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.

Before Castlevania Anniversary Collection, I’ve only dabbled in two games from the franchise: Castlevania: The Adventure on the Game Boy and Super Castlevania IV on the SNES. I didn’t finish either one of them, but I’ve always wanted to revisit this series at some point. Little did I know that I’d be doing it on the PC.
Castlevania Anniversary Collection was developed by M2, the team that also gave us Contra Anniversary Collection. Considering these two collections were released one month apart, and the Contra collection was merely adequate for an “Anniversary Collection”, I didn’t have high hopes for this compilation of Castlevania games.
As expected, Castlevania Anniversary Collection, like its Contra counterpart, runs in windowed mode with no clear option to change screen setting, and has a paltry selection of unremarkable border frames. Plus, the graphic design of the game menu and bonus book, titled The History of Castlevania: Book of the Crescent Moon, looks amateurish.
Further proof of how lackadaisical development of this collection was is the absence of original game manuals. I excused this for Contra Anniversary Collection, but not for this one. Castlevania games are action adventures, and it’s important to know what the icons means and how the in-game menus work (especially for Castlevania II). There are abridged manuals, but they aren’t very informative. Plus, the manuals are in The History of Castlevania bonus book! This means to access them, you’ll have to save your game with save state (thank goodness for that), exit the game, scroll to the bonus book, find the entries and read them, exit the book, and restart the game. What asinine design!
Ignoring that, however, Castlevania Anniversary Collection has a pretty decent set of games. It has most of the 8- and 16-bit game console and Game Boy games, but is missing Haunted Castle (arcade), Rondo of Blood (TurboGrafx-16), Dracula X (SNES), and Castlevania Legends (Game Boy). Haunted Castle and Dracula X are in the Dominus Collection and Advance Collection respectively, but including them here would have been more appropriate.
How much you’ll like this compilation highly depends on your appreciation for Castlevania and/or your nostalgia for this franchise. Here are my impressions of the ones featured in this collection:
Castlevania – Challenging, especially with the knockback and enemy placement. Very atmospheric, but limited colour palette made some aspects of the environment hard to detect. Truly a classic.
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest – I was particularly curious about this title because I read the novelization from the Worlds of Power series as a kid. It’s an ambitious, but confusing game partly because of the unclear, bad translation. The day/night cycle was poorly implemented, and became annoying quickly.
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse – Very challenging, but highly replayable given the branching paths, companion recruitment, and ability to switch characters. It’s brisk, responsive and fun, allowing Castlevania to end its NES era on a high note.
Super Castlevania IV – The multidirectional whipping and overpowered weapons made this game relatively easy. That, plus the bright, colourful art direction made it feel less like a Castlevania game. But, it’s still very fun, and it holds up well over 3 decades later due to the fluid gameplay and some amazing level designs.
Castlevania: Bloodlines – Although this game doesn’t star a Belmont, it allows you to play as either the whip-wielding John Morris or the spear-sporting Eric Lecarde. This offers two unique gaming experiences, making Bloodlines worthy of replay.
Castlevania: The Adventure – Marred by slow speed and clunky controls, this Game Boy title is frustrating to play – not just as a Castlevania game, but also as a platformer. If it weren’t for nostalgia, I wouldn’t have spent as much time on it as I did.
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge – The Game Boy sequel is faster, has more responsive controls, and brings back subweapons. While a vast improvement over The Adventure, it still can’t match its 8-bit peers.
Kid Dracula – Kudos to M2 for putting in the extra work to localize this game in English, but this game is not the reason for your buying this collection. Despite the slightly unrefined controls, it’s a fine action platformer.
Castlevania is a crown jewel in Konami’s catalogue, and it deserves a better anniversary treatment than this. Seeing the impressive presentation and extra content that the Advance Collection and Dominus Collection have, could M2 or Konami have updated this compilation in recent years with better aesthetics and features? Of course! Would they do it in the future? I highly doubt it.
This is an unequivocally, woefully subpar anniversary compilation. It’s a shame because being able to play Castlevania, Castlevania III, Super Castlevania IV, and Bloodlines on the PC makes this collection worth getting. So, thumbs up to most of the games in the collection, but thumbs down on how the compilation was put together. Because of that, I recommend getting Castlevania Anniversary Collection only if it’s on sale.

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.

