Recent reviews by dualhunter

Loved it.

Very good. It would have been nice to have more of a reason to use most of the characters. I mostly stuck to the same 4 characters once I was far enough to have a full party.

Great game, I don't usually like the extra modes for Castlevania games but I liked Zangetsu mode and Classic mode wasn't bad either. Bloodless and Aurora modes were fun too.

Still fun and now the pixels won't cut your eyes.

Good games, lazy collection. Big picture mode warns that it might not work properly with a controller but it works fine. The collection starts in a window that may or may not fit on the screen properly. Make sure there aren't any sound issues, if there are, kill the game (since there doesn't seem to be a proper way to exit, right clicking on it in the task bar works fine) and try again. If it sounds fine, hit alt enter to switch to fullscreen (alt enter again when you're ready to quit). The English version of Castlevania is the only one I had lock up on me a couple times (good thing I save often). The Japanese version didn't lock up but you need to finish the English versions for achievements to count. Would have been nice to have more than one save state slot per game but even one was really handy.

I hated X7 and wasn't a fan of X8 (barely played after giving up on X7). X5 and X6 are both weaker than X1-X4 but I enjoyed them enough for the the second collection to be worth it.

The best of the series all in one collection.

Fun to mess around with.

Overall I like it but I really want to know why the game was delayed so long. I can understand delaying a game to take the time to fix bugs and make the game feature complete before release but that clearly wasn't the reason for this game. Luckily you can save any time and the bugs seem to mostly be the easily repeatable kind rather than random so they should be eventually fixed (but again the the game evidently wasn't delayed for testing). One bug was actually helpful, a weapon that is only supposed to auto-revive the user once per battle revived many times per battle enabling me to defeat some optional bosses at a lower level.

Like past games by Zeboyd Games, it's a retro style RPG with the tedious stuff removed: no random battles, no need to grind (unless you play on higher difficulties or want to take on the optional bosses earlier in the story), no need to restock items, no need to heal after battles, no need to avoid using your best abilities to conserve MP, etc. The story isn't amazing but it's not bad and there is some humor and references to other games and media including some cameos from past Zeboyd Games.

There were a few playable characters I wasn't a fan of and basically just used when I had to but for most of the game I had a party I liked (and even the characters I wasn't a fan of have abilities that can sometimes be useful). I'm not a fan of the limit on equiped abilities at a time (it would have been nice to keep revive abilities equiped but with limited slots I had to give them up for abilities I need more often), but at least it lets you customize your characters a bit and you can remove the abilities that don't suit your play style. I tend to focus an elemental attack abilities (most enemies have a weakness which is displayed when you select the enemy with a single target attack) so regular battles were a bit repetitive: unload elemental attacks, unload other strong attacks, recharge abilities and repeat if necessary. It was still enjoyable and I think I varied my tactics more than in past Zeboyd games so there is a bit of depth to the battle system but it's still fairly basic. On higher difficulties you'll need to plan a bit more and pay attention to things like Style and Hyper Mode so if you want simple battles pick the lower two difficulties and if you want more depth to the battle system pcik the higher two difficulties.

Despite the disappointing issues I still recommend it though I probably won't be getting the next game from Zeboyd Games at launch. I like their games but if they don't want to fix the issues before launch I'll just wait for a bigger discount.

Pro:
higher resolution so I can see what's going on
standard game is still fun
options to speed up the game are great

Con:
campaigns still don't interest me