These games came out swinging right out of the gate, with Symphony of the Night setting an extremely high bar that the rest of the 2D 'Vanias worked hard to try and top. Did any of them succeed?
Honorable Mention: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES) and Vampire Killer (MSX2) for being early proto-attempts at this style of game. The forerunners, the ancestral missing links that lived in caves.
Also Worth Mentioning: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair is the only 2D Castlevania game I never played, because it's a zoomed-way-out multiplayer game and very different from the rest. At this point it's pretty much forgotten in the annals of Metroidvanias. Weird how they gave it such a similar name to Harmony of Dissonance.
8. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA, 2002) - The graphics and the music land this at the bottom spot. Bright neon colors (to offset the original GBA's dark screen) and music that sounds like it belongs on the NES (and wouldn't be considered great then either) were bad choices. Juste Belmont, who looks more like a vampire than a Belmont, deserved better...especially given that he's the ONLY Belmont lead in this entire list somehow. At least Circle of the Moon has some fans...this game doesn't really have anyone backing it that I've seen. This game gets points over the others for actually having a Belmont and traditional whip-based gameplay. Unfortunately that's all it gets points over the others for.
7. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA, 2001) - The one Iga wasn't involved in, which is why I couldn't just call this list "Ranking the Eight Igavanias" like I wanted to. For a long time I considered this the worst of the GBA/DS six due to the small character sprites, dark visuals, and bland environments. However, after replaying all of them in the past several years, I can safely say that I underrated this a bit and it at least rises above the level of Harmony. Woe to you if you're trying to play it on the original hardware though, feeling around in the dark like some sort of proctologist.
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6. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS, 2008) - Has a bad-ass main character and brings back the classic artstyle. So this one won me over right out of the gate. However, could it crack the "great games" tier of the Top 5, or is it stuck down in loserville with Circle and Harmony? Well, the answer is somewhere in-between. It's a polished game with good QOL, but it doesn't really feel like an Iga 'Vania at times, with the linear long hallway-filled areas. Is it a bad game? No, not in any way. Even the low-tier games on this list are a good time, and this is the first one that really feels polished. Got mixed feelings on this being the way the series went out, and part of me feels like it should have gone out with a Belmont. Either way, it's much more solidly put-together than the first two.
5. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS, 2006) - A fundamentally very good game that could and should have been two or three spaces higher. It loses a ton of ground because of the DS stylus elements they shoehorned in. Waggle Motion just HAD to be the wave of the mid-2000s, eh? The Dominus Collection doesn't really fix the stylus nonsense either, it just gives you the option to substitute button press minigames instead that can be just as annoying as the stylus because of how little time you get. The collection also has a very small and difficult to see map. Lastly, changing to anime-style art (which only lasted through this and the next game) was a bad move when the series already had a unique and very recognizable artstyle. So basically this game had a lot working against it...take all of that out of the equation and the game itself is an absolute banger. Like I said, it should have been 2 or 3 spaces higher. It's a "best of the GBA/DS games" contender if it just had some fixes.
4. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4, 2019) - Was back and forth on the placement of this one, because part of me would put it ahead of the next two. However, the setting isn't as interesting as those games, and there isn't as much to do. What it does have going for it is that it's the newest one and has the best QOL. They clearly put their all into it and held nothing back. Also, the main character is hot as hell, especially with Kung-Fu Shoes on.
3. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA, 2003) - Possibly the best of the six GBA/DS games, this is an all-around solid game that fixed all the issues with Circle and Harmony before the series jumped to the DS. They perfected a few formulas here (before fixing what wasn't broken by adding gimmicks to Dawn). Soma isn't my favorite lead, and I definitely prefer Portrait's two leads on a moment to moment gameplay level, making this a narrow loss for Aria. However I think it just does everything else right. It's got Dawn's super-solid fundamentals, without any of the glaring weaknesses. The only downside to this game is that the resolution and visuals aren't great since it's a GBA game. There's a large difference between the visual quality of this game and the visual quality of Dawn.
2. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (DS, 2007) - The one I personally had the most fun with of the six GBA/DS games due to the two leads (who are both really fun to play as), the interesting level ideas, and the return of the Vampire Killer whip, finally after it was de-emphasized in the several games around this one. Charlotte Aulin is a delight, and Jonathan Morris brings back the whip-based gameplay that was missing for several games. This is probably the best "Belmont-style" game on this list, in that regard. The second half of the game is very non-linear, letting you tackle the last set of paintings in any order. This gives it more replay value, since it'll be a bit different every time through. And for the 40,000 people that actually bought Castlevania Bloodlines, this is a direct sequel.
1. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997) - Yep, the first one is still the best. Everything in the design of this game is inspired and they left it all on the table. The visuals are more striking than the portables (even the ones with higher resolution) due to the art direction, the character you play as is debatably the most interesting in the series, and the game takes heavy influence from Super Metroid to its benefit. At times it's a little rough around the edges, and this was really the Wild West of Igavania where anything goes, but that's part of what makes it so interesting. At times it feels less like a game and more like a journey into the unknown design-wise.
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