This is a great collection of the classic Castlevania games. I remember playing the first and second games on NES as a kid and never being able to complete them. It was a ton of fun playing them as an adult. This collection is put together very well, it contains English & Japanese versions of the games.

The save state feature is nice, I know many people consider this cheating, but it helps remove frustration. My only complaint is there is no quit game option from the main menu. I played it completely on the Steam Deck and had to force close from the main menu (you can switch between games, just not exit the main application). I had no issues with saves being lost, just seems strange no quit option. I had no crashes or glitches, it ran perfect.

Highly recommend this collection to anyone looking to play these for the first time or to relive childhood gaming.

Summary: Recommended, but only if you are already a Castlevania fan. There are just too many middling games in the package for you to put your foot in the water.
The biggest problem is overall, a difficulty level that is all over the map. Ultimately how frustrating each game ends up being really boils down to how little you want to use the save-state feature, but that does not change the fact that there is some very shoddy design in some of these otherwise excellent games.
In order of listing:
Castlevaia 1: The OG and the GOAT. The best balanced, and best challenge of the collection. Some eccentricities to be sure (I wish there was some kind of indication a candle had a sub-weapon in it or not), but this will forever be the first, and maybe the best.
Castlevania 2: Surprisingly underrated. The game is difficult in all the wrong ways. Boss fights are a joke: there are two separate ways to stun-lock the final boss, and it is the only boss you can't just walk away from. Instead, the difficulty comes in deciphering the really obtuse "puzzles" that fill the playtime. That said, the open world and RPG nature of the game is really interesting and well-executed. With a re-translation to give better hints and a re-balance, this game would be great.
Castlevania 3: Very strong. High amount of replayability, excellent visuals and sound- and hard as hell. Really, the only problem is that it's a bit too unrelenting. Especially towards the end of the game, it falls in love with the idea of enemies attacking you within a second of you entering a new screen. You can lose a quarter of you life within 2 seconds of starting the final level. Combined with the fact that enemy respawning rules seem to change arbitrarily- the game feels a lot better to have 'have beat' than to actually 'beat'.
Super Castlevania: Absurdly overrated by Nintoddlers. Presentation is good, and the movement is great, but the actual gameplay is severely lacking. Tons of pointless gimmicks that existed just to sell the SNES's graphical capabilities, awful platforming, and 2/3rds of the way through the game becomes obsessed with instant-kill traps to the point where you forget you even have a health bar. The boss fights do deliver though so it's very hard to call it a bad game.
Castlevania Adventure 1: Castlevania Adventure 1 would be a better game if everything instantly killed you and there were no checkpoints. Why? Well, some of early Castlevania games have a problem where if you die you may as well restart the level because you'll need all the strength you can get to make it past the challenges at the end of the level. Deciding to double down on this, Castlevania Adventure weakens you if you take damage. That's right, you better do the 10 minute final level hitless if you want a shot at the final boss. Oh, and there's no permanent checkpoint at the end either, so you'll have to do this multiple times. Designed to waste your time and your life. This game became playable with the invention of save-scumming. Fuck you. Devs should suffer.
Castlevania Adventure 2: An outstanding improvement over the original. Starts a bit slow and easy, really picks up towards the end for a tough but very fair gauntlet. Only soured by what has to be the worst boss fight I've ever seen right at the end. This, in a way that makes you say "I'm sorry Bed of Chaos, you were really interesting and experimental". Must have guest-starred the programmers from the last game for it.
Castlevania Bloodlines: Looks great, sounds excellent, plays phenomenally. The whole game borders on maybe being too short and too easy, but the Hard Mode really gives the game the added kick it needs. Limited continues means that lives actually matter, and the password system encourages replaying levels to complete them better than you have before. Two playable characters and a lot actually gameplay-relevant visual gimmicks makes this especially memorable.
Kid Dracula: I'm not really sure why they added this but not Castlevania Legends, but okay. Fun little platform-shooter that really starts to outstay its welcome. Final level expects you to beat 3 new bosses and go through two tight insta-kill platforming sections on 3 hits. Haha, fuck you.
Tierlist:
Castelvania 1
Castlevania Bloodlines
Castlevania 3
Super Castlevania
Castlevania Adventure 2
Castlevania 2
Visit to the Dentist
Kid Dracula
Literal Dog Shit
Terminal Cancer
Castlevania Adventure 1