Castlevania

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (PC Engine CD) / Vampire’s Kiss (SNES) Review

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It’s time to admit something: I was going to review Rondo of Blood alongside it’s sequel Symphony of the Night last year given they’re packaged together but despite slowly but surely making my way through it I never did in the end because I lost the screenshots I took when I cleared the Symphony of the Night folder. Well, now with the SNES port of Rondo (known as Vampire’s Kiss in the UK, Dracula X in the US) on the latest Castlevania collection I thought “Perfect, I’d hate to leave it unplayed and now I have an excuse!” … Jesus, I was not prepared for the increase in difficulty found on the SNES version. So I’ll admit given I’d already completed a version of the game I spammed save states like some sort of bitch, whatever that means. So while most of the later game screenshots come from a “cheaty run” I can promise you I have played at least the original legitimately…

With that overly long opening out of the way: Let’s take a look at it/them!

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Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA) Review

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After a long break its time to complete our look at the GBA Castlevania games with Aria of Sorrow, finally mine after the recently released “Castlevania Advance Collection”. A lot of people site Aria as their favourite Castlevania of all time and it’s not hard to see why, its certainly the closest any game’s come to capturing the fun and freedom of Symphony of the Night. So let’s finally take a look at it!

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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1) Review

David Hogan5 Comments

So I finally gave up on the third GBA game and/or the DS games getting a digital re-release for now, so before I look into sneaky and murky emulation there is still one “Metroidvania” style Castlevania game I officially own and that’s the out-right classic Symphony of the Night. As mentioned in my reviews of the first two GBA games (which were a while ago now, thanks to the Scrolling Sundays marathon…), I had somehow never played SOTN until just now, but you’ll not be surprised to find out that it lives up to its lofty reputation. Let’s take a look!

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Castlevania – Harmony of Dissonance (GBA) Review

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Castlevania HoD

After completing Circle of the Moon it wasn’t too long before I made a start on its sequel, Harmony of Dissonance, dropping in and out of the game as I played other things. HoD is technically better than Circle in pretty much every way, with the exception of the background music… and possibly having too much content? Let’s have a deeper look and see if I can make my mind up!

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Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA) Review

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Castlevania Circle of the Moon

One of my goals for this blog this year is to get rid of the “Coming Soon!” bits in the tab pages above, and to get that goal started, let’s add a Game Boy Advance game to the back catalogue! Thanks to the hype surrounding Castlevania being added to Smash Ultimate, I was in the mood for a Castlevania game beyond playing Super IV for the Smash rundown, so I decided to start with the first of the GBA games, killing two birds with one stone, plus leaving me open to play the others ones down the line… Let’s have a look then!

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Super Castlevania IV (SNES) Review

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Super Castlevania IV

I was excited when Simon and Ritcher Belmont were announced for Smash Ultimate, not just because I’ve wanted Simon in ever since Mega Man appeared as a NES-era 3rd party rep in the last game, but also it meant I got to cover a Castlevania game on this blog! I mean, I was going to eventually anyway, obviously, but this is a nice excuse to jump straight to the favourite one that I’ve played: Super Castlevania IV. Let’s take a look, and kick off the actual game review part of the Smash Ultimate countdown!

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Castlevania – Season 1 Overall Review

David Hogan1 Comment

Castlevania S1

One of the weirder Netflix original shows to spring up, this animated series based on Castlevania (specifically Castlevania III) was an enjoyable watch, though it did suffer from needless gore and swearing in the first two episodes (reminded me of the old Manga Entertainment anime from the 90s, for those who know what I’m going on about…) the latter two were very entertaining. I don’t know if four 25-minute episodes can be called a season, but either way: let’s take a closer look!

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