Basically played classic Castlevania all day today and had a really good time getting all the achievements in the Anniversary Collection. I played through Dracula's Curse four times because you have to to get the achievement, but mostly because I was enjoying myself so much. Alucard isn't very useful, is he? Maybe I just didn't find an upgrade subweapon for him or something, but he seemed pretty weak and has a bigger hitbox than Trevor. Also his route was the most annoying to actually play through. All those falling block levels! Creative for a Castlevania game, but it felt pretty tedious pretty quickly. Meanwhile Grant and Sypha are both super useful and were fun to play - Sypha is just powerful and can attack from quite a range, and Grant can just skip huge chunks of level by climbing on walls. I think III is my favorite NES Castlevania... and it might be the best one on this collection, as much as I love IV.
I don't have much to say about Castlevania: The Adventure. It's as bad as you've hard. Cheap, slow, the music isn't even all that good.
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, though, is a MASSIVE improvement over it's predecessor - it runs much smoother, has fantastic music, has subweapons ffs, and the levels aren't cheap nonsense. The Dracula fight is a bit ridiculous, though, if I'm honest. Still, really good game.
I think Castlevania: Bloodlines might be the best looking Sega Genesis game, and that includes latter day stuff like Pier Solar that packs all kinds of new tech in the cart. It's not even just the fun technical stuff Konami did (though that stuff is pretty impressive) - the art is just very well done. The enemies all look better than anything in IV or Dracula X (SNES), and everything runs absolutely smoothly, which isn't the case on the SNES games. It also has kickass music. Really fun to play, too, though the final boss gauntlet drags far too long (though that, too, is packed with pretty neat effects). Great game.
Kid Dracula surprised me - I'd heard it was good, but it does all kinds of weird, cool stuff. It has an ability, for example, that lets you turn your personal gravity upside down for a few seconds, and barely makes you use it - plenty of games are based around that gimmick alone haha. It's a charming little game, and I'm really glad they put it on the collection as I'm not sure I'd ever get around to playing it.
Right. Time to play Rondo of Blood again, since I'm somehow still in the mood for Castlevania. I wish it'd have been on the Anniversary Collection, dangit.