Castlevania’s recent relevance has been odd. The beloved Dracula-hunting series has primarily existed as a great animated TV show on Netflix, but as a video game series it’s been relatively quiet, save for compilation versions 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 came out, then went offline, and was later re-released without much fanfare for Apple Arcade. It’s existed mostly unnoticed, but it’s a canonical Castlevania game and for its 1.4.0 update, the story is complete and in an unexpected twist, it promises to include reveals about the NES game from 1990, 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 last 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 scrolls have been added to the Trade/Scroll range.
- A “New Game+” mode has been added which allows you to play the story from the beginning but transferring some items of saved data after the game has been cleared.
- Other improvements and fixes have been made.
Apple Arcade is a strange place for new Castlevania video game content to exist exclusively, but the promise of a full story may entice stale Castlevania players to seek out the game. I only played a few levels there when it was released. initial release, but I plan to see what story revelation could possibly add to a Castlevania game from over 30 years ago.
For more Castlevania, you can read GameSpot’s list of the best entries in the series. You can also read how Castlevania: Lords of Shadow sent the series in a fantastic new direction, only to ruin everything in the sequel.
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