Last updated on December 15th, 2025 at 04:12 am
Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls – Action Game Review
Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls is a Action game from Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd., first launched in 17th September 2021.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 841+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls Stand Out
■An All-New Castlevania Game!
The gothic fantasy series available on multiple consoles is back! This time you’re looking at an original game exclusive to AppleArcade: "Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls"!
■Classic Sound & Visuals
Immerse yourself in the rich world of Castlevania with the work of renowned artists from its long-running history – featuring character designs from Ayami Kojima and music by Michiru Yamane. Experience a new original story spanning the Castlevania universe!
■A True Action Game
"Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls" is a full-fledged side-scrolling action game. Experience a game with epic amounts of content including 60 levels, a wide variety of equipment, daily and weekly missions, and more! Set in a world after Dracula has been sealed away, the pages of a new story bringing together heroes of the past have begun to turn…
■Iconic Characters
Play as Alucard and unlock other legendary characters such as Simon Belmont, Charlotte, Shanoa, Maria and more to come! Master each character’s unique combat style to annihilate fearsome enemies and bosses!
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 6th February 2024
Recent improvements include:
Bugs have been fixed.
Download & Availability
Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Im not a serious gamer. We have an Apple TV 4K HDR (3rd gen). We decided to give this a whirl love it!! It took a but to get into. Theres a lot of capabilities that you unlock as you play. Its awesome. Helps take our mind off things.
ITS OUTSTANDING THE MUSIC ABSOLUTE HOMERUN THE GRAPHICS ABSOLUTE HOMERUN THE STORY THE HOMERUN-IST OF THEM ALL / AND TO THE DEVS THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY LIFE BETTER THIS IS THE GAME FOR ME THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR WONDERFUL GAME.
Why is it so difficult to install.
So we have not been playing many games recently but this game is just so much fun so even though we get beat by a tough boss we just ant to keep playing and we just do not want to rage honestly you guys have done an amazing job creating this game.
We have played almost every sidescrolling Castlevania game in the series, and while this takes some getting used to, it is super fun with a lot of replayability and room for skill expression. We still wish somehow for this game to keep going on and we hope that it doesnt get removed from the app store anytime soon. If it does, we hope a port is released somewhere else where we can hopefully save our hard work and data. We really enjoy everything about this game, especially the story. Would love to somehow see new things added haha though we know the history of this game so its unlikely. Anyway, just wanted to put the review as our little way of showing support.
Such a fun game! We would recommend because its easy, solid, and has great graphics. The story is well thought out and the soundtrack is outstanding. Definitely worth a five minute sesh here and there.
We regret not giving this more of a chance earlier. Theres so much depth and replay value. Youre going to grind but its fun building up each character and taking on level challenges. Theres no P2P element (at least in the Apple Arcade version). If youre a true Castlevania fan this is a must play. Also, controls are pretty tuned for touch. It does take some adjustment to find the best layout but once you get the moves down its really fun! Honestly this is a 10/10 for a mobile game.
We dont know what else to say other then this game is rally good. The lore is interesting and the art is fantastic.
Looking at the reviews we thought it was going to be a bit buggy but when we played the game it turned out to be fine all was great. Just a bit of lagging but its small and overall great!^_^ we definitely recommend playing this game.
We have never played one like this before. Our favs prob be Sotn and Dracula x. This took the number 1 spot by far.
We think this game is super fun. We beat it all the way through and am now working on hard mode. We reached out to support about a bug previously, they fixed and communicated with us along the way.
