The one thing the arcade game had going for it was its amazing soundtrack, and that has been comprehensively updated in this version, too. The rendition of Castlevania’s signature tune Bloody Tears is especially good, but all of the songs retain the feel and tone of the original versions but have been subtly improved to make them more appealing. The sound effects are also punchy and effective in their updated format.
While M2’s glow-up of this much-maligned Castlevania is a success on pretty much every count, there’s no getting around the fact that Haunted Castle is a game from the very earliest part of the series’ history – so in terms of mechanics, it’s not exactly pulling up any trees. Even in this much-enhanced form, Haunted Castle Revisited lacks the replayability of Dracula’s Curse and Rondo of Blood, the two other “classic” Castlevania entries so beloved by fans. While it’s arguably trickier than Super Castlevania IV, it lacks that game’s atmosphere and epic scale.
This is hardly M2’s fault – it could only do so much with a game like Haunted Castle as a template – but, very much like Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth, another M2 upgrade of a terrible game – it feels a little like the developer’s talents are somewhat wasted here. We hope that it picks a stronger game, such as Belmont’s Revenge, as a starting point for its next Castlevania project.
Even so, a new Castlevania is a new Castlevania, and that’s always worth celebrating. While it doesn’t quite reach the hollowed heights of the franchise’s 8 and 16-bit glory days, Haunted Castle Revisited nonetheless represents a long-overdue rehabilitation for one of Konami’s least auspicious arcade releases and is almost worth the cost of the Castlevania Dominus Collection on its own.