Castlevania Anniversary Collection

Genre: Compilation / Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This Compilation is included in Castlevania Collections Bundle, along with Castlevania Advance Collection and Castlevania Dominus Collection.)

Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a collection of 8 of the 10 first games in the Castlevania series (the arcade game, Haunted Castle, is in the Arcade Classics Collection, and as such isn’t included here, and Vampire Killer isn’t on any of these collections). These games are all Action-Platformers, though each of them brings something different to the table. Here are my thoughts on each of them:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade
Castlevania	Action-Platformer	1	B
tl;dr The official first game in the series, originally released on NES, features some great, classic Action-Platforming action, with solid (for the time) presentation, and some amazing music, although it’s marred by an unforgiving high difficulty level and a lot of screen flickering.
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest	Metroidvania	1	B+
tl;dr The second Castlevania game originally released on NES is one of the very first examples of a Metroidvania, and while it has some really strong gameplay and fantastic music, it also has some rough edges – some parts of the game feel poorly-implemented or incomplete, and the terrible localization makes playing with a game guide absolutely necessary. Still good, but not for everyone.
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse	Action-Platformer	1	A-
tl;dr The third Castlevania game in the NES trilogy plays much like a refined version of the first game, with players gaining one of three additional characters to transform into, making for a lot more gameplay variety. Also, again, I have to mention the fantastic music this game has. And while the game is still damn difficult, the extra characters mitigate this somewhat.
Super Castlevania IV	Action-Platformer	1	A
tl;dr The series’ first game on 16-bit hardware sees it taking a lot of risks and liberties with the series formula, and many of these pay off. The game has some amazingly inventive level design thanks to the added power the SNES allowed for, the ingenious ability to manually manipulate your whip, and some absolutely phenomenal music. This was one of the best early releases on the SNES, and it has aged extremely well.
Castlevania: The Adventure	Action-Platformer	1	D+
tl;dr The Castlevania series’ first release on the Game Boy was… rough. The game’s unforgiving gameplay was excruciatingly slow, players didn’t have the series’ staple sub-weapons, and the game de-powered players upon taking a single hit. This game is just not fun to play, and its flaws are even more apparent next to the much better games in the rest of this collection.
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge	Action-Platformer	1	C-
tl;dr The Castlevania series’ second release on the Game Boy was a slight improvement over the first one, but still suffered many of the same problems. While the game balance is a bit better this time thanks to the return of sub-weapons and a slightly expanded move set, the game’s unforgiving nature and slow pacing still sap the enjoyment out of it.
Castlevania Bloodlines	Action-Platformer	1	B+
tl;dr The Castlevania series’ Genesis release doesn’t have the level of inventiveness or refinement as the SNES game, but it still has some quality gameplay, with two selectable characters and the ability to use more powerful versions of sub-weapons.
Kid Dracula	Action-Platformer	1	B
tl;dr This game, originally only released on the Famicom in Japan, is a more kid-friendly spinoff of the Castlevania series, and plays very differently from the other games, resembling a cross between Castlevania and Mega Man. Still, for what it is, it’s not bad, and series fans open to trying something a bit different should find this game to add some good variety to this collection.

All in all, out of eight games, pretty much all of them are at least worth playing except the two Game Boy games, and I would argue that Castlevania III and IV in particular are still to this day fine examples that have withstood the test of time. And I know I repeated it throughout what I said above, but I have to touch on it again – many of these games have some truly fantastic music that I still absolutely love, all these years later. In any case, while some collections are a mix of good and bad, this one is almost all quality, which is pretty rare in these compilations.

Rather than just including the games and calling it a day, this collection actually goes a few steps farther. There are save states players can use (and you’ll need them – these are difficult games), multiple display settings, control settings, and the game even lets you play both the US and Japanese versions of every game in the collection (except Castlevania II for some reason).

On top of this, this collection includes a digital “History of Castlevania” book that includes US and Japanese box art, interviews, and lots of behind-the-scenes materials detailing the making of each game in this collection. This was a completely unnecessary inclusion, and its presence here really makes this feel like a release that had a surprising amount of care put into it.

As far as complaints go… it’s really hard to complain about Castlevania Anniversary Collection. I wish players had more colorization options for the Game Boy games, I wish this collection included more games from the series, and I wish players could assign a button to create a save state to cut down on going through menus. But for $20 this game includes six absolute classic games (and two crappy ones) and a wealth of options and bonus content. Fans of action-platformers should absolutely look into this game.

tl;dr – Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a collection of Action-Platformers that includes eight of the great games from early in the series (well, six great games plus two crappy Game Boy games). This collection gives players a wealth of options and bonus content, and is… actually pretty ideal for a collection of some of the best Action-Platformers ever made. This title is a must for fans of the genre.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2019 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Compilation/Collection – Castlevania Anniversary Collection was the one collection released this year that seemed to go above and beyond in just about every way a game collection can. Firstly, it bears mention that the selection of games is superb – out of 8 games, 6 of them are very good (including the first Western release of Kid Dracula), and I would argue that two of these games are still among the best in their genre. However, in addition to that, this collection packs in both the US and Japanese versions of nearly all of these games, has added save states and presentation options, a huge collection of production materials, interviews, and behind-the-scenes contents… and all of this for only $20. This is how game compilations should be done, and I hope other publishers take notice.

Runner-Up: Best Value

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