Things we could have used knowing during the frustrating start phase of our journey 1. When doing dispatches higher stars do not matter until all 3 previous bronze and silvers are filled otherwise you can fail without 3 bronze stars that is a big deal on getting legendary and rare parchments. 2. Max out jump assist skills first including the orb costing ones they save energy for failed jumps so you have it for offhand weapons. 3. Weapon skills do not cost energy like offhand it can be confusing trying to survive with 10 hit life bars but they dont cost and can activate when not cursed. 4. 3 characters have weapon skills that heal them watch for an orb icon on weapon skill items there are many items but they are not easy to know about the first one is Rhea in grimoire 1 for Maria legendary weapon. 5. All that glitters is not gold what we mean is if you have 400 blue parchments you can level a blue to 35 with slightly less stats than a legendary and if you have a rare with 300 parchments you can go to level 40 also if the rare gets 400 than you no longer need any parchments with access to level 80s limit. 6. Dont be afraid to activate oath handicaps some have great benefits like getting hard to drop souls you need for enchantments. 7. Remember to use your trials and simple searches every day even if its not the right one needed you will rank up fast on simple searching 30 a day. 8. Dont be afraid to level the wrong gear your dispatch team will benefit off each one you do level up. 9. This one got us recently next to options in match there is a sword icon below it that is auto attack your going to want to disable that if your planning on dodging attacks we bumped it recently and it gave us a lot of grief fighting a boss in grimoire 5 with a no heal character. 10. If your desperate for stats you could run the Halloween order repeatedly it will be time consuming and slow until you clear consecutively with a 200 parchment limit per week but it has solid legendary gear to be started with and if you make it to floor 30 your ready for winter order hunting as well. 11. Each person has 4 sub weapons several cross over characters just because a weapon has higher stats does not mean it will work best learn the type A and B moves and figure out what works best then target that type in equipment farming later on. 12. Possibly our last tip for our inexperienced self is spend all your crystals on grimoire 1 and 2 drops in shop because if you get 5 blues you have a level 35 item and if your lucky 2 legendary weapons in those 2 grimoires that have heals the condor blue is also very useful in book 2. Hope this advice we never got helps you on your journey. Truth be told we joined for this game and it didnt disappoint by much now if only we could find something just like it to expand to when we finish which given our situation with arcade not getting our attention elsewhere we hope is a ways to go Im currently at the end of grimoire 6. If your looking for a review on playing it or not try another person or a gameplay video we only say things we notice are not mentioned if you do decide to take a leap of faith. Im glad you revived this game we hope you intend to continue making more like it after it.
Everything was outstanding except that it took us Three Hours To Install. The graphics were great the game is so much more fun than some of the other games on arcade.
We cant get past it and we cant play.
A lot of things in this game scream (Iga-style) Castlevania, something they clearly lean into, but Grimoire honestly suffers from the comparison in almost every way. If you are unable to play SotN or any of the gba or DS Castlevania games, this is a fair substitute. Otherwise, youll probably have more fun revisiting any of those games no matter how much time your spent with them prior. Our understanding is that Grimoire also had a lot of gatcha and play to play/win elements previously. While the latter was removed, there are still a lot of random pulls and daily junk to do. That might be a plus for some, but we think most prefer a more traditional gaming experience. Its also pretty grindy. Thats not really unusual in the genre (metroidvania), but youd be a god in most games in the same time it takes you to grind for rolls for one of the 5 playable characters in Grimoire. We did play a lot of it, and finished the main playthrough (theres also a hard mode). Im still missing one achievement, but its been months and we havent found the motivation to pick the game back up. If we do, Ill likely just do that and then put it away forever.
Draculas Castle Keep stage 1. Wants you to obtain the sealed treasure but there is no sealed treasure in the quest. We mean its a boss battle how could there be.
WHY DO THE CHARACTERS MOVE SO SLOWLY???!!! This game wouldve had potential, but some developers decided that the movements of a snail would be a good idea.
We hadnt played Castlevania since the 90s on our gameboy and this iteration sure brings back some fond memories and a glimpse of what we have missed in the past 25 years of vampire hunting. However the fun is cut short by the mandatory repetitive leveling up mechanics of later levels and soon you will be spending more time on DeadCells+. The well written storyline and more than a few surprises make up for the grind but Konami probably missed an opportunity to have a game as popular as Diablo Immortal.
Put some time into this game and its fun but after we completed the first book with all the challenges all we could see was a black screen and the game wouldnt load anything else. Hope they can fix it.
This game could be much better if not for the heavy grinding, also game lags constantly! Many times Im mid jump and get a lag spike making mid air actions almost impossible! Also lags when too many enemies are on screen.
