YMMV / Castlevania: Bloodlines

• Accidental Innuendo: The single Wheel Knight encountered in Versailles Palace has a very unfortunately-placed fist held directly in front of its crotch area, which it rapidly pumps back-and-forth as it tries to attack the player.
• Awesome Music: Michiru Yamane's first contribution to the Castlevania series, and not too bad either.
• Breather Level: Stage 5. While it does have numerous varieties of heavy-hitting Armored Knights that are fairly tank-y, it also has practically no pitfall deathtraps or Ledge Bats to contend with and none of the boss enemies are especially hard to beat.
• Cheese Strategy: In Castlevania Anniversary Collection, it's possible to earn the achievements for completing this game by inputting passwords that skip to Castle Proserpina. Doing so will allow to skip a good majority of the game.
• Fridge Horror: While not outright stated, it is implied that Eric killed his own fiancée when she was vampirized as she dies afterwards. Considering the tragicness of this scenario, this can also be considered a Tear Jerker moment.
• Goddamned Boss: Fighting Elizabeth Bartley after her Medusa phase is an exercise in patience. Her patterns aren't particularly interesting, she's only vulnerable at certain times, and you have to wear down her elemental magic orbs before she'll finally takes a fixed five bars' worth of damage, with each phase introducing more orbs to blitz through. And just as one final "screw you" to the player, she's given a Last Chance Hit Point, making you do an extra round of orbs for no good reason.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The game is only six stages long, which can seem like a step backwards from Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood. To make up for it, stages in Bloodlines are longer than most of the levels in Super Castlevania IV, at least. This game had two characters that play completely different from each other, which extends the replay value a little bit. Of course, that doesn't stop people from judging it solely based on number of stages.
• Scrappy Mechanic: For whatever reason, this is one of the few Castlevania games to have limited continues, making the already tough game that much more unforgiving. Since the game still has a password system, it effectively means you'll have to re-enter the password over and over again to retry.
• That One Level: Stage 3, The Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's a stage that's heavy on platforming and has some sections that have claimed lives from even players that are familiar with the game. If you picked John Morris, good luck with the autoscrolling section in 3-5 where you need to climb the falling tower with jumps, and John has a slower jump reach than Eric... not that Eric has it easy either, as the platforming section before the boss (3-7), which is also an autoscroller, is a pain and a half due to the gargoyles circling you and then zooming in to you, and they're a pain to get a hit on them. The only saving grace is that they die in one hit... which is less than compared with the general annoyance that is the flying enemies that roam through 3-1 and 3-3. A good bunch of the time, they're very awkwardly positioned, and you need to hit them twice before they fall down. They're especially aggravating in 3-3 if you're using Eric, because you need to take the upper path with spiral jumps, and there's a good bunch of these enemies, which will take an advantage to easily ambush you, and more often than not, you won't end up unscathed. Of course, John doesn't have to deal with that, but he has to deal with forced swinging whip jump mechanics in the next screen, which, compared with Super Castlevania IV, they don't work as you would expect, and it's very probably the first time you'll be doing this over bottomless pits without prior practice, so expect to die trying to clear the jump. And to top it all off, a final sendoff is the boss battle, which can be difficult if the physics of the tower don't agree with you. Overall, one of the hardest stages in the game.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Eric in the European and Japanese versions.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The wizards at Konami made the Sega Genesis do some things it couldn't do, mainly scaling and rotation. The game as a whole is even more impressive than what the SNES pulled off in Super Castlevania IV.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: the game received a "GA" (General Audiences) rating, despite being the first Castlevania game that showed ANY blood and gore in any system, and it had them in large amounts.