Real quick disclaimer: I have never played any of these games before. In fact, I’ve only played Castlevania for about 20-30 minutes before. I don’t hate the game or gameplay, I just get sidetracked with other things. I did visit each one of the DS titles for a minimum of one hour although more time was spent on Order of Ecclesia because that was the one I started with.
From what I can tell, these are very faithful ports of the DS games which I’ve heard high praise for before. In my time with these games, I have legitimately enjoyed my time with each. I really like how each one is very much its own, but they are very much part of the same franchise. It seems to me like Dawn of Sorrow is the one closest in terms of gameplay to the original titles although it takes place in the far future. It is a little odd to me that most, if not all, of the weapons seem to be medieval and not futuristic, but it’s Castlevania so what are you going to do? I also like how you can combine monster souls with weapons to upgrade them. Meanwhile, Portrait of Ruin stands out because you have two protagonists that you are controlling at the same time which is fun but takes some getting used to. I’ve played Order of Ecclesia the most because it was listed at the top of the list in the Main Menu and it’s interesting because you don’t pick up weapons, but rather Glyphs that let you manifest weapons. It’s an interesting system and I am really enjoying the game if I’m honest. At the end of the day, if you ever wanted to play the DS games on modern platforms, this is your chance!
Now let’s talk about the quality of life upgrades that these games received. First, you have a rewind feature. This is helpful when you just make a silly mistake and don’t want to go all the way back to your last save. Of course, the introduction of save states is phenomenal in my opinion. Now you can save whenever you want or need to and then load back from there instead of the last save point. Third, you can view and customize your controls in-game to be most comfortable for you. You can also access the compendium/bestiary for each game from the pause menu. From the main menu there’s a gallery mode to view cool art that was never released, packaging, instruction booklets, and more. Plus, there’s a music player for you to listen to your favorite tracks. I would also be remiss if I did not mention the fact that from the main menu settings you can toggle which regional version you wanted to play: American, European, or Japanese. I have no idea if there are any differences other than languages, but I do think that’s a cool feature.
Another aspect that’s interesting is how they decided to incorporate the second screen of the DS. Instead of just deleting it, they have a few layout options for you. The default layout (and a few others) offer the gameplay screen to take a good chunk of your screen, but then the map takes up a quadrant with character and enemy information just below it. There are layouts that eliminate the third pane of information, but I found the default one to be just fine.
As for performance, the Castlevania Dominus Collection ran smoothly for me. I played it exclusively on my Steam Deck and it ran at 60fps no problem and I’ve even seen online that you can drop the TDP considerably in order to get more battery life while playing and maintain 60fps. I played it a little in handheld mode, but also took the opportunity to use my dock to connect it to my TV and use the Tribute16 controller from Retro-Bit which was a little more comfortable for this type of game.
I do not feel comfortable reviewing this collection in terms of whether the individual games are good or not. For that, I will say that on Metacritic, these games are all in the mid-high 80s by critics and mid-8s by users on the original DS versions. It sounds like these are really good games. In terms of a collection of ports, I think that the Castlevania Dominus Collection is really good. Now, I have not really messed around with the ports of Haunted Castle, that honestly does not really interest me, but I know that it does add value for a fair number of fans. Given the price of about $25, the fact that these are rated positively by fans, and there are nice extras thrown in, I think this is a fantastic purchase if you’ve ever wanted to play these games or if you wanted to revisit them. This is definitely a recommendation I would give friends.
