The Castlevania series is one of the great classics of gaming, with a legacy spanning over three decades. It’s been some time since a new game came out, but after this year’s Tokyo Game Show, fans can jump for joy with the announcement that the series will finally get a new installment… on iOS and Android.
Yes, the newest entry into the Castlevania series, Grimoire of Souls, seems to be a game made exclusively for mobile devices. That doesn’t necessarily mean the game won’t be good, but the graphics and gameplay on display seem a little bit soulless.. more Mighty No. 9 than Megaman 11, if you get my meaning.
The game lets you play as Alucard, Simon Belmont, Charlotte Aulin, and Shanoa – characters separated by centuries in the Castlevania timeline, meaning that whatever narrative they’ve cobbled together of the game’s story mode will probably care more about fanservice than making anything.
The game also boasts a co-op mode, a feature last seen in Harmony of Despair, and a new but vaguely-defined “Multi Mode” that seems to involve a large number of player characters running around a small-scale dungeon at once.
The game may very well end up enjoyable, but even if that does end up happening, releasing a game exclusively on mobile after such a long absence is a disappointing move on Konami’s part. Despite Konami’s recent assurances that they still care about modern consoles, there hasn’t been a single Castlevania game that has come out for the current generation of consoles. With the Playstation 5 and Xbox Scarlett on the horizon, there’s a good chance that they’ll miss the boat completely.
Unless you count the pachinko and slot machines that the company has released, the last Castlevania game to come out is the 2014 game Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
And so, while mobile gamers can always hope that the game defies expectations and becomes a worthy entry into the beloved series, console fans will have to just be satisfied that they have Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – a game that is probably, much better than Grimoire of Souls will be anyway.
