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!