Few names are as endearing and maddening as Castlevania. As much as I love it, my hatred for it’s parent company, Konami, is among my worst. A company that’s a shadow of it’s former self, Konami seems to be trying to drag itself back into relevancy with a number of collections, including an Arcade and Contra collections. Now if only they’d get around to the Suikoden and Mystical Ninja collections, maybe I’ll start to forgive.
But let’s talk about the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, not to be confused with the Castlevania: Rondo of Blood Collection. This collection contains eight games from Castlevania’s past, all vintage Castlevania experiences.
The games covered are:
- Castlevania (NES)
- Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
- Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES)
- Super Castlevania IV (Super Nintendo)
- Castlevania: The Adventure (Gameboy)
- Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (Gameboy)
- Castlevania Bloodlines (Genesis)
- Kid Dracula (NES)
That’s a lot of games, right? Well, it’s even more if you want to unlock every achievement, which requires a full run of each game, except for Castlevania III and Castlevania Bloodlines. Bloodlines requires you to beat the game with each character, for two runs, while Castlevania III requires a staggering four runs, once with each companion character and once with Trevor Belmont alone. And these games are not easy. Castlevania is one of those old school franchises from the days of Nintendo Hard. These games have no mercy and you’re required to beat all of them, some multiple times.
And these are not easy games by any means. In fact, they can be quite difficult, though if you’re attempting to get all the achievements, the process can be rushed along with passwords. But while these games are hard and time consuming, this is also one of the highest quality collections available. Most of the games in this collection are excellent, with the only exception being Castlevania: The Adventure. All of the rest of these games are quite good, though Kid Dracula does feel a smidge padded. Also, it’s bonus games are clearly why we didn’t get that game.
Helping these games along is a save state feature, though I wish you could save on multiple slots as opposed to just having one per game. Also, other collections, like the Mega Man Legacy Collection, feature a rewind feature in addition to save states, to limit how much progress you lose on a simple mistake.
As far as the difficulty is concerned, these are all currently their American releases, so these games are hard and, in some cases, needlessly punishing. However, a future patch is supposed to add the easier Japanese versions for all but Kid Dracula and Castlevania Bloodlines. Castlevania 3 alone, with it’s four runs, felt like the most punishing by far.
And then I played Castlevania: The Adventure. Imagine a game where your character could be powered down by a single blow, from any enemy. That’s this game. I wound up abusing save states, which leads to my next issue, which is the real deal breaker.
This game is unstable. Many times, loading a save state on my PS4 caused the game to freeze and crash, forcing me to shut the game down and restart it. Where it was only a matter of time before it crashed again. This made games like Castlevania 3, The Adventure, Bloodlines, and Kid Dracula especially aggravating as they’re, by far, some of the most time consuming and most difficult. And it’s because of these issues that I must give this collection a non-recommendation, in spite of my love for Castlevania. If this issue is fixed, I can recommend it, but only if you don’t mind a series of highly difficult games.
Not Recommended (Game crashes) – Low Recommendation if fixed
The Professional Protagonist 