Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls

A lot of things in this game scream (Iga-style) Castlevania, something they clearly lean into, but Grimoire honestly suffers from the comparison in almost every way. If you are unable to play SotN or any of the gba or DS Castlevania games, this is a fair substitute. Otherwise, you’ll probably have more fun revisiting any of those games no matter how much time your spent with them prior. My understanding is that Grimoire also had a lot of gatcha and play to play/win elements previously. While the latter was removed, there are still a lot of random pulls and daily junk to do. That might be a plus for some, but I think most prefer a more traditional gaming experience. It’s also pretty grindy. That’s not really unusual in the genre (metroidvania), but you’d be a god in most games in the same time it takes you to grind for rolls for one of the 5 playable characters in Grimoire. I did play a lot of it, and finished the main playthrough (there’s also a hard mode). I’m still missing one achievement, but it’s been months and I haven’t found the motivation to pick the game back up. If I do, I’ll likely just do that and then put it away forever.

Book 4 boss is bugged or something. I’ve got Alucard at 40,000 strength and I’m only doing 80 damage to the boss… I beat him with Belmont with no big issues, but Al is doing a tiny fraction of the damage. So another reviewer says you get 1000% more rewards for perfecting a level than when this was F2P elsewhere. It is still not enough to be called a premium game. Drop rates of rare and legendary gear are horrible. Now on book 4 i have only won 4 pieces of legendary gear from summons… 48 stages perfected= 4 legendary… for 5 characters. Horrible. However the worst part is leveling up weapons and characters. Your 5 characters each equip 4 weapons and 5 pieces of gear: 5x(4+5)= 45 gear you need to constantly upgrade to stay up with the difficulty requirement. This was fine up through Book 4, where the level req. is suddenly much higher than even my strongest ally. The weapon trial awards at this level are horribly inadequate; I have to play them about 8-9 time to max out (lvl 15-35) ONE gear piece… and I’ve got 9 per character. So, I stop my adventure here where the Grind to level up has become unbearable. It is too bad, too, because the gameplay looks great and plays well. It would have been better if they ripped out all of the F2P loot boxes and just given us balanced gameplay without the grind.

This is the only mobile game I have ever taken the time to review. As an avid Castlevania fan, it has been many years since I have had so much excitement for the series. This game is amazingly well put together, and remarkably has a canon story. With controller support already implemented, this game deserves a PC port like Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links. No Castlevania fan should miss out on this game. It is not your average mobile title, while there are daily login bonuses and a little bit of gotcha game devices, it looks like everything in the game can be obtained through gameplay, and there is no time limit to how much you can play other than daily trials missions. It’s great to see characters throughout the timeline interact with each other and the gameplay is great. The touchscreen controls work about as good as you can make touchscreen controls, but there is complete controller support worked into the game. Overall, this game honestly is a masterpiece. The only shame is that this game is only available on mobile, and more specifically, only the apple arcade. I would pay money ($10-20) for a PC port of this game with update support. I’m talking to you, Konami!!! Between the success Super Smash Brothers, Netflix, and the new Getsu Fuuma game, you know that the people want more Castlevania! A PC/Switch port of this game is the next step!