Castlevania Dominus Collection: The Holy Trinity Is Finally Complete

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the Nintendo DS Castlevania games would be joined in an excellent M2 Collection published by Limited Run Games. Now the holy trinity of Castlevania collections is finally complete: first Anniversary Collection, then Advance Collection, and now finally the Dominus one. It certainly feels great to have them all on the shelf in their red boxes!

In fact, Dominus is probably the most interesting one, for two reasons. First, the Nintendo DS Castlevania (or should I say Igavanias?) have never been officially republished on other platforms in any way, not even as part of a Virtual Console-alike system by Nintendo themselves. Second, the collection includes a lovely surprise: the original late eighties Castlevania arcade edition—that’s right, the really really bad one. Sure, it’s a novelty one can revisit and say “ha-ha, yup, that’s bad all right”, but wait, there’s more. It also comes with a reimagined/remaster that caught me off-guard: it stays true to its roots graphically but dramatically increases the playability of its horrendous coin-up original. And it doesn’t even have any business being on this package, especially considering we didn’t get such a nice gift in the other collections.

As for the three DS games (Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia) what can I say. They’re all superb and I’ve reviewed them before, although apparently not all on this site. Dawn is the successor of one of the best games of all time, Aria of Sorrow. It simply has too much to live up to. The castle design is mostly good, the artwork and 2D animation is even better than I remembered, but then the soul farming swoops in and kills all the fun. In Aria, there was some farming, true, but here, you don’t find the best weapons, you craft them by fusing souls. This means hard to get ones will have to be harvested anyway, with or without that Soul Eater ring you probably can’t afford anyway. Needless to say, I vastly prefer Aria, even though Dawn is very good.

But perhaps Dawn of Sorrow is the conventional one of the three. In Portrait of Ruin, things are shaken up by alternating between two characters, Jonathan and Charlotte. Remember pressing that switch button over and over again and the characters shouting each other’s names? JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE! JONATHAN! CHARLOTTE! Probably the best part of the game. Another thing Iga changed is the item collecting and the level structure that now is more linear and divided into unique sections by jumping into paintings. I loved the music and will play the sound track all day long but the level design felt a bit bland and too straightforward, even though the mix-up in itself is refreshing after more than a decade of steady sameness.

And then there’s the ballsy Order of Ecclesia that will kick your butt from the very first region up to the very last. Shanoa has to face bosses in the beginning of stages instead of at the end—what??—and has to scrape by in order to run to a save point. Healing potions are hard to come by for a change and stealing glyphs from enemies is a cool concept that’s not Soma’s soul absorb ability even though some are still carried by enemies. The glyphs can be combined by equipping both—or the same one twice—so in that sense, it reminds me a bit of the DSS system from Circle of the Moon. Also, in Ecclesia, you journey through stranger disconnected areas pasted together using an unwieldy world map that feels like a cross between Portrait and Dawn—and yes, there’s still a proper castle to explore at the end.

Each game has something unique going for it, except perhaps Dawn which basically is Aria tuned up to the max until it became not fun. I can live with the stupid seals you have to draw on the screen after beating a boss fight, but I can’t live with forging Hrunting and Claim Solais instead of finding it behind a breakable wall. I really can’t pick a “best” one but I would advise against starting with Ecclesia because of the steep difficulty compared to the other GBA/DS Igavanias. Portrait of Ruin is probably the most fun “new” way to experience a ‘vania, while Dawn is the logical continuation of the GBA era, and Ecclesia the most unique/interesting one. They all clock in at about 10 hours so pick your poison.

What about the presentation of the collection itself then? As expected for an M2 package: pristine. There’s your save points, ample options to switch up (ha!) the dual screen setup including a three-screen layout that permanently displays the map I vastly prefer, an art and music gallery, a beastery compendium, … Everything you’d expect after playing the other collections is here as well, although I found it strange that you cannot make use of the save states for the arcade game that’s no doubt being emulated as well.

I don’t think I need to waste more word on this collection: if you’ve never played any of the DS Castlevania games before, you really really need to, and this is the best way to experience them. Besides, are you really going to drop more than $100 on the second hand market to hopefully grab a genuine DS cartridge? I didn’t think so either. Good thing I still have my three originals as well.

Have fun exploring the last true Konami Igavania pieces before it morphed into the questionable Bloodstained!