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It’s a great time to be a Konami fan. We’ve been getting compilations of the games from the company’s heyday for years now and it’s glorious. Finally, old school titles like Metal Gear Solid and Symphony of the Night get their due on modern platforms. The Castlevania series has been shown some incredible support, with the Castlevania Dominus Collection the third compilation to hit.
The thing is…nobody even knew this was coming out. I sure as hell didn’t. Imagine my surprise when I was browsing Steam and saw this!
So, how does this Castlevania compilation fare to the others?
What is the Castlevania Dominus Collection?
The Castlevania Dominus Collection is a compilation of 4 games (5 if you count the remaster of Haunted Castle) from the Castlevania series. Developed by M2 (the masters of porting games to modern systems) and published by Konami, it’s available right now on the PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series S|X consoles.
Our copy of the game was awesomely given to us my the kind folks at Konami! Thanks so much for the code!
Comprising of Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia from the Nintendo DS and Haunted Castle from the arcade, the Castlevania Dominus Collection also brings forth a newly remastered version of Haunted Castle, with all new visuals and other quality of life additions.
Of course, the compilation also contains the regular host of extras in the form of artwork from the games (along with the manuals) and a music gallery to listen to the incredible soundtracks from the games. Weirdly, there’s no art or anything for Haunted Castle at all, which is disappointing.
To be honest, the extras are rather underwhelming. There aren’t any developer interviews or even marketing materials like arcade cabinet art or trailers. It’s certainly not up the standard to what was included in the past Castlevania Anniversary Collection or the Castlevania Advance Collection.
The sting from the lack of extras is lessened somewhat with the all new Haunted Castle remaster called Haunted Castle Revisited.
It is gorgeous, with huge sprites that are incredibly animated. I’m in love with Simon’s walk animation. Although short (it follows the arcade’s six stages format), playing through the game took me back to a time when platformers like these dominated.
Jumping is tight (you can even control yourself in air, unlike old school Castlevanias), and controls are responsive. Most importantly, the game is fair.
It doesn’t task you with impossible jumps while dodging enemies that can bump you back with a hit. Awesomely, even if you do fall into one of the pitfalls, you respawn either where you dropped or nearby, with just a couple of bars of health lost. No need to restart all over. If you do die and need to continue, you’ll just restart at the nearest checkpoints.
The most impressive part about Haunted Castle Revisited isn’t that it’s included free (I would happily pay $15 for it if it wasn’t bundled in the Castlevania Collection) but that it comes with all new remixed tracks. I especially love this game’s version of Bloody Tears.
It is one of the best versions of the song in all of the Castlevania series. There’s just one teeny caveat to playing Haunted Castle Revisited; there aren’t any achievements for beating or playing it. I beat the game in one go and nothing was unlocked…which kind of made me sad.
Of course, that wasn’t for long because I remembered that the DS games in the collection did have achievements! There are a ton of them, though most are simply attained for game progress. Some are tied to the secret modes that you can unlock for each game though.
Speaking of the games themselves, they are the cream of the crop of 2D Castlevanias.
The Soma Cruz duology (Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow) are some of the best Castlevanias Konami’s ever made, just a bit below Symphony of the Night in terms of greatness.
Dawn of Sorrow’s areas are fun to explore, the music great and the gameplay top notch. I love gathering enemy souls and utilizing their abilities. It really makes grinding fun and gives you a ton of options. Plus, Soma has the cool afterimage effect that Alucard has!
Order of Ecclesia’s a bit different than the other games and it’s an acquired taste but it’s still one of the top entries in the series.
I didn’t really like the notion of going from map to map for Order of Ecclesia and the glyph system isn’t as fun as the soul collecting from the Sorrow games. A bit too limited in their combinations so you’re stuck with just using a handful of really good ones. You don’t even get to level them up if you collect multiples of the same glyphs. The game’s also stingy with XP, so you level up much slower than in other games.
The visuals more than make up for it though.