The portraits are gorgeous; the 3D graphics are bland and ugly. The game is a grind-fest, and the controller support is incomplete (d-pad movement isnt supported?!) we do appreciate that, if we felt like we were missing out on some Castlevania experience due to the micro-transaction-heavy original version of the game, that this is basically the home console port of the arcade game (Ironic, we know!). So yeah, the game gets a bonus star because Apple Arcade managed to at least save it from predatory monetization schemes.
Im fairly far along in the game, well into book 4, we have every item from every book before 4, including astral weapons and argos weapons, our levels and stats are fairly high, 330K gold with a ton of fragments and materials. We were cruising through the game having a good time. We beat stage 1-5 in book four, game gave us our rewards and then saved. Loaded the next area and boom, black screen and music. Ive deleted the app, deleted our data, created a new save, loaded the save, continued and nothing. Stuck on a black screen with music. This is 12.5 hrs wasted, NO MATTER WHAT IVE TRIED, stuck on this black screen. Please fix this.
GoS is extremely well written. They obviously did their research, and made all of the different games fit together seamlessly. The dialogue is also rich and interesting. There are no weird translation issues or typos, and one of our favorite parts is being able to collect all the music tracks from each of the games. Its well balanced too. Its just challenging enough to make you excited to to replay the levels to meet all the challenges, but not so hard you just rage quit. The controls can be a little tricky but thats just an artifact of playing on a device with no physical buttons. Well done.
This game is really fun, has great gameplay and feels really solid. The negative reviews are from mindless cavemen who cant play a game with more than two control options.
If we could only pick one phone games this would be it. This game is always fun especially with controller. There arent many good games that have controller support and this game has been given so much love since the last time Ive played with many new chapters added with new weapons and gear to collect.
We remember a few years ago when Apple sent out a survey asking about Arcade. We said we wanted more in-depth games, and our wife wanted more casual, and we thought at the time they were trying to mix them both too much. Our wife has a lot of arcade games she regularly plays, and Ive found our more complex, grindy f2p-style game we actually want, but dont have to spend IAP for. Plus its Castlevania! The downsides we see from some people are upsides for us. We enjoy f2p models with a cheat mode turned on! Great game, wish the rating was higher so they were encouraged to make more, but we hope even something like this helps. Great job Konami for making it and Apple for buying it outright.
More games like this one please. Dont forget 2D actions games and Castlevania. This game Rocks.
We are sure Castlevania fans everywhere are grateful for yet another release of this long running franchise. For some, its a new experience and for others it brings back a lot of memories. All the characters have their own decorated storylines. They all have their different fighting styles and specialize in different types of attacks. This is all well, and good as it gives each person a chance to adapt their own playing style and challenge themselves to learn new ones. We know the game at one point had app purchases but when it migrated into Apple Arcade, all of those were turned off and now we can earn, various benefits, weapons, artifacts, and pieces of armor to put a beat down on evil. All good and anyone playing this game would be happy to do so. We are also grateful for all the bug fixes and performance updates and the wonderful many new features that keep getting added to the game itself. Konami is a long running company with many wonderful games, collaborations, and titles to its name. We can only hope that the reviews that are being written are actually read by the staff and such changes would be considered. Here is our hope, our request, and our issue all wrapped up into one. We understand there are certain awards that can be won if you meet certain conditions, for example, earning different types of coins and various forms of currency in the shops. We would kindly ask that the prices to be lowered, especially for items that do not have any attack or defense benefits, and are just for looks like the skins. Asking 500,000 coins of anything is an extremely high amount of grinding that needs to be done, for the sake of being considerate of peoples time and making things attainable to those that are not the most diehard of fans we believe it is only fair to ask for some of those prices, all across-the-board to be lowered to make them more attainable. We believe in the end, it will increase replay value and encourage people to spend time in some of those additional features rather than avoiding it, and just sticking to the story. If the difficulty in the game continues to increase, but the opportunities to decorate and strengthen our characters are hindered by very high amounts required to purchase them, then we fear that it will discourage people to continue. Now we know that you can summon things, and for the most part you can come across some nice four-star, and even five star items as we have but sooner or later at one point we feel the scales tip over and we are just asking for not the game to be nerfed or made more easy but just lower some of those prices please. Along with that hopefully we can also create a more inclusive community by initiating some type of player, reaction, and communication with one another, by sharing our achievements, or giving items to one another by trading, but we understand that is a monumental task which would require an exorbitant amount of money and server space but all in all in the end, even if the online functionality is limited, we can all be happy to start dawning some of these outfits and wonderful items from different areas and timelines. We dont write reviews very often but in the past years, we have been moved to do so on a few occasions and this is definitely one of them. Thank you all for your hard work and your attention to detail. The game is broken and all the shops get deactivated for no reason. Thats messed up.
