Castlevania Dominus Collection on Nintendo Switch is NOT What I Expected!

What we're covering so just yesterday at the Nintendo Direct partner showcase we saw the surprise Shadow drop announcement of Castlevania The dominis Collection which consists of the three fan beloved Castlevania Classics from the DS era we have Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow many's best ranked Castlevania game in the entire franchise in some cases uh it's ranked an 89 on Metacritic to boot we have portrait of Ruin which is ranked 85 on Metacritic and Order of Ecclesia which is also 85 kunami opted to give us haunted cast in this collection as well which is a Revisited and redesigned version of the very first Castlevania arcade game so in today's video I want to take an objective look at this collection of games for the price point of 25 which is what it is going for at the time that I am filming it here in the US region in the eShop and take a brief look at each of these games and just how they've transferred over from a gameplay perspective and a layout perspective on the Nintendo switch from their DS original releases and ultimately come to the conclusion on whether or not this is a collection that you might be to pick up as a fan of the Metroid Vania genre or not and we're going to get on the same page with all of that before we do make sure you like subscribe and turn on your bell notification to join Suber Nation if you're new here and with that we'll hop straight into some Castlevania Dominus collection gameplay so right out of the Menu Overview gate we have the intro screen and we will kind of walk through the menu system first because with any Castlevania collection it's kind of nice to see uh the layout of the content that they're giving us um just immediately like the the tunes that hit from Castlevania are are definitely striking a a nostalgic chord with me because I absolutely love these games however um I very much was one that spent the majority of my time in the Castlevania Universe uh from the NES to SNES era which I will also be checking this out uh these games out rather with the SNES special edition controller or the NSO controller rather um let's check out extra real quick so you have haunted castle Japanese version um and then you have like a Revisited version which definitely looks like it will have enhanced visuals we may hop into those after some of the primary um experiences within the collection um but you can kind of see everything laid out just in the home menu here very nice whenever it comes to um a gallery I'm assuming you probably well maybe you don't need to unlock any of the stuff I was assuming maybe it was gray out cuz you did um looks like that might not be the case so you just kind of have like a bonus gallery to go through um and look at anything you want in terms of the extras in these games you have the entire soundt tracks it looks like from each of them uh which is just awesome I mean this is honestly something that I could see myself just booting up and listening to Castlevania music is that good um and then let's check out the settings because this is something that you know whenever you want to play a game similar to how you remember it's very important in terms of figuring out what settings are there so American version Japanese version European version Korean version for order of Ecclesia and then you you were missing that on portrait of Ruin and Dawn of Sorrow what the reason is behind that not entirely sure um you have like kind of I guess a swap of your buttons here so you can reverse them if you prefer um and then you just have like a a control uh so left stick control character or you can move the touch cursor so what does that mean exactly so uh I guess oh okay so we could assign the left stick to to either the um to either control your character meaning like the analog stick or to move the touch cursor which um that's actually a good question we might not be able to play it with this controller uh if if that is indeed a requirement but uh we will first hop into Dawn of Sorrow this Dawn of Sorrow, Control options, Screen Layout Options is very much the one that I cannot wait um to go ahead and essentially dive into and play to completion I I love all of these games but I have a limited level of nostalgia for these as I mentioned um you do have a few different game options here so enemy set mode and game start we're just going to go straight into the start mode um it looks very much to me and I was not sure if this would be the case or not um oh okay so this would that just explained it to me there but it looks like ZR is what you actually need to press uh to move around the cursor now the issue that I'm going to run into a little bit with this controller is um it does seem like it it it wanted to assign that to um the the joystick so just keep in mind you might be better off with playing the uh playing this with a Pro Controller rather but we'll skip past the opening of this and get directly into some gaml so um right out of the gate of Everything feels nice and responsive but uh one thing that I do want to point out because since these are DS games it's kind of nice honestly because you do have like the whole left portion of the screen right now um where you can see you know my character's health and uh all the primary reaction but this is very much what it looked like in the trailer and so far unless if I'm missing it cuz you guys are kind of seeing my initial um boot up and reaction of this game um I think that this is going to be the only aspect ratio to kind of play in where essentially you have the DS what would have been the DSC screen on the display the entire time so you just have your box available to the left um and then you have obviously all of your information which I believe uh we're going to be able to easily look at the map on screen all at once we're going to be able to see all of our various different character stats and things um so this it this could be kind of in the more convenient direction to have however I'm very curious to see and we will test this out in just a moment um this may indeed be designed to where I should um essentially be like holding the um the ZR button in order to use my cursor and it looks like that is what I do but I don't think it's letting me move it around just because of this um d-pad here and in fact just to confirm that we're going to swap controllers out real quick okay so after some brief messing around I can indeed confirm you should be playing this with something with analog sticks on it doesn't have to be a Pro Controller but um that's absolutely what you want to do because you do have a lot of additional options that um I did not notice right at first so the first thing I want to correct is we do actually have um numerous screen layouts that you can toggle between one big one small display one on top of each other DS style um and then I really do think that the most ideal and just uh the you know what you probably are going to want to lead with is is the default setting in a perfect world I would have liked to see them add one where it's entirely full screen for your one display and then you optionally can pull up those secondary displays if you need to um but nonetheless this is a DS Port not complaining here I do actually like um the the options that they have included you can also um customize your different uh button layout it seems like almost entirely so that is very nice you can definitely mess around with um a number of different options if you want to change anything that's included in the game uh by default and so we're only going to play uh just a very brief moment of uh of Dawn of Sorrow even though I intend to go through this game to its entirety I do want you guys to be able to kind of see um a quick look at multiple different games within this collection um but just in terms of like the visual presentation the