The "Castlevania" series has been around as long as any video game franchise, its trademarked style, unmistakable atmosphere, and individual games typically being described in one word--"excellence." But were all of the individual games as great as the series' reputation would have you believe? That standard of said excellence was certainly set high by the original classics and some later Dracula X additions, as my video game contemporaries will repeatedly preach, but if you want to know how this Castlevaniac's temperament toward the series has evolved, 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) 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