Castlevania’s recent relevance has been strange. The beloved Dracula-hunting series has primarily existed as an excellent animated TV show on Netflix, but as a video game series it has been relatively quiet, save for compilation releases of previous games . Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls is the first truly new Castlevania game since Castlevania: Lords of Shadows 2 in 2014, and it’s only available as part of Apple Arcade.
Grimoire of Souls actually released and then was pulled offline and was then re-released without much fanfare for Apple Arcade. It has existed mostly unnoticed, but it is a canonical Castlevania game and for its 1.4.0 update, the story has concluded and in an unexpected twist, it promises to include revelations about the 1990 NES game, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. Along with the story conclusion, you can find the list of additional updates below.
- Several new Grimoires have been added, including the final Grimoire that concludes the story.
- Two new members have been added to the Alter Arts lineup!
- A new ‘Soul Fragments’ store has been added.
- Various parchments have been added to the “Trade Shop/Parchment” lineup.
- A “New Game +” mode has been added that allows you to play the story from the beginning but with transferring some elements from the saved data after the game has been cleared.
- Other improvements and fixes have been made.
Apple Arcade is an odd place for new Castlevania video game content to exclusively exist, but the promise of a complete story may entice lapsed Castlevania players a reason to seek the game out. I only played it for a few levels when it originally released, but I plan on seeing what story revelation could possibly added to a Castlevania game from more than 30 years ago.
For more Castlevania, you can read GameSpot’s list of the best entries in the series. You can also read about how Castlevania: Lords of Shadow sent the series in a fantastic new direction, only to squander it all in the sequel.
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