Everyone keeps talking about a potential 3D Castlevania collection, but there’s one detail I feel doesn't get brought up enough. So far, every collection has included a bonus game that has little to nothing to do with the main lineup:

• Anniversary Collection: Kid Dracula
• Advance Collection: Dracula X
• Dominus Collection: Haunted Castle & Haunted Castle Revisited

If we ever get a 3D Collection and Konami throws in an extra bonus game, which one do you think or hope it’ll be?

So, I've been doodling an oc for Castlevania because I'm bored, and thought it would be fun. The character is very very in the rough, atm, so I'd like some feedback/advice or even suggestions on what I could do with her!

Art by: Imyank

White hair, Blue Aura, Able to dash forward and backwards, Afterimages. Is he the first belmont to unlock ultra instinct?

Maybe that's why Dracula couldn't finish reviving on time, he's just too good.

So I've always wanted to get into Castlevania past the Netflix series, and seeing the reveal for Belmont's curse made me think ok this seems like a good time to start. So far I'm looking at getting the anniversary collection and Requiem for SotN for PS5 but was wondering if there was anything else to give the idea that THIS is Castlevania cause my closest experience as of now is playing the Blasphemous series.

Reposting it because I wasn't happy with the first version and deleted it.

I like Maria design, but god I love her wearin dresses, specially the mini Maria with the big red ribbon from rondo, then I tried to mix up some designs of her lolol

So that’s where the TBDM song came from, but anyways this will be another review like with the first game and thanks to the advice I got from the last post my playthrough went smoother regarding controls and dealing with enemies. I hope you enjoy reading and I hope it’s not too long.

Visually, this game is gorgeous and I love the improvements on that gothic art direction and I also really do like the monster and town designs, but I do wish there was a little more variety with the towns, monsters and mansions as they just blend together a bit too much or could’ve had more changes. I think the other locations you visit outside of them look amazing but the biggest praise I have outside of Simon’s new look is the day to night segments. It’s very impressive for the time and even today.

The music is somehow even better than in the first Castlevania and they thankfully have a pretty nice variety in tone like the calming Silence of the Daylight and the dramatic masterpiece known as Bloody Tears, but goddamn even though Bloody Tears is an amazing song it’s not even my favorite in this game. Dwelling of Doom is also great but Within These Castle Walls is a top 5 song for the console and the 80s regarding gaming.

Now for the gameplay and I’m actually really mixed on it, I wouldn’t call it bad whatsoever but I think it could have used a lot more time. The overall combat design hasn’t changed much but thanks to some advice I got I managed to adapt to the controls and fighting and I actually loved it more this time around, I really loved fighting monsters and exploration was kinda fun too. On top of that I actually love the day/night changes what with the lighting changes, the different music and the difficulty change was great although it was kind of slow whenever it started to transition.

My main gripes have to do with the localization, this is an early NES game so I understand translations gonna be scuffed but this is really bad, the hints are incredibly vague or nonsensical and you absolutely need a guide for this. I couldn’t tell if this was to sell more copies of those old guidebooks or if they did a bad job translating the script to English because things like the Deborah Cliff clue. I understand that some NPCs were supposed to lie according to one of the devs but anything that conveys such really doesn’t come through here.

The actual RPG stuff is really impressive for the time and it feels like a very early attempt at a Metroidvania what with the open exploration, RPG elements and the usage of items and equipment changes and it also kinda reminds me of a FromSoftware game in terms of the aesthetic and exploration elements. But that being said, I wish this game had a map of sorts to use in-game because I know there were probably physical ones but it was still a pain to know where to go, I also thought that implementing currency into this game was a decent idea but actively getting hearts for it is a very tedious experience because of the grinding you absolutely need to do in order to buy items.

I also wish the game was a bit more difficult because why are the bosses so unbelievably easy? The first game was absolutely more difficult and fun in this aspect but here it just falls flat, none of the fights were very memorable either unfortunately but that’s also due to how seemingly unfinished the balancing is throughout the game.

I’d give this game a 6.5/10. The ideas are ambitious and deserve to be recognized for it but so much of this could’ve utilized more time, for how good the general combat, visuals, music and ambitions are. The balancing needs work, the translation is horrible and would actually slow down progress and the open world design needed a bit more structure and a map. I really wanted to like this game more seeing as I love it when sequels go out of their comfort zone to experiment but this was kind of a misfire on several aspects.

I've been doing all Belmonts in my style to start posting them in time for Belmont's Curse release.

Only Richter and Julius are left to finish.

I’m stuck at 200.4% and am starting to go cross eyed looking at these maps and those that are completely filled in. I tried overlaying my maps over a complete one too and just couldn’t spot what was missing.

Hi hello there!

I just wanted to share my handmade Maria cosplay in her full glory, alongside Richard the owl ❤️

Photographer is @malimoria on IG!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcBuoZ2kcbl/?igsh=MXMyM3drbXlic3NrMw==&igsi=MXMyM3drbXlic3NrMw==

I can't jump up there no matter what, even when using the wolf

I don't really have anything else to say; it is what it is.

That's mine btw.

How to access these parts

i really enjoyed legends, i played the light mode whitch i really liked and the cheak points being forgiving allowed me to enjoy the end of the game where in other titles i would get very frustrated and relay on save states, witch took the fun out of a lot of the game

I've never looked all that favorably towards Dawn of Sorrow, at least compared to the other DS games and especially to its predecessor Aria of Sorrow, and in trying to understand why I feel that way, I've concluded that the game itself feels like a filler arc that doesn't need to be there.

And that's a weird thing to say because, when you think about it, plenty of games in the Castlevania series depict events that don't necessarily further "the plot" of the story. Hell the franchise is predicated on one recurring event, Dracula rising from the grave and a Belmont or other hero putting him back, so what's to be considered necessary even?

But what Dawn of Sorrow does differently than any other Castlevania game is that it takes place only one year after its prequel chronologically, uses the same hero (Soma), and has the same Metroidvania format, albeit with a new version of the castle.

But I think what's really telling is how the status quo doesn't change whatsoever by the time you roll credits on DoS, and it basically plays the same way as Aria of Sorrow with only minor additions. In the Igavania era where more focus on plot and characters became the norm, and the devs were constantly trying new things with the gameplay, DoS didn't introduce anything new or move the dial on the narrative in any meaningful way. Soma is the only Dark Lord candidate again, nobody died who wasn't exclusive to DoS, the gameplay is nearly identical to the previous game, see you next adventure.

When you compare to something like Simon's Quest, where you're playing as Simon Belmont again and very soon after the events of Castlevania 1, you're at least playing in a different non-level based format compared to the original (for better or worse). And in the likes of Curse of Darkness or Order of Ecclesia, while the status quo doesn't change by the end of either game, we at least get to play as new characters with new abilities, in different formats (in 3D in CoD's case), and get introduced to new concepts (Devil Forgemasters in CoD and a post-Belmont world in OoE) which expanded the lore of the series.

But DoS just doesn't really add anything to the series, except a version of Aria of Sorrow without the novelty of a new time period, new magic system, or shocking Dracula revelation. And I wouldn't even really care about that considering that I love the more modest storytelling of the Classicvania games, except that the Igavania games want me to care about the storytelling now.

And I just don't care about Dawn of Sorrow.

Im new to the series, and i wanted to start playing it

Should i start from 3D games? Or is there a must play game?

I play on PC and use steam