with a blue vest instead of a blue coat is Richter's kid but who knows. The cool thing is that the amount of sprite recycling/recoloring in Symphony of the Night is so heavy that while the colors are difference you can tell they used the 32X sprite for the Fake Trevor boss in Symphony of the Night:  For anyone who cares, from left to right that's: SCVIV Simon, SotN Grant/Sypha/Trevor, SotN Richter/intro Maria, 32X Rival, 32X Richter's kid/female lead, Saturn SotN Richter/Maria, Alucard of course, and John Morris from Bloodlines. Man Bloodlines, awesome game. I love the juxtaposition of having a great soundtrack while simultaneously having the most questionable "swinging a morning star into something" sound effect ever chosen. That game is so cool. I know the wildly different system architecture and licensing issues of the time were a pain but I can't even imagine that happening today but it was pretty crazy how you'd get totally different games on the SNES/Genesis at the same time that were the same property. Anyways while it sucks that Bloodletting never happened and the SNES Dracula X game is kind of crappy in some ways that it eventually all coalesced into Symphony of the Night is fair enough. 
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Oct 2, 2014 07:13
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Neo Rasa posted:And then he did this for every GBA/DS game right after. I do wish Circle of the Moon let you use those other character sprites for thief and magician mode, it seems like something that would have definitely been done if they had time. CotM in general is REALLY cool. I love love love the level design in it because, while not immediately noticeable, the platforms are spaced so that as you get more jumping/running/wall jumping/etc. abilities you can navigate the same areas faster and faster. Harmony of Dissonance really dropped the ball with this as it has a large number of huge rooms partitioned into small corridors you have to go through the entirety of repeatedly. It also runs pretty poorly because he made a strong effort to make it "like Symphony of the Night." Yeah, and then he proceeded to create his own origin story which was equally as dogshit as Legends was. But he did that for a lot of games by KCEK. CV64 wasn't the best of games, but there was little reason for it to be removed from the timeline. While I enjoy his games, he seems to have his head stuck up his rear end with regards to their stories. I mean Portrait of Ruin pretty much had to give this whole roundabout explanation simply to say that John Morris wasn't a Belmont but still had the Vampire Killer, instead of just saying "gently caress it, John Morris was a Belmont, just not in name." Also, it bugs the poo poo out of me that they keep using the old Richter sprite instead of the new one that matches the way he looks in SOTN.
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Oct 2, 2014 07:18
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The worst example of his head being up his rear end was Castlevania: Judgment being described by him as a branching adventure game featuring just boss fights to emphasize the characters and their situations to justify why it's a bit lacking as a fighting game. John Morris being a Belmont was really cool honestly. Like Bloodlines took place in the 1900s so yeah some time passed, families got around, names changed, whatever. It felt right in Bloodlines since that game's levels had such an awesome progression from rural ruined ancient structures to the modern stuff. Portrait of Ruin was already pretty boring but having to sit through the text dumps about why Morris' kid is able to use a whip was pretty weird. Like Dawn of Sorrow though it's another CV game where the post game that lets you use the alternate characters is more fun than the actual game proper.
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Oct 2, 2014 07:27
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Neo Rasa posted:The worst example of his head being up his rear end was Castlevania: Judgment being described by him as a branching adventure game featuring just boss fights to emphasize the characters and their situations to justify why it's a bit lacking as a fighting game. Well they took the idea of losing the name and ran with it in CV64. And yes, I agree. Julius mode is better than the main game in Dawn of Sorrow.
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Oct 2, 2014 07:30
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I want to play SOTN on a Vita. Dracula X Chronicles for $15, or SOTN PS1 classic for $4? It's on sale right now but Dracula X isn't and it's a pretty big difference. Also the best thing about having my old DS carts is that I can pop in the Castlevania games and instead of replaying it normally jump straight into Julius mode and stuff.
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Oct 2, 2014 08:18
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Only the NA version of DXC is Vita-compatible, so if you're an EU dude you'll have to buy the NA version with a NA account. The DXC version of SOTN lets you play as Maria (but not the same Maria from the Saturn version) and has a new translation/dub and some other little additions but either version is fine, really.
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Oct 2, 2014 08:27
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More importantly, Dracula X Chronicles has Dracula X on it which is a really awesome game as well as its remake which is very well done too (I was shocked by this honestly, I really wasn't expecting much).
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Oct 2, 2014 08:31
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