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Lots of people these days are probably busy with their Switch 2s, playing either Mario Kart World or DK Bananza. Meanwhile I've been going through the M2 GBA & DS Castlevania collections, plus Symphony of the Night and Bloodstained to make the list complete. Now, these games are commonly referred to as metroidvanias. I didn't question the genre term much back in the day because it seemed self-evident from just comparing their maps with those of Metroid games. Nowadays I prefer to liken them to the Diablo series instead. Just consider the gameplay of Diablo: you hack and slash through hordes of monsters. It's the same in these later Castlevania games. Both series also keep players engaged by rewarding the grind with powerful rare drops. You could say that Metroidvanias are really just a mix up of dungeon crawlers and traditional platforming games.
Symphony of the Night
For a game that spawned its own genre it's surprising how solid this one is. While the first 30 to 60 minutes are kind of a monotonous slog, the game gets a lot more fun once it opens up (even if the constant backtracking through the same boring hallways can feel a bit daunting at times). Compared to its successors I really like how the game lets you explore freely and features angled attacks and weapon skills to spice up the otherwise minimalistic combat mechanics. The story is intriguing but kept to a minimum. The visual and sound design is not only superb but also unique in the series, giving exploring Symphony of the Night's gothic castle a strong atmospheric feel that's somewhat lacking in the series' future installments. I found the second half of the game more fun to play than I expected too.
Overall there's good reasons this one is considered a classic. Symphony of the Night is still worth playing today, over many of its sequels too, even if it's unfortunately way too easy and has some rough edges (especially related to the magic system). It's worth noting that it's a good idea to search up the original manual or wikis to figure out how this game works before playing it since it's otherwise rather cryptic due to its complete lack of tutorials (a good thing!).
Circle of The Moon
Circle of the Moon may suffer from a huge technological downgrade if you come into it right after Symphony of the Night, but I still really liked the game for its simple and yet fun mechanics. You can tell it was an early GBA release because the visuals and sounds are very reminiscent of classic Gameboy games. For me this was rather a feature than a problem since I really enjoyed the nostalgic vibes I got from playing this game. Besides, the visuals are still good (incredibly consistant when compared to other games in the series). The music is great too. Circle of the Moon's dungeon map is surprisingly large without feeling bloated. The game ends just when it feels like it's a good time for it to be over. The story is again intriguing without frequently interrupting gameplay.
A quirk of this game is that it's difficulty is entirely random. Since you gain new abilities through finding rare drops that may literally never drop. I guess the RNG of this game can get stuck in a state where you're unlikely to find new skill cards because I had to play through 90% of this one with just a couple of base skills, which made the game very challenging (and fun) for me.
Harmony of Dissonance
Oh god, what happened here? Sprites and background graphics are now huge, leaving little screen estate for the gameplay and making the game really feel like an archaic Gameboy title. For the most part the visuals are not even good as they look way too cartoony. Visually Dracula's castle is reminiscent of dungeons in Mickey Mouse games.
Our new protagonist is Juste Belmont. Who sticks out for looking like Alucard. Why does the title's Bemont look like a vampire? You can tell they really just wanted to do Symphony of the Night again. His red coat also doesn't hit the ambience of the series at all. He looks like Alucard cosplaying as Santa Claus! The soundtrack of Harmony of Dissonance is beyond description — somehow it manages to be absolutely dreadful and really, really good at the same time. It's mostly really catchy and hits at least a few tunes just right before dissolving into a dissonant mess. Still I recommend checking out some fan rearrangements on Youtube that really make this soundtrack shine by bringing out its strengths.
Gameplaywise it feels a little janky because Juste's landing lag lingers for just a moment too long (although I found myself getting used to this). But the really bad part of Harmony of Dissonance is its backtracking, because this games makes you explore the same dungeon twice (by recoloring it...). It's so bad this is the only game in the entire series that I haven't bothered to get the true ending for because I had eventually gotten too sick of exploring.
The bottom line is that Harmony of Dissonance has some real problems, but I don't consider it to be entirely unplayable and would say I was having fun regardless for the most part (the game had a couple difficult parts I really enjoyed). Juste's arsenal of various spells makes combat a lot more varied than it was in earlier titles, the soundtrack is sometimes still really good and there's some cool background visuals in the dark-side caves. Still, not exactly the reason to purchase the GBA collection.
Oh yeah, there's also a new gimmick that lets you collect furniture and stuff to put down in your own room. That Juste arbitrarily decides on while exploring the caves out of all places. I have no idea what they were thinking. There's not even a portal nearby to allow you easy access. You have to backtrack through an entire dungeon each time you want to visit this room. It's bizarre.
