14
Lots of doom and gloom here, but I bought this and it was clearly done by people who love the series a lot and who tried to cram as much as possible into it. I don't necessarily disagree with everything said, but let's take a look at this thing anyway. I bought it on Halloween.
First I'm going to point out the most obvious thing: you're going to want to check out the OST of this game. It has a TON of songs from the series, and each one comes with a variation. Some are just straight-up rips but a lot of them are mixes as far as I can tell. So, music. A LOT of it.
There's a buttload of characters.
In fact, there are so many that I think I can probably list all the ones not in the game with little effort:
No:
nameless NPCs from the very old games save one very interesting inclusion.
Selena Belmont for Simon.
Drolta Tzuentes from Bloodlines (though they included someone I didn't expect related to Bloodlines, ha).
damsels from Rondo/Dracula X save for Maria herself if she even counts.
Hugh/Morris from Circle of the Moon.
Lydie and no merchant from Harmony of Dissonance.
villagers from Ecclesia.
non-playable N64 characters.
Elizabeth Cronqvist (she only appeared in backstory anyway) and no Mathias Cronqvist (lol sorta, but that's not to say there's nothing about him there).
Aeon/Golem from Judgment.
Kid Dracula. While Alucard is obviously in the game, his Genya Arikado disguise is not.
characters from Moonlight Rhapsody/Grimoire of Souls/Lords of Shadow/Order of Shadows/Pachinko/Worlds of Power.
characters from radio dramas/comics/show/etc.
I'm pretty sure basically everyone else worth noting is in the game. I guess as far as enemies they could have included, there's no Astarte or Laura? ... Wallman?
Vampire Survivors also already had references to Castlevania all over the place in it, so a lot of the pre-existing content feels like it fills in a lot of the very few gaps there are. A lot of them feel like knock-off CV characters or NPCs/enemies from the series, with one clearly being inspired by Legion, for example.
They went all out with additional references with this release, I'm actually a bit impressed. I think they probably could have squeezed more in but I'm just being greedy at this point considering how affordable it was on top of everything else. Adding all the straightup CV content insertions to all the referential content in the base game of Vampire Survivors helps the game succeed at what it was going for at the start. It feels a bit like a CV fever dream and a bit of a condemnation that Konami just leaves all this stuff rotting in the basement.
It is worth pointing out that the interface is pretty poor. It was designed as a mobile game and it shows in that respect. That said, I've found it fun, and it's also easy on the hands if you are disabled like me. The game has DLC packs but it does NOT have microtransactions, which is good.
I like it. It actually exceeded my expectations. That said it is absolutely NOT a Castlevania game, lol, so don't go in with the express goal of being disappointed. It's supposed to be fun.