I played the games on my 4K TV, my 16-inch notebook and the ROG Ally X and the games all looked great. I love Shanoa’s sprite and her animations. Hell, the art design is probably the best out of all the games in this collection. While Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin chose a more anime-ish style, Order of Ecclesia brings back the gothic style of Castlevanias past. Unfortunately, the character art’s not by Ayami Kojima, which is a shame.
Overall though, it’s definitely the second best entry in the DS trilogy of Castlevania games, with Portrait of Ruin coming in last.
It’s not a bad game at all, but compared to previous titles, Portrait of Ruin lacked that certain Castlevania charm. It doesn’t have the spirit of a Castlevania game despite ticking off all the boxes. Perhaps its the setting? Or the art design? Or maybe it’s the dual characters you can swap (or use together)?
I can’t really nail down a single aspect of it that’s bad per se but it just doesn’t have the feel of previous 2D games in the series. The lack of a collection elements (like the souls from Dawn of Sorrow or the Glyphs from Order of Ecclesia) also means the game doesn’t really reward combat.
Overall, while neither game reach the highs of the Dawn of Sorrow (much less Symphony of the Night), they are still fun games to play through and deserve their second time to shine. It might not be surprising both gain a whole new audience considering this is their first outing off the DS.
All of the games have insanely good music too. A damn shame Konami doesn’t offer soundtrack versions of the games’ scores on Steam like some games do. I’d have bought them in a heartbeat. Symphony of the Night’s is available on Amazon SG (I got mine just a few months ago) so you might want to check that out too!
I had zero issues getting the game running on any of my gaming hardware. It ran fine on my desktop with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, my laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 and the ROG Ally X. I’d have thought the ROG Ally X might some issues but nope, it played the games beautifully.
In fact, I recommend playing on the ROG Ally X more than anything else because it’s the closest experience to the originals. It’s a handheld (like the DS was) and the screen sizes (when split) are close enough to the DS’. Also, all the DS games now let you save anywhere and have a rewind feature built-in. The rewind is nice for undoing mistakes, but if you’re playing on the go, it’s the save anywhere feature that’s a godsend!
The downside to this is the barebones presentation that M2 has gone for. There aren’t any resolution options at all and I can’t even find a way to make the games go fullscreen or borderless. You can choose from different screen arrangement styles, but that’s it. No filters, no border options, nothing.
Despite that, I really love that M2 has gone above and beyond with the DS’ dual screens and added a third optional screen. On the DS, the top screen can either be the map screen, or a status screen. For the Castlevania Dominus Collection, M2 simply created another screen to display all the 3 possible screens at once.
That means you can be playing, glance at the top right for your location on the map, and then glance at the bottom left to see what the enemy drops (or how close you are to levelling up). If you’ve played the original games, you’d know how incredible this is without the need to keep switching menus!
Touch controls are a bit hampered by using the analog sticks (or a mouse) but are awesome on the ROG Ally X with its touchscreen. Again, another reason why you should be playing this on that.
Of course, if you’re stuck with a controller and don’t want to swap to a mouse for them, M2’s awesomely configured the games so that some the touch screen specific actions can be done via button presses.
The Bottom Line.
The Castlevania Dominus Collection is simply divine.
It brings forth games that have never seen a console or PC release and does so in a way that not only replicates the original experience, but makes it better. The additional third screen for the games are an amazing new addition, as is the rewind function (but that’s been done in previous collections before).
Haunted Castle Revisited also deserves a ton of props for being a full-fledged title that Konami could’ve easily sold separately. It’s a great remaster with superb visuals and music that’s only tempered by the short length.
While the thin smattering of extras and the lack of visual configuration options are lamentable, that doesn’t detract from the fact that The Castlevania Dominus Collection is one of the best compilations on the market right now, with killer titles and superb improvements.
TLDR:
A must get despite some shortcomings.
The Good:
- Great selection of games included.
- Haunted Castle Revisited is incredibly good.
- Third screen for DS titles a great addition.
- Save anywhere makes playing on the go awesome.
- Great looking sprite art still holds up after all these years.
- Superb music for all the games.
The Bad:
- Limited extras.
- No resolution or visual enhancements or options.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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