The Castlevania series has been around as long as any high-profile video game franchise, its trademarked gameplay style and atmosphere unmistakable. Its reputation insists that individual series entries have typically reached a height of excellence, but are all of the respective games as great as that reputation would have you believe? The 8- and 16-bit classics are certainly beloved, and the later Dracula X additions, are legendary among old and new gamer alike, but are they worthy of such acclaim? If you want to know how this Castlevaniac regards the 25-plus titles that encompass this franchise--how my temperament has evolved over the last two decades--you can see all of my thoughts in this section, where each game has been thoroughly reviewed and in most cases deeply analyzed. Each game has been graded in five different categories (graphics, gameplay, sound, controls and challenge-level) on a scale of one-five, with at review's end an overall score being assigned; this overall score, it should be noted, is not an average. There are ten possible overall scores that can be attained, as shown below:

    
"5" - Excellence
  
"2½" - Mediocre
    
"4½" - Great
 
"2" - Bad
   
"4" - Very Good
 
"1½" - Poor
   
"3½" - Good
"1" - Horrible
  
"3" - Fair
"½" - Worthless