Three incredible action adventure games from the Castlevania series have finally returned, for the first time!

In addition to the three action adventure games from the Castlevania series, Haunted Castle Revisited, an redesigned version of the very first Castlevania arcade game, makes its debut! And you can also play it in its original format!
Experience the world of Castlevania like never before, with never-before-seen art and handy new features such as rewind, quick saves and much more!

- Titles
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
The adventures of Soma continue! Discover a completely new way to create countless weapons by combining souls, in stunning 2D graphics.
One year after the events of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, a boy named Soma Cruz is once again put at the center of a plot to resurrect Dracula led by a mysterious cult.. Will he finally be able to face his own destiny and put an end to all this?

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Not one but two heroes join their forces to fight the evil this time! Switch between Jonathan and Charlotte with a single button press and make the best use of their unique abilities.
Dracula's Castle has suddenly resurfaced, but something doesn't add up.
Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin make their way in to investigate, they soon discover that the mind behind all this is not who they thought...

Castlevania Order of Ecclesia
The enigmatic Shanoa is the only human capable of using the glyphs, symbols full of magic.
Gather glyphs by exploring the Castle and its surroundings and absorb the power of the mighty foes you fight!
The three most powerful glyphs, thought to be able to even defeat Dracula himself, have been stolen. Can Shanoa bring them back to the Order, and finally destroy the Dark Lord?

Haunted Castle
Haunted Castle Revisited, an redesigned version of the very first Castlevania arcade game, makes its debut! And you can also play it in its original format!

So this collection was certainly a welcome surprise. The "Metroidvania" games were kinda trapped/locked on DS for so long, and it didn't seem like they would ever be re-released. But now they have and developer M2 did another fantastic job with these retro classics. You can even do the touch-screen stuff when playing Switch in handheld mode! Very cool.

So if the three DS games (not 3DS, haha) came out and that was it, this would still be an incredible collection. But they went one step further and added in Haunted Castle as well. The old arcade game is...rough, to say the least. BUT! There is also a remake of that game included as well; Haunted Castle: Revisited. And wow, it's actually awesome. It's practically a brand new old-school Castlevania ("Vintage-Vania") game. Very cool graphics, tight controls, and AMAZING music. Plus one of the most badass final forms of Dracula ever. It's a great little bonus. And I only say "little" bonus because it's a fairly quick 6-stage romp, not unlike the original NES game.

This release is very much welcomed, and any and all action fans should jump on this as soon as they can. You won't regret it!

By and large it looks like they really knocked this one out of the park. I'll probably pick it up down the line and I'm excited to try the Haunted Castle remake.

Now we just need Rondo and Symphony, plus maybe Adventure Rebirth and the newer sidescrollers (how are they?). Hopefully one more CV Collection is on its way!

It's great they're releasing this, but I'm not sure if I'll grab it meself since I already have two of the three games. Although, the one I don't have (Order of Ecclesia) seems to be the one people point to as the best of the bunch, so maybe the collection could still be worth it for that when it goes on discount or something.

I too picked this up. I really loved these games on DS and haven't played them in 15+ years, and $25 for all three is a great deal. The new features like Rewind and accommodations for non-touch controls are thoughtfully considered (e.g. you can do the Magic Circles in DoS with buttons instead).

Haunted Castle is great if you thought classic Castlevania games needed a lot more cheap bullshit and limited continues. Thank goodness for Rewind in this one.

Haunted Castle Revisited is a very good remake that makes for a solid if unspectacular Classic-vania romp. Strangely it's the only game in this compilation that doesn't have Rewind, but with the lowered difficulty and 30 minute runtime it really doesn't need it. It's not worth $25 on its own, but as a sidecar to the rest of the package it's a very welcome bonus.

Dawn of Sorrow was my first Castlevania game and I loved it then, but replaying it now it's lost a lot of its shine for me. The soundtrack is a mixed bag, enemies are varied but all pretty sleepy, and the critical path can be unclear. But it has that constant feeling of low-effort progression on the map or leveling up or gaining souls that makes it a nice time-waster game. I remember liking POR and OOE better back in the day, and I'm hoping they hold up better for me as well.

@nate38

Interesting. I’ve always felt that Dawn of Sorrow was the best of the bunch. Even today.

It is hard to top Order of Ecclesia in terms of overall quality, though.

Am I alone in adoring Portrait of Ruin?

Also this collection is pretty awesome.

@ludist210I had the collector’s edition back in the day- the one that came with the Castlevania CD and the timeline. Loved it! I liked Portrait of Ruin. I thought the soundtrack was really good, but I’d have to admit that the games were all kind of a blur to me by that point. I never played Order of Ecclesia, and unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything from it that’s making me really want to jump on it. I’ll get to it at some point, for sure.

I remember being mixed on Dawn of Sorrow. It was a very good game and hit all the right notes, but I didn’t find it to be that interesting of a game. It didn’t have nearly the impact that Aria had on me, even if it was “technically” better in a lot of ways. Still, a great soundtrack, especially that opening area theme.

@ludist210

Oh make no mistake, I like Portrait of Ruin a lot, too! It’s the one with the most variety and the partner aspects with Jonathan and Charlotte is pretty cool. I like how you can pause the game and have them just talk to each other. It’s mostly game hints, but it helped flesh them out as characters, rather than just the player avatar(s).

It’s also pretty important lore-wise, considering the events in this game set up the events for Julius Belmont not too much later within the timeline of the Castlevania universe.

@PogueSquadron

Order of Ecclesia is another solid game and IMO, the most challenging of all the “IGAvanias.” The glyph collection system is as addictive as the Soul System in Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. (And later revisited in Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night)

Started up Portrait of Ruin this morning and ended up playing for like four hours... This game has a lot of little tweaks and improvements that add up to something I definitely prefer to Dawn of Sorrow. It helps that the music and overall presentation are brighter, too. If there's one downside, it's that the portrait worlds are a tad bloated.

@CPA Wei Yeah I forgot about that. Definitely a bummer. And speaking of bummers, I've since finished Portrait of Ruin and started up Order of Ecclesia, and I'm liking it less than I remember.

The biggest issue is that it's structured like Portrait, with the Metroidvania castle and a bunch of separate linear side areas, only this time you have to do ALL of the less-interesting linear side areas up front before you even get to go to the castle. And I had to look up the location of one of the requirements to unlocking the castle, and it's not in an intuitive place at all, probably would've taken me hours of mindless wandering and attacking every wall to find it. Granted I only just got to the castle and explored in there a bit, but OOE loses a lot of points for making me eat all my vegetables first before letting me at the Metroidvania main course.

Plus, the Glyph system isn't as cool as I remember. Mashing the two attack buttons to rapid-fire attacks just isn't any more satisfying than regular old weapons and sub-weapons, and it actually feels like it has less weapon variety than its predecessors. And Portrait of Ruin made me appreciate only having to grind for rare items drops, so I'm not psyched that OOE essentially brought back DOS's rare soul drops in the Glyphs.

I seem to remember OOE being my favorite of these three back in the day, but now I'm really wondering why that was. Maybe the castle really steps things up.