Review of the New Netflix original anime Tekken Bloodline, which will contain some minor spoilers about the premise. It's currently unknown if there will be part 2 or season 2 so to speak.
Jin Kazama learned the family self-defense arts, Kazama Style Traditional Martial Arts, from his mother at an early age. Even so, he was powerless when a monstrous evil suddenly appeared, destroying everything dear to him, changing his life forever. Angry at himself for being unable to stop it, Jin vowed revenge and sought absolute power to exact it. His quest will lead to the ultimate battle on a global stage — The King of Iron Fist Tournament.
So let’s go back to the PlayStation 1 games , what was your favourites? The ones that you never stopped playing ? Mine was Tekken , FIFA 2001 and crash bandequet so you can I imagine how hyped I was when I learned that a Netflix series based on Tekken 3 was going to premiere. So my takeaway:
After a tragic event, Jin Kazama finds his grandfather, so he can train him and take revenge.
POSITIVELY
The animation is good. A bit cheap at some points, but overall it's really good. It seems that a day was entered for the best possible result.
Faithful to the lore, history and characters for most of the series, a rare thing these days.
·Character moves and combos.
·Jun Kazama
-NEGATIVELY
·Absences of much-loved characters.
·Some battles that have a back story take place off screen.
·Battle duration. Maybe they wanted to do it as long as they kept in the game. But here it's anime, a different medium. I'm not saying they made them like DBZ that lasted 174936 episodes, it just had to be a little longer.
·Rhythm and sequence duration. We have the story of the most well-known and most loved game of the series, literally Tekken 3 brought the franchise into most homes and we blew it away in just 6 episodes lasting 20 minutes!! HUGE MISTAKE! For me, I think it should have had more episodes so that characters other than Jin and Heihachi could be fleshed out. For most, what they say to us is five lines of dialogue!
Those who know the franchise and the vomit that was the live action movie, can happily kill two hours, just for the nostalgia. The rest of you give it a chance. Maybe it's the little spark that will make you enter more into the world of Tekken.
Take a look at the gameplay of those days . How nostalgic
While writing this review, I realized that I've played few games of the Castlevania saga and it's quite rare since the Metroidvaina in general, is a sub-genre of video games that I like a lot, and although this particular saga, has in its catalog a large number of titles, I think I've played only 4 games. The title I'm going to talk about next is one of the most underrated of all, since I've seen very few people talk about this particular Castlevania.
That's why today's Retro Review is about: Castlevania: Bloodlines.
Castlevania: Bloodlines places us in Europe and tells us that many years ago the great villain Dracula, was finally defeated at the hands of a descendant of the Belmont clan, Quincy Morris, but after an arduous battle against the greatest force of evil, Morris dies, leaving his son as the only heir and as a descendant of the valiant Belmont clan. Many years have passed and Quincy's son is now quite old, his name is John Morris, and this character will soon be involved in a fight of good against evil. This game is set in the year 1914, and soon the First World War will begin, but this war is caused by the niece of Dracula himself, Bartley Elizabeth, who in order to revive her uncle starts this cycle of death and destruction. So once again, a descendant of the Belmont clan, must stop the plans of the evil forces and prevent the most powerful vampire of all from reviving once again. But John Morris will not be alone in this difficult mission, as he will have the help of Eric Lecarde, because this character wants to take revenge on Elizabeth for the death of his girlfriend.
Graphically it is quite an outstanding game considering that this game is approximately 26 years old, but its graphic style still looks quite good today. As it is typical in the games of this saga, the decoration of its scenarios is quite good, always with a much higher level of detail and the atmosphere is also very well recreated.
The sceneries, as I mentioned before, have great details on screen, from the smallest detail, to the biggest, which in a way makes every place we go, not feel empty and that our environment is full of "life". Also, due to the time in which the events of this game take place, many of the sceneries are recreations of some places we could see in those times, and are designed and decorated in an excellent way.
The character design is quite good, the main characters, despite having relatively small sprites, have very recognizable designs with small details, which despite not being as good as the scenarios, if they give a certain charisma.
But I think that as far as designs are concerned, the enemies are at a better level than the protagonists, since their sprites, in most of them, have a better defined design and also characteristic of what this saga is.
Like many games in this saga, Castlevania: Bloodlines has a high quality soundtrack. What characterizes the Castlevania saga is that when we hear a tune, no matter what game it is, we automatically know what a Castlevania tune is, since it has a certain main feature that makes us associate it with this game. One could say that in terms of sound and melodies they have a very distinctive stamp and mark. When you listen to some of the tunes in this game, they have a certain scary atmosphere, which logically fits in very well with the plot of this game, but there will also be tunes with a more action tone, for those moments when we find ourselves battling with our enemies. Similarly, sound effects are outstanding and necessary to create a better atmosphere.
As for the gameplay, Castlevania: Bloodlines, maintains the same features of the other games in the saga, mechanics that are quite intuitive and easy to learn. The Castlevania saga is a game of the side-scrolling platform genre and while we must go through a series of scenarios and overcome any kind of obstacles, we must also defeat any enemy from the very hell that wants to attack us.
As is common in this type of game and in the Castlevania saga in general, in these scenarios we find ourselves with sub-bosses and end-of-phase bosses, each with their own characteristics, skills and attack patterns and equally with a varied level of difficulty. In itself, Castlevania: Bloodlines is not a difficult game, but at some points there will be challenges, which can test us to overcome them.
In Castlevania: Bloodlines, we have two playable characters, as I mentioned before they are: John Morris and Eric Lecarde, each of them has skills and advantages, but also disadvantages, so it will be up to us to choose which character best suits our skills, although there will be certain moments in the story that we can only play with a certain character. John Morris, as a descendant of the Belmont clan uses the classic whip of this family, and Eric Lecarde, being the best character in terms of ease of control and skills, has a spear, which belonged to Alucard, the son of Dracula.
Castlevania: Bloodlines is a title quite forgotten over the years, which may not be as memorable as other titles in this great saga, but it is an excellent video game of the action genre, platforms and side-scrolling, but also an excellent Metroidvaina, which will give us some good hours of fun, and in terms of graphics, is a pretty outstanding title, despite its shortcomings.
