Castlevania Anniversary Collection

Review after 100%
A collection of some excellent games and some not-so-excellent games. I'm old enough to have grown up with this series, but I didn't truly discover it until much later in life. So as someone who grew up with the NES, SNES, and Genesis who was also a newcomer to some of these, I will give my perspective on each and say whether they're worth getting this collection for.
Castlevania
Relatively short, very well-constructed especially for the era it came out. It's somewhat difficult, but you have infinite continues and eventually you will learn all of the level's gimmicks and be able to overcome them. Due to its length, it's the most replayable of the bunch.
Verdict: Worth it.
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest
Not as bad as its detractors say, but also not as good as its defenders make it out to be. This game walked so that Symphony of the Night could run. This is basically an adventure game where the challenge is not in the platforming, bosses, or enemy design, but rather in figuring out where you're supposed to go. Unfortunately, it's extremely cryptic and sometimes even intentionally misleading, not helped by the less-than-stellar translation. Once you look up a guide, though, the game loses all challenge.
Verdict: Hard to recommend when other adventure games exist which do everything this game tried to achieve but better. Mostly interesting as a relic of the past.
Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse
Here we go. This game is awesome. Also the one the Netflix series is based on. One of the only two I had experience with as a child, mostly through Blockbuster rentals. It is unrelentingly, unforgivingly hard, but also mostly fair. You will die until you learn what you're supposed to do, and once you've worked out a strategy to overcome it, the sense of accomplishment is without equal. After the first time I beat it, all I wanted to do is go back and beat it again with a different companion, or try a different route.
Verdict: Absolutely worth it, one of the stars of the collection. If you're going to play it and don't care about achievements, play the Japanese version, which has significantly higher sound quality and more fair difficulty.
Super Castlevania IV
This game plays differently than others in the collection, with the subweapons being nerfed but giving you the ability to whip in 8 directions, and Simon has the ability to adjust his mid-jump trajectory instead of being locked into into an arc one you jump. A lot of people say this makes it too easy, but those people fail to realize that the game's designers accounted for this and Simon has to deal with a lot of enemies coming at him at once from multiple angles. This makes it the most demanding classicvania on the player's dexterity and skill at action-platformers, where the others are more about careful, deliberate planning of every action you take.
Verdict: Worth it, another star of the collection, even if I prefer most of the others to it. Hard to say if you should play it first or last though. It makes a good entry point, but you may find the others frustratingly limiting in comparison.
Castlevania The Adventure
This game is the only one I actually owned as a child and it is responsible for me thinking Castlevania wasn't for me until I was in my 20s. It's one of the first games for the Game Boy and visually it is impressive. But it also shows they didn't have a good command of the hardware yet. This game is sluggish and the level design is terrible, and there's no sub weapons. This game and its sequel are the only ones I used save states to beat, because I just could not be bothered to try to beat it normally, it simply wasn't fun.
Verdict: Not worth it. This game sucks and aged poorly even within its own console generation.
Castlevania 2: Belmont's Revenge
The other Game Boy game in the collection. A marked improvement over the original, with snappier combat and much better level and boss design. However, that just results in it being a sluggish, ugly, mediocre classicvania instead of an outright bad one. Also, the second-to-last boss is a ludicrous spike in difficulty, likely the hardest in the whole collection, and I could not beat him without save states. The final boss meanwhile is an annoying memorization game, you just need to die repeatedly until you know precisely where to stand depending on where he teleports.
Verdict: Not worth it.
Castlevania Bloodlines
Back to good games. This game is awesome and my second favorite in the collection. It has two playable character options, every level is extremely well-crafted and fun to play through, and it's short but also highly replayable similar to the first Castlevania. It's also gorgeous with a banging soundtrack, not a single lackluster track in the whole game. There is only one problem with it: despite being as hard as any classicvania, it does not have infinite continues.
Verdict: Worth it, another shining gem in the collection. Just play the Japanese version instead if you don't care about achievements, it's a bit easier and you get the full ending regardless of what difficulty setting you play on. Using a password also restores all of your continues unlike the American version, giving you a form of more cumbersome infinite continues.
Kid Dracula
This may look like a kid-friendly version of Castlevania, but don't be fooled. As early as the second level, this game lets you know it's not to be taken lightly. I beat it in about an hour and a half, but I must have died 20+ times on one level in particular. Also the sprite work is very detailed by NES standards, but as a consequence it suffers from horrible slowdown issues.
Verdict: It's okay, it's nice to have it in the collection, but it's not a reason to buy it. It's more of a nice add-on to the actual reasons to buy this collection.

