26.6 hours played
Written 4 days ago
The Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a solid way of either reliving the start of the series or experiencing it for the first time if you were missing out on them in the past.
Both the games, as well as the actual job to preserve them may seem a bit lacking however, and you have to be aware that you are simply jumping back in time to an era where people had "way more time", had more endurance because "we didn't have anything else to compare it to" or from which game design simply has evolved.
There will be a group who will have an outrage if I defame the games as not being as well made in some aspects and keeping the hard-as-nails-difficulty until the late 90's for no real justification, when doing differently and making some bold choices earlier would have ended in better experiences which would have aged smoother.
So yes, I used save states for all of the games (the rewind feature was a bit too context-help-ish for me) and I used them so much that I probably earned the games' achievements for try-harding all in itself. Because even with your preferred method of "cheating", these games are still designed to be unforgiving, and you can only fight that with external strategy so much without getting hit by that limitation.
If you do not have tolerance for that stuff, this collection will probably not give you much except for satisfying your curiosity. If you really want to play the games to experience them, because you like that kind of challenge, then this collection is shining the most.
When the games put aside their difficulty and you can finally breath for a moment, that is when you can appreciate that they - even compared to today's standards - do so much right and can be very tight and enjoyable experiences.
With all that written, I will do as many before me, and write some general gist about each game of the collection, as well as my personal thoughts about them.
Castlevania 1
A solid and short experience, which is fun for the most part. During the later stages however, you will really feel that arcade-style difficulty. Each hit you take matters, because you need as much life as possible for the boss at the end of the stage. If you mess up too much, you loose a life. Lose them all, you have to do the stage again. Which can happen very easily.
Otherwise: Basically the entry of what you would expect those classic games to be. Good art, music, snappy controls and for the most part still a fair experience. It definitely takes advantage of being the first you may try out though, because the sequels definitely add more to the formula.
Castlevania 2
Ironically, while being the infamous one in the series, I personally took a great liking to it. It is actually not that difficult, either. As long as you pay attention, you can manage to get around loosing and being punished too much fairly well. The biggest offender for this game is that it is quite cryptic. There is probably no way you will make it to the end without looking up a guide or trying a lot of random shenanigans. I already knew about most things and looked up the rest. As soon as you know about them, the game can really play out the intended exploration and feeling of adventure. Graphics I felt were a bit weaker, but the music was still superb. The bosses are indeed quite lousy, but if you see them more as another enemy to deal with, it works out.
Castlevania 3
This is basically a ramped-up version of the first game. More levels, more gameplay ideas, more characters. If you take everything from game 1 and expand on it in mostly a good way, you have the third game. The only problem is that in doing so, they also ramped up the amount of unfair spots in the game and put in some really harsh design decisions, which hit home that arcade-style feeling even more. I think I had the most hate-fun-relationship with this one for sure. Graphics and music are again really good, bosses are... bosses again. They felt a bit tedious, but maybe only because you have to play through the game 4 freaking times for all achievements.
Castlevania 4
This will be a hot take, but I did not really like it. Not because it was bad, on the opposite. I can see why a lot of people like it. But... I dunno, I think I just never liked the SNES style that much. I also did not feel that the actual improvements of the new console were used that well. It was cool back then, but nowadays it just is... another game. And in that regard, it is a good game, with re-imagined and new locations compared to the first one. Nice graphics, music and all that. But it was not for me.
The Adventure
Oh boy, this game takes the cake. I do not even fully share the opinion that the controls are bad or the gameplay is lacking. The game around it was just purposefully designed to frustrate you because the game has those limitations. Level 3 can die in a fire. I do not know how people beat it without save states. One mistake, one frame of acting too late or too early and you are done for. I cannot comprehend how such a level came into existence. But yeah, some good music again. Graphics are fine.
Belmont's Revenge
Technically improves on everything of Adventure, but the game design was still kind of irritating. Which shows that a better foundation does not mean an entirely better experience per se. Because of that... I also do not have to write too much about it. The game is okay and serves what you would expect at this point.
Bloodlines
And here we have the game that I had the most fun with. Not only is the arcade factor stripped down the most, the game fully embraces the more sped-up and action-like feel the Sega consoles went with. The characters move faster, their abilities are fun to execute, the level design is solid and enemy interaction makes you feel powerful. Eric Lecarde especially was a blast to play with. The bosses are also great in this one. Graphics and music are top notch. Still, the difficulty is there alright. As long as you can easily loose all health and power-ups, have to blast through an entire line-up of bosses at the end, among other things, you will just not get rid of that punishment. But it is certainly my personal recommendation to plough through.
Kid Dracula
This game was a little odd to me. While it was a fun platformer - and I enjoyed the idea and its gimmicks, it also was still quite challenging at parts, not letting go of that old-school difficulty. People who play these games as their bread and butter will laugh reading this, but yes, to me the last level - which had no checkpoints - felt quite harsh, as even though the bosses were simple to figure out, it was still all on one health bar. I think it shows that "how easy it is at most" kind of thing the best. I also agree with other reviewers that you will probably only use the homing shot for most of the game, as that ability solves almost all situations. Graphics and music were nice.
Art book and overall package
Nice overall, but lacked polishing. I found around 5 spelling mistakes, most in the book and 1 even in the game overviews. The one track on loop during it also got a bit tiresome after an hour of reading. Most of the games also had frame rate issues, but I am aware that there is a high possibility of these games having them even back then on original hardware, so I will let it slide personally. It also got annoying to constantly quit out of the emulation menu by accident though, because it is put on the trigger of the controller. I also do not understand why save and load are not the first option in the list and auto-selected for quick access, as they obviously make up the most frequent usage of that menu.
All in all, I think they did a well job, but having a few more weeks to think some things over would have done better, as you can clearly see some overall improvements on the sequel collection.
Pricing
Worth it if it matters to you already. If you are a stranger, you should check out a sale or the collection bundle.
