In 1796, Richter goes missing and Dracula's castle reappears. Alucard arrives at the castle to destroy it, meeting Maria Renard, who once fought alongside Richter and is searching for him. Alucard meets Richter, who claims to be the new lord of the castle. Convinced that Richter is under somebody else's control, Maria urges Alucard not to hurt him and gives him the Holy Glasses, which allows him to see past illusions. In the castle's keep, Alucard confronts Richter and learns that he plans to resurrect Dracula, so the two can fight for an eternity. During a fight, Alucard breaks the spell controlling Richter, and Dracula's servant Shaft appears and tells them that Dracula will still be resurrected soon.
The objective is to explore Dracula's castle to defeat an entity named Shaft who is controlling Richter Belmont, the self-proclaimed lord of the castle and hero of the events which took place in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. Shaft can only be seen with a particular item obtained during gameplay. Once he is defeated, the second portion of the game is revealed, the Inverted Castle, an upside-down version of the first castle with new enemies and bosses. Alucard has to find five specific bosses to collect five pieces of Dracula (in reference to Castlevania II: Simon's Quest), eventually leading to the final battle with a newly awakened Dracula.
The music in the game is for all releases composed by Michiru Yamane.
Release differences
Due to hardware limitations, the Saturn port has a very simplified transformation animation, and "Loading… please wait" screens, that the PS version has done away with by a clever system of letting the next stage load in the very last room of the earlier stage. However, the Saturn version features some extra stages and one extra playable character, and, as the Saturn features an internal clock, the center clock in the Saturn version shows the current time, and not the play time, like the Playstation version does. This allows for the equippable jewels "Sun stone" and "Moon stone" in the Saturn release, that give extra stats boost during day hours and night hours respectively.
Translated box back (Japanese Saturn version):
Only the moon, hanging in the dark sky, knows the truth…
Is the Dracula you know, really the true Dracula…?
Microbadges: