But the real question is… does virgin blood taste any different? There are way too many horror movies that require virgin blood.

Very cool, thanks!

Can you give any more details? What’s the story about? How many issues is it? Have you read it? It looks interesting, you’ve got me curious.

It’s weird how many times I proofread this post and still missed these typos. Also in the SotN section, I called it “Dracula III” rather than Castlevania Iii (Dracula’s Curse). Oops.

I don’t want to say it’s a bad game or shame you for liking it, but it’s just a bit too far of an outlier for me to really embrace in a meaningful way

It’s funny, after beating Lords of Shadow, I didn’t have an overly negative reaction to it. I thought it was a decent enough game, just a tad long for my liking. But then a couple years later I had an itch to replay it. So I tried watching a youtube video with all of the cutscenes strung together (a “Lords of Shadow movie”). And with each boss cutscene I thought to myself “oh man, that’s right, I hated that boss”. After that happened with basically every boss in the game I realized “hold on, I don’t think I liked this game at all…” and decided not to replay it. 😄

OP, you did not mention Vampire Survivors

That’s true, I stuck with the “official” Castlevania-named games. I didn’t mention any of the collabs. Because there’s a Vampire Survivors expansion, a Dead Cells expansion, and a V Rising expansion. While I love those games all got homages to the Castlevania franchise, they aren’t really “Castlevania” games to me and I don’t feel compelled to play them. Although I have actually played Vampire Survivors and Dead Cells…

Definitely. Each handheld game is unique and tries something new, but at that point you’re balancing the pros and cons of each distinct feature rather than saying “this is obviously the worst in the series” or “this is obviously the best in the series” since they all get the basics right. While I wouldn’t say “they’re all the same” since they each try something new, I also can’t provide any specifics that would inform a newcomer to “focus on this one” or “stay away from that one”. It’s just down to preference at that point. On the other hand, I can confidently say “you can skip the Game Boy games” and not feel bad about it.

Thanks, fixed it!

Thank you for highlighting those two. I know there are differences between all the handheld games but I’d already rambled on so much about the other games I didn’t want to start splitting hairs on the differences between a bunch of games that are all worth playing. Also, I legitimately can’t remember which one is which. So this really helps!

Bloodstained 2 (Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement) is scheduled for release in 2026 so you’ve still got some time to play Ritual of the Night. I thoroughly enjoyed it though. It was a bit buggy at launch but it’s solid now. So it’s probably good that you waited.

Technically there’s a mobile game called Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls on Apple Arcade but otherwise yes, Lords of Shadow is the most recent Castlevania-branded game to be released.

I know Luc Besson is… problematic, but this looks like a solid adaptation. I don’t think it does anything new but it doesn’t look like a bad movie either. I dunno, if it hits some streaming platform I’ll probably check it out. I won’t be going out of my way to watch it though.

Ok, played the demo, I get it now. They have campfires to refill your health and respawn enemies. I guess that’s just a requirement to be considered a souls-like. Also, the enemies hit really hard and you have to dash a lot. Oh, and if you die it leaves behind a corpse which you have to reach to get back any dropped coins.

One thing this game does which I think is interesting (and not an aspect of a souls-like) is you have both a melee weapon and a gun. The gun only has six bullets and you refill ammo by using your melee weapon. This means you spend a majority of your time using your melee weapon because six bullets really isn’t much and not every melee hit refills a bullet. I’m guessing ammo regeneration is dependent on melee damage dealt but I didn’t find any real pattern there (it isn’t 1:1).

Overall, it’s an interesting game. Definitely a tough game, but I don’t know if I would’ve said it’s a souls-like. I’m also not an expert in souls-likes so maybe I’m just ignorant. It’s a fun but tough game. Probably too tough for me, but that’s fine.

That’s crazy. I had tried playing this game about a year ago and it was very much an immersive sim like System Shock. The inventory management relied heavily on the mouse and at the time, I thought the devs had said they had no desire to add controller support. If it’s now steam deck verified they must’ve changed their mind on that. I’ll definitely have to give it another try, thanks for posting this!

Then one day she tried that on Zeus who was in disguise as a normie and… well it turned out like you’d expect.

He got her pregnant?

(checks wikipedia) He killed her?? That’s actually not what I had expected…

Ooo, that’s another aspect I should’ve mentioned… Whether a vampire society should exist or not. That’s an interesting one.

That’s quite thorough. Have you seen these rules used (or at least, not actively broken) in any vampire media? Or does this only exist in your head? I could see Vampire: The Masquerade reaching this level of detail but I don’t know its rules.

Blindsight has a sequel, right? Do you need to read both novels to get the full story?

Empire of the Vampire is fantastic.

I’m glad I asked then, thanks!

I absolutely love this explanation.