Castlevania 1 - 7/10 - Besides some wonky controls and extremely short (Like 45 minutes-1 hour). But overall pretty fun, some cool weapons, and a easy enough platforming but some tough segments with enemies and bosses. A solid foundation to a legendary series.
Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest - 5/10 - Yo, who made this game and thought people could figure this out? This is no doubt in my mind this game was made to sell guides. It HAS to be. Saying that, the gameplay is still solid and works well enough. Nothing is terrible. But without a guide this isn't beatable, with a guide, this is really easy for the most part. It's a mixed bag for me, but I'll give it a 5 for being a decent enough follow up.
Castlevania 3 - 6/10 - I really didn't like this one that much. The time limit were short, the difficulty felt cheap verses hard. And the layouts of the levels didn't do much for me at all. While better than 2, it's not as fun as 1 for me.
Castlevania 4 - 8/10 - Probably the strongest one yet. I do find some of the later bosses more bullshit hard than fun at points. Other than that, the level design is the best in the series so far, the smoothness of the controls, and the combat all run really well. As we transition from Nintendo to Super Nintendo it's easy to see how big of an improvement we got here.
Kid Dracula - 7/10 - Not Bad! It's for sure just a Megaman clone but it's a fun one at that. The first half is especially laid back and chilled with some really fun powers. The later half, while not as good, is still enjoyable. A nice little game that feels different than everything else.
Castlevania: The Adventure - 6/10 - This is a Gameboy version of basically the first game but not as polished and fun. Saying that it's perfectly serviceable but its's about 30-40 minutes long and overall very easy. This feels more like a cash grab.
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge - 6.5 - Better than the first game, and even better than the original Castlevania 2, but it's still not great. It's serviceable but still feels slow in comparison to the original for me. But the final boss gave me some challenge that sparked my interest but beatable again in less than a hour.
Castlevania: Bloodlines - 7.5 - Second best game in the collection. Design wise and look and feel, this is actually the best IMO. But the gameplay isn't quite as good as Super Castlevania (Castlevania 4). Also the last two stages are more of a pain in the ass than fun. Also this one is sometimes wayyyyy to hard for it's own good. Saying that the combat is fun, it looks great, awesome designs on monsters too. Second best in this collection easy.
Overall a solid collection. None are really "Awful" and while only Castlevania 4 I'd consider to be great, the rest are good or okay. Just make sure to use a guide for Castlevania 2 from NES cause shit is near impossible to beat without it lol.

It's not too bad. Shame there's NO easy way to exit the game or switch between windowed and full screen. Fix that Konami. You did for the latest Castlevania collection. Get it together.

Castlevania: One of the all time classics. Feels like the root of action games in general started here even if it technically didn't. It respects your time and is surprisingly forgiving. Should be remembered across the generations, yadda yadda yadda.
Simon's Quest: Even if the game told you exactly where to go with a faithful translation, it's still a boring grindy mess, however ambitious it may be. Ironically AVGN and Nintendo's hotline back in the 80s probably profited more off this game than Konami did. Would've probably been forgotten if SOTN and other future games didn't reference it's mcguffins.
Castlevania III: Probably my biggest hot take: I do not think this game is that good. It does not respect your time like CV1 does, with it's numerous autoscrollers, slow platforms, long stair climbing sections and endless bone pillar/axe knight spam. Has a kickass Dracula fight though and some good ideas used better in other games.
Super Castlevania IV: This game is divisive and I'm in the camp that absolutely loves it. Simon's unique control feels amazing and powerful and the atmosphere is excellent. The game only gets so hard as to feel tense but not overwhelm you and actually kill you if you're paying attention, which is perfect for me. Nothing in the entire franchise gets me feeling emotions like the ending to this one. This and the first one are my picks for favorite classicvanias.
The Castlevania Adventure: The actual worst game in the franchise. There's a part in the first stage where you have to jump from platform to platform, from the absolute edge with no deviation other than a bat towards the beginning that flies in an unpredictable pattern. Feel the most memory test-y out of the series, I kept save stating while climbing ropes in the slow vertical autoscroller because I couldn't trust the game to not put instakill spikes at the top of them.
Belmont's Revenge: This one is actually really sweet. Don't know how the teams were assembled during the making of these games but if it's the same as the first GB one they've improved immensely. Would recommend over 2 or 3 even, if the peniultimate boss weren't so much of a pain in the ass. They made him way overtuned and ruined an otherwise solid sleeper hit of this collection.
Castlevania Bloodlines: Hated this game as John, loved it as Eric, who is sort of an easier mode of this game. Liked how they rethought everything about the series to make something that would stand out, and they'll never let you forget it's on Genesis. The bosses are the best part, which I can't say about any of the previous. The autoscrollers are the worst part, but thankfully they're almost frontloaded.
Kid Dracula: If I had a dollar for every time they decided the next Castlevania should just be Mega Man but you move slower, I'd have two dollars (Belmont's Revenge is the other), which isn't much but it's weird that it happened twice. Not a fan of how they make you do various minigames between stages. Sprites are super cute I guess.

Overall: Could use more wallpaper borders and color options for the gameboy games, but this collection is alright. Doesn't do anything amazing but doesn't ruin anything either, aside from weird RNG in CV1. It's nice seeing some of the dev documents too.

The only enemies in this collection, that are worse than Dracula, are the stairs.

It's probably thanks to the Belmont clan that we have elevators.

If you're not familiar, these classic games are a libertarian horror story where a homeowner is frequently harassed on their private property by a bunch of degenerate liberals, who seem to be into leather and whips and one time even bring someone named Grant DaNasty, which simply must be a stripper name.
In all seriousness though, for these classic collections, it doesn't fully pass the "needs to be a better experience than piracy" test (no rewind, only one save state, no added bonus challenges or anything like that) but it does have s booklet with background information on the games and most of the games are just tons of fun (the first game boy game is brutal and I didn't care for Kid Dracula).
One thing that's odd to those young'uns not familiar with these classic games: only one of them, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, was what one would consider now a "Metroidvania" - a non linear platformer. The rest are pretty much linear (Castlevania III lets you pick the next level a few times). That idea of a non-linear adventure, typically through Dracula's castle, came later in the series. It's not a problem to me, these games are classics, but just so you know what you're getting into.

Release the other Castlevania games. Don't forget Adventure Rebirth while you're at it.
And Jesus Christ, hire M2 or Intie Creates to make NEW games. The Netflix show is basically in every normie's mind, take advantage of that.