I mean. the theme is very similar. dark and gothic but thats not really half of it. the biggest thing is the fact that each enemy felt dangerous(for the most part) and combat was very much tied to whatever weapon you had.

but the biggest similarity is the boss fights. I mean, castlevania is the melee dodge and then attack boss fight kind of game. you won't win anything buy running at bosses and hitting them mindlessly. you have to play defensively. in dark souls its mostly a defensive game where you make your attack after a successful defensive movie most of the time.

outside of the platforming which is missing from souls games. the whole enemy layout and boss fights is how a castlevania plays. enemies scattered around areas in the game with no context obviously its just expected to have these creatures in such a world. and boss fights are pretty much a non scripted room where you have to recognize patterns of mostly melee attacks .

Well..... yeah, you are right.
A shame that Konami didnt get the idea to do one like it when Demon Souls first launched.And with the company current state, we will never get one.

am talking about 3d games that are slow. castlevania games are very slow paced similar to dark souls.

and by dangerous I meant they can potentially do a lot of damage. I mean in dark souls you kill the goons in two hits or something like that. as long as you are careful that is. but if you get careless you can easily get staggered and chain damaged by them

in castlevania a goon can easily hit you while jumping and ruin your day.

Now that you mention it, the first Dark Souls does resemble a mix between NES Castlevania where combat was all about maneuvering and commiting to your actions, and Symphony of the Night which was more focused on metroid-esque exploration. Of course, this is only if you disregard plot and worldbuilding which has a completely different style in both franchises

Well, Castlevania had a heavy focus on platforming which I think is not entirely replicated in Dark Souls.

yes thats the missing part but. in 3d games unless your mainly a platformer games have no platforming 95% of the time

the lords of shadow castlevanias and few of the other ones seem like crappy hack n slash games compared to the old castlevanias that are all about playing defensively and do a lot of damage with more precise well timed attacks.

Not really: the older Castlevanias were not really slow or exploratory, focusing on platforming and harder bosses.

The later Castlevanias were slower, more exploratory, and the enemies were easier, but less difficult.

Zero Punctuation made this comparison a while back in his Dark Souls video.

Structurally yes. Combat no.

I think Bloodborne is the closest thing to a good 3D Castlevania we've ever seen. The official ones sucked so much ass... I can't even stomach looking at them. Castlevania is only great when done in 2D and I hope they stick to that formula going forward. The GBA trilogy is fucking amazing!