soundtrack um everything that you know love remember that you want to see from these games playable um in terms of their Nintendo switch release it's all intact um also do want to mention quickly for other console players out there uh yeah this is only um uh one version that you can pick up like you don't have to get this thing on switch if you game on PS5 series X anything else it looks like from what I can see um this released on all major platform so this is a huge win um some of the best Metroid Vania games of all time are now available uh easily to play in a great collection so uh we will hop back to the main menu and kind of go through um another experience next so you guys can see um just a different look at different games briefly we are Portrait of Ruin now in portrait of Rune which right out of the gate you can swap your characters right away of course I mean if you know this game you're kind of going to know what to expect um uh but this is looking and playing just the same very nice very responsive and also um do want to point out that the same um visual options like that we mentioned before where you can change out your settings and everything uh just by default hitting the ZL button that's going to bring up that menu um at any point in time and you can do that it appears like on any Castlevania game so um that is something that is uh you know again welcome and nice to see um we do have to get this uh Bridge down but uh nonetheless yeah music intact every everything looks sounds great um I mean if you have Nostalgia for these games I I'm already going to tell you just from the look and presentation and just considering that these are DS Classics that you can now play on a big screen uh Metroid Vania fans I'm going to recommend this one to you at the $25 price point I definitely think it's going to be a worthwhile pickup the amount of gameplay that is in these three DS Classics and then um even um haunted castle that we still have to get to I mean it's just it's a lot of content a lot of Gam play and a lot of fun for Castlevania lovers and that's just the reality of it is that this was a huge win that we got Nintendo uh or got this released on the switch I guess you to say and Konami to bring it back um in a classic collection I absolutely love to see that um and would like to point out just how convenient it is even though like if you really want the full big screen experience yeah you you do have like the other displays to the to the right of your main display um but that is very convenient for a game like Castlevania where you're going to be looking at the map frequently trying to figure out what you've missed and where you need to backtrack and go back to like it's it's obviously going to be uh kind of a considered an upgrade across the board I would say um just in terms of the presentation of the game again maybe in a perfect world would have potentially liked to see this uh where we do have one full screen option I will tell you guys a big reason I didn't play as much Castlevania on the DS is just because uh even though some had some of the best games I've always been a TV console gamer myself when at all possible to the point that I've you know really missed out on some great great moments in gaming uh and you know this is one of those that it's literally the perfect thing for me I'm so glad that we have this uh and that that it's actually available um for 25 bucks these games all thrown together in a Collection Pack and uh nonetheless we got it as a shadow drop announcement this this is definitely the most hype reveal of the Nintendo Direct for me personally but um we will lastly just kind of uh go back to our main menu we'll return uh no not return to game but X end game rather um and we will hop into order of Ecclesia next um so you guys can go ahead and see that we'll skip past the very intro where we're creating The Stave file we Order of Ecclesia now have order of Ecclesia right at the beginning of the game after a very brief tutorial and getting like your first uh initial glyphs or attacks so um gosh you know just every single one of these games um I will tell you is going to be a lot of hours of enjoyment here um and you know they all they all have that same visual style and that same presentation so there's really um no variance no down side or anything that I could tell you guys that stick out as like a kind of a concern with this so I will just say that I think you should get this collection hop into it and um you know if you have any level of nostalgia for any of these or if you just want to kind of see uh essentially what some of the uh series fans talk about as you know the best Castlevania games of all time it's going to be worth it for that alone um hopefully if the $25 price point is you know something that has you a little bit hung up maybe you don't want to spend quite that much on it we sometimes see these Castlevania colle C go on sale so it's not like it's out of the realm of possibility for that to happen um but I would just say that I really do think that the value is absolutely there at the $25 price point so uh you know if you are somebody who enjoys a Metro good Metroid Vania game it's just going to be a kind of a no-brainer solution so um we will lastly very quickly and briefly um just kind of uh look at the uh haunted castle so you guys can see that at least the redone Edition so just so you have a full look at everything that um this collection has to offer so again as soon as the menu uh as as soon as the uh music kicks Haunted Castle Revisited and Closing up and everything you want to kind of just keep playing these but I do want to make it as concise as possible for the purposes of the video um but we will take a look at this because this was kind of a a cool uh bonus thing that I didn't necessarily expect to see as part of this collection uh in fact it was like very briefly in the trailer and I had to like double take it as to what that was so the original arcade version of Castlevania um playable I mean and look how buff Simon Belmont looks here so uh cool stuff cool stuff you know definitely a collection that is just I mean you think about four of these different experiences that you're going to have all readily available on your switch in handheld mode looking beautiful on the OLED and biggest win for me guys is instead of playing these on a a handheld like the DS you have it fully available uh on a literally whatever size TV screen you want with uh your switch and dock mode so a very big win the visual presentation to this I mean it looks incredible it's definitely um on par if not even just a little bit upgraded uh from what those 3DS visuals kind of looked like for us so uh you know again soundtrack there's you guys are probably going to be hearing a lot of more a lot more Castlevania music in the background of my upcoming videos because as I continue to play through this um The Nostalgia is going to continue to be there so uh definitely an enjoyable collection I think it's a steal at 25 bucks for all of this content I would like to hear from you guys in the comments below if you have any intentions on picking up these classic Castlevania games if it's something you may wait for uh overall uh maybe you're going to make wait for a sale you need to see it at that uh $15 or $20 price point I really think that this is a great value at 25 but let me know how you feel about this surprise Shadow drop announcement in the comments down below and if you're planning on picking up uh this great Castlevania DS game collection and with haunted castle to boot so thanks so much for watching the video uh make sure you share all your thoughts and feelings in the comments down below regardless if we agree or disagree also make sure you like subscribe turn on your notification Bell and with that I've been Sun Bro you've been Nation thanks so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next video