You guys planning on fixing the store anytime soon.
There are no longer items to purchase even though we have the coins and other things to purchase.
Continually crashed at stage 1-2 right after the grim reaper. Figured out we needed to drop screen quality down in settings then it worked. Good game overall but we can see the beginnings of the pay to play purchases which is a bit of a downer since we are already paying for Arcade.
We are sure Castlevania fans everywhere are grateful for yet another release of this long running franchise. For some, its a new experience and for others it brings back a lot of memories. All the characters have their own decorated storylines. They all have their different fighting styles and specialize in different types of attacks. This is all well, and good as it gives each person a chance to adapt their own playing style and challenge themselves to learn new ones. We know the game at one point had app purchases but when it migrated into Apple Arcade, all of those were turned off and now we can earn, various benefits, weapons, artifacts, and pieces of armor to put a beat down on evil. All good and anyone playing this game would be happy to do so. We are also grateful for all the bug fixes and performance updates and the wonderful many new features that keep getting added to the game itself. Konami is a long running company with many wonderful games, collaborations, and titles to its name. We can only hope that the reviews that are being written are actually read by the staff and such changes would be considered. Here is our hope, our request, and our issue all wrapped up into one. We understand there are certain awards that can be won if you meet certain conditions, for example, earning different types of coins and various forms of currency in the shops. We would kindly ask that the prices to be lowered, especially for items that do not have any attack or defense benefits, and are just for looks like the skins. Asking 500,000 coins of anything is an extremely high amount of grinding that needs to be done, for the sake of being considerate of peoples time and making things attainable to those that are not the most diehard of fans we believe it is only fair to ask for some of those prices, all across-the-board to be lowered to make them more attainable. We believe in the end, it will increase replay value and encourage people to spend time in some of those additional features rather than avoiding it, and just sticking to the story. If the difficulty in the game continues to increase, but the opportunities to decorate and strengthen our characters are hindered by very high amounts required to purchase them, then we fear that it will discourage people to continue. Now we know that you can summon things, and for the most part you can come across some nice four-star, and even five star items as we have but sooner or later at one point we feel the scales tip over and we are just asking for not the game to be nerfed or made more easy but just lower some of those prices please. Along with that hopefully we can also create a more inclusive community by initiating some type of player, reaction, and communication with one another, by sharing our achievements, or giving items to one another by trading, but we understand that is a monumental task which would require an exorbitant amount of money and server space but all in all in the end, even if the online functionality is limited, we can all be happy to start dawning some of these outfits and wonderful items from different areas and timelines. We dont write reviews very often but in the past years, we have been moved to do so on a few occasions and this is definitely one of them. Thank you all for your hard work and your attention to detail.
The game is great when it comes to character controls and graphics. We are having a problem with a serious Special Mission glitch. The game will not go pass Special Mission 3 Breakdown even though we have gotten the exact Breakdown and more. It seems like they didnt run the tests all the way through for Apple TV. We have deleted the game and downloaded it again but still the same problem exist.
Its 2024 and most of the functions work in the game except that the store is completely broken with all of the stores saying No items available for trade. This makes it impossible to upgrade any of the weapons that need a special item to upgrade them. This worked properly at the tails end of December but does not work now.
