CASTLEVANIA
Why It Isn’t Working So Well
We’re cheating a little bit here- we already mentioned Castlevania in the first edition of this feature. We talked about how the series has been unable to stay relevant in the current market, about how, despite having received a few notable releases every now and again, it is nowhere close to being the goliath it used to be in the industry years ago. When we mentioned Castlevania the last time, we thought Metroid Prime creators Retro Studios would be the perfect fit for this series. And while we still think they’d be a pretty good fit, we gave this a little more thought, and we think there’s another developer that would be a much, much better fit for this series- hypothetically, of course.
How It Could Be Better
WITH FROM SOFTWARE
In a way, the Soulsborne series accomplishes everything that you’d want to see from a quintessential Castlevania experiences, and it does so with great panache. Excellent game design, brooding atmosphere, rich lore and tense combat have long been the hallmarks of the Castlevania series, and these are all things that we’ve become used to seeing from Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Castlevania has been in desperate need of someone to come along, grab hold of the core essence of its formula and identity, and then translate that into 3D game design, and looking at the work From Software have done over the past decade, they seem like the perfect team to do so. Will it ever happen? Highly unlikely. But then again, that’s exactly the point of this feature, so let’s just dream about it and let that keep us afloat until we finally get the great 3D Castlevania game we all deserve and need.