Aria of Sorrow
Ironically I have not much to say about this one because it's just inoffensively good in the sense that everything is a step up from CotM and HoD. There's more meat to the story and characters (still not getting in the way of the gameplay), the music and visuals are fantastic. The player character Soma can wield a variety of weapons and acquire a diverse set of skills, resulting overall in a less monotone and restricted gameplay experience. Unfortunately the game is really easy. There's a lot of potions lying around and if you need more the shop is always rather easy to access. If you manage to save up money you can get a very broken weapon way before finishing the game too. Hard mode probably should have been normal mode with an easy mode option. Otherwise a great game.
Fun fact: Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow were released under the western Castlevania brand even in Japan (where the series is known as Akumajou Dracula). Maybe there were complaints from japanese diehard fans of the classics that the games had changed too much?
Dawn of Sorrow
The series moved onto the Nintendo DS hardware with a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow. Dawn of Sorrow is mostly similar to its predecessor but has some unique quirks that unfortunately make it a worse game in some respects: the touchscreen gimmicks are forced and break the flow of gameplay, character portraits and the cover art are drawn in an anime style that does not fit the franchise, powering up weapons and skills requires grinding for soul drops. However personally I still like it a bit more than Aria of Sorrow. It feels a tad more challenging to me, the visuals are now in line with Symphony of the Night without sacrificing screen space (thanks to the higher resolution of the NDS's screens) and look fantastic, then there's the Katana's ability to landing cancel and string together two quick attacks with short hops, giving the combat an edge that was missing in the series until now. Overall this one ranks very high for me despite of its minor flaws.
Portrait of Ruin
Portrait of Ruin keeps the anime aesthetic introduced by Dawn of Sorrow for its portraits and extends it to the environment and background art. Everything looks at least a tad more cartoony in this one and the background visuals in general are rather bland and uninteresting, which is unfortunate because one selling point of this entry is that it features places outside of Dracula's castle. The overall sountrack is also a little weaker than in previous games (although there's a few great tracks), composed mostly of tracks that don't stick out much. The partner mechanics sound great on paper, but feel incredibly gimmicky. Having both character on screen trivializes the game even more in most situations as it allows you to one-shot most enemies. Even worse, most enemies barely put up a fight in the first place (although most boss fights are still decently challenging unless you abuse potions). Portrait of Ruin overall is even easier than the Sorrow games were already. The story also didn't go well with me. The cut scenes drag on even more in this one (although they were already pretty long in Dawn of Sorrow. Maybe I just grew tired of so much story in a previously gameplay focussed series), to the point I wished it was possible to skip them on the first playthrough. This game also brings back Symphony's weapon skills and general command skills, but I find the generic critical art of most weapons rather boring and the pattern required to perform a dodge roll is kind of insane for a move you're supposed to perform fast. I really missed my katana short hops in this. You can do quests now, but many of them ask you to perform obtuse amounts of grinding to level up skills, so doing a 100% playthrough is just as tedious as it was in the series' previous entries. Sadly a weaker title, despite some really neat ideas and additions.
Order of Ecclesia
Order of Ecclesia is the Aria of Sorrow of the DS Castlevania generation. Its art and soundtrack are amazing, the story again takes a backseat (and I liked the characters better) in favor of gameplay. All sorts of moves can now be cancelled into each other, making this the most fluid and dynamic game of the series. There's not many potions to find in the dungeons so if you restrict yourself not to buy any this one's a decent challenge again. Order of Ecclesia is even more linear than Portrait of Ruin was, but I don't have a problem with that since the gameplay is satisfying enough and the game doesn't necessarily require the open exploration parts to be fun.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Well.. I already wrote a review for this game here in 2019. I tried to replay this one after playing through the Konami games and didn't make it far. This game is janky. Not in the way old games feel janky these days, but janky in a way I found impossible to get used to. Bloodstained just didn't feel pleasant to play to be honest. Hopefully the upcoming sequel will play better again.
Conclusion
Fun games, but a bit simple in their mechanics and very hack&slashy. I considered Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin guilty pleasures back in the day because I really got into their grindy aspects at the time. Their biggest weakness is that their hard mode have to be unlocked by beating them on normal first.
All of these games come with unlockable extra modes. In most cases they let you play as Richter or Julius who are supposed to make them feel like classic Castlevania games. Unfortunately these are all very rushed and poorly balanced, so I never bothered to dig deep into any of them. The sisters mode in Portrait of Ruin feels especially gimmicky for its use of the touch pad.
Anyways, these are pretty much all worth playing and I'm probably the only one in the world to rank Portrait of Ruin this low.