We did buy remote control for the whole arcade since we do subscribe during off school season or vacation. Doing touchscreen as remote is not our forte- lag issue when doing touchscreen mode. The game is more responsive (sadly) when one has an Apple TV device; it handles the game nicely vs tablet or mobile device. We played this for a while and its great for few several months then it just gets boring and blah the longer you continue playing, because it just becomes repetitive. Storyline is great but doing same task should you get only 1 or 2 star or need to level up as the mission gets challenging further-one can easily get burnt out.
While this game is fun it doesnt feel like a Castlevania game. The levels feel poorly designed, in comparison to previous Castlevania games such as Harmony of Despair and Symphony of the Night. Additionally the three dimensional element to the characters is a little strange On a positive note the new menu screen is pretty cool.
The movements, main attack and special attacks are based on gestures and a few actions like jumping and sliding are done with buttons. We can appreciate the graphics and the story but this way of doing controls is totally counter-intuitive :/.
It appears the development has ceased supporting this game. We had been playing it for over a year and right around 12-2023 none of the upgrades were available anymore.
At some point during the new year or a system update the shop features broke and became unusable. Game play is still available but upgrading weapons/armor not available because conversion not available.
We were really excited to try this but everything is set up like some p2w mobile game. Theres a place where you can summon items with currency, reasons to grind stages, etc. Stages themselves are rather short. We gave up half-way through the second stage when we realized how it played.
Basically, while there isn't any more IAPs anymore, there's still a heavy grind that is reminscent of most gacha games. Our biggest issue is that for gaining power you basically have to grind the Halloween event, which is not fun. There are the Trial Quills of course, but they're limited and there isn't an easy way of obtaining them. We completed seven of the Grimoires, after that, we didn't see the point in continuing. Most of the remaining monsters are just reskins, and the remaining bosses didn't seem interesting to us.
We're on an M1 mac Mini and the performance and look of the game is very nice. We've tried a bit with our keyboard but wanted to use our controller, Nimbus Steel, which works well for almost any game we try but for this game it doesn't. Any chance that is going to be addressed.
Why is the jump so far over? This phone is already heavy and sharp enough. No need for awkward controls too.
It dont work with nintendo switch controller. U_u.
We remember when Konami made games that were Konami hard back in the 1980s. The thing is, there was always a way to win based on skill, or maybe some hints from Nintendo Power (or that up, up, down down code). Here, there is no way to win except grinding. By the time you get to the 6th (or 7th if youre good) grimoire, youre at a point where your fully leveled 5* equipment (that took hours to get) just isnt good enough unless you limit break it. That requires getting a second copy of the item (or 100 parchments good luck with that) and paying a big ton of gold. And you have to do it again and again. Youre looking at a big chunk of your life spent just to win this game. In the end, its just not worth it. So we have given up. Im not opposed to the gacha mechanic, and Im not opposed to the concept of play to win, but it has to be reasonable or else its just not fun. And thats a shame, because there is a lot of production value and character and heart put in this game. If only it were actually playable.
No way we can recommend picking up this game. Mechanics are implemented passably but not as good as a real Castlevania game. There's about 4 different currencies going so that's how you know it's a ported F2P pay to win. Bizarrely stuttery on an SE 2020. Controller support is there and essential to do anything interesting, but also is completely half baked next to console releases. For example, you can't tap a direction to face that way, you will always take a step.
We encountered a game-breaking glitch in this app that rendered our main save file unplayable. After some back-and-forth with support, it became clear they either could not or would not fix it. Looks like maintenance patches are already off the table for this game. Play at your own risk.
We have tried multiple times to use our PS5 controller that we have paired with our Mac mini and it doesn't work.
Its not about exploring and grinding monsters for new equipment/gear/powers. Its a generic cash farm with a Castlevania skin. We will keep playing because we love Castlevania ever since we were a child. Maybe it gets better.
Lots of mechanism from garbage p2w gatcha games which make people sick. Should modify all those stupid mechanisms before going to Apple Arcade.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.4.2
- Size: 1,961.38 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: AR, NL, EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, PT, RU, ZH, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd.
Last updated: 6th February 2024 | Genre: Action | Developer: Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd.