Castlevania

What was once one of the most beloved franchises born on the NES is now seeing troubling times, as is the case with other well known franchises out there as well. Castlevania is the ultimate inviting party towards gothic atmosphere, mythological creatures, distinguished gameplay and pure terror.

This is a huge franchise, so let me only talk about the ones I have beaten and experienced so far. my first Castlevania was Super Castlevania IV, but I didn't get far with it as a kid. Years later, I did manage to beat it. The controls and gothic setting are mindblowingly good here.

The first title I did manage to beat was Circle of the Moon on the Gameboy Advance, which continued the famous formula starting with Symphony of the Night, which is basically action RPG with a large playground, or as they are called by fans, Metroidvania and Castleroid.

Aria of Sorrow was next. This felt like a really new way of presenting the franchise, as it was happening in the future, the characters were reincarnations and some of the monters in it remain pretty weird.

The Soul Capturing system was interesting as you were able to use abilities from the enemies themselves, adding more gameplay. There is also a little twist involved in the story, and the level design was very good.

I went back to Harmony of Dissonance because I was hungry for more, and I was pleasantly surprised of the huge castle layout and that despite having like 8-bit music playing, some of the songs were really good. It was a lot of fun to just dash around the huge castle, looking for secrets or the next path that just opened.

Dawn of Sorrow turned out to be my favorite Castlevania because of the excellent bosses, the graphical animations, the tight mechanics, an improved Soul Capturing system, celebrating music and good extra unlockables.

Symphony of the Night on the contrary turned out to be the most dissapointing for me after playing all those others already. I disliked the very easy challenge, most of the castle or the inverted castle felt unnecessary to explore and I wasn't really a fan of the overall soundtrack.

It is by no means a bad game, but it was easy for me to disregard it as the best of the franchise. Portrait of Ruin introduced a dual partner system but re-used a ton of enemy designs, previous bosses and had poor level design, but it still offered enough new content to satisfy me.

Order of Ecclesia is another very solid experience that once again changed the formula here and there, such as the Glyph feature and splitting the level design into smaller maps(and one huge castle later on).

The latest Castlevania games I managed to play and beat is the NES trilogy. The first one was short, difficult and classical, Simon's Quest is a oddity like many NES sequels back in the day and Dracula's Curse is rightfully the best of the three.

As you can see, I still have a lot of Castlevania's to play out there, such as Rondo of Blood. Recent titles like Lords of Shadow don't seem to be successful enough nor interesting. Sure it's a new direction, but Castlevania is starting to go underground.

I really hope to see a classical 2D action platformer or a phenomenal 3D attempt from this franchise in the future. Or at the very least see it continueing to survive, as Castlevania deserves to stay after making many memorable entries already.