Castlevania Belmont’s Curse Review

There’s a new Castlevania game! Can you believe that? After eighteen years, yes it really has been that long since the last entry, I thought the series was dead. Both because the main man behind the series Koji Igarashi had left to make his own Castlevania successor in Bloodstained, and because Konami has largely stopped making games.

In all honesty it’s not too unsurprising that it’s been that long since the last entry. Castlevania is one of those rare franchises where it’s too acclaimed to not be famous, but not famous enough to be popular. The games are beloved by its fans and critics, but they’ve never been big sellers. Ironically making it very similar to Metroid. Maybe that’s why the Metroidvania term took off like it did.

But Castlevania is still a big enough name that I knew it wouldn’t stay dead forever. The collections certainly did well enough to show there was still demand for it, and the Netflix adaptation helped keep the series relevant. Granted I thought the Netflix series was unbridled dogshit, but it did put Castlevania back in the public eye.

One look at the indie scene though and you’ll see that Castlevania never truly died. I mean I already mentioned Bloodstained, but there’s tons of indie games that take clear inspiration from the series. Including games like Vampire Survivor and Dead Cells which actually have crossover material based on the series.

So with Konami operating under the Sega method of managing their older IPs by licensing them out, it only made sense to let an indie developer handle the Castlevania series. Said developer being the guys behind the Dead Cells Castlevania crossover, Evil Empire. Not the people behind Dead Cells itself just the DLC. Because modern game development is nothing if not confusing.

Now I will admit that I did not play much of Dead Cells. I only played a few hours, and I never tried the Castlevania DLC, but what I have played was very good. So I knew the series was in good hands. Although I have to admit when I saw the first trailer, I wasn’t that impressed. It didn’t look bad, but it also didn’t look like Castlevania.

That seems to be a common sentiment I’ve seen online. That the game is good but doesn’t feel like Castlevania. Based on my experiences this does have some merit to it, although I do find it to be a tad overblown. I might as well get this out of the way now because this is something that a lot of people seem hung up on. Best to just rip the band aid clean off.

Now superficially it does have many familiar elements from the series. You can find chicken in walls, you destroy candles to gain magic although disappointingly there are no hearts to collect, and it features several of the series classic enemies and bosses, although it is missing the Frankenstein Monster. Come on even Lords of Shadow had him, kind of. There’s a ton of references and homages to the series past. It is a game made with clear love for the franchise.

However, when you actually analyse the games design you realise that Belmont’s Curse is very different from past Castlevania’s. In a lot of ways the game actually feels like it takes more inspiration from games inspired by Castlevania than it does the actual Castlevania series. I don’t know how that’s possible, but that’s just the vibe I got from it.

The biggest affront to it not feeling like Castlevania is in the music. Normally I like to hold off on the music until we get to the presentation, but it feels more relevant to talk about that here. Castlevania has a very distinct melodic identity. The music of the franchise is perhaps it’s most famous aspect, with dozens of homages and remixes to it both official and unofficial alike.

It needs to be said that I am not a music guy. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about music theory, and I am not the best when it comes to describing why music is good. I just listen to it and if I like it, I like it. However, I have played enough of this series that I know what it is supposed to sound like. It supposed to sound very energetic and bombastic. Contrasting the dark gothic visuals, or anime gothic visuals in some instances, with a rocking soundtrack that makes you feel like a badass.

That is not what Belmont’s Curse sounds like. Its soundtrack leans more into atmospherics, which can work for Castlevania since it has its fair share of atmospheric tracks, but it does not give them any kind of catchy melody. Which can make the music very droning, repetitive, and not very memorable. The only track that stands out is the remix of Bloody Tears, and even then, I wouldn’t call it a good remix.

The music by itself is not bad. It wasn’t grating to listen to, and the sound quality was decent so it at least has something over the GBA titles. But for a Castlevania game this OST is dreadful. Say what you want about any game in the series the good or the bad, every game has had a memorable soundtrack. Even fucking Haunted Castle has some banging music. The fact that Belmont’s Curse’s music is so unmemorable is the greatest sin it commits.

I can certainly see where folks are coming from when they say it doesn’t feel like Castlevania. It is very different from the Igavania titles in how it approaches certain elements, and I will get into more detail on those as we go. But I also find this criticism to be a little silly. After all, Symphony of the Night was also a radical departure from series conventions and at the time it came out a lot of Castlevania fans criticised it for that. These days it’s considered a stone-cold classic, but it did put off some fans of the Classicvania formula.

Look, Castlevania has always changed itself. From Classicvania to Metroidvania to whatever the 3D games were doing, it is a series that has always reinvented itself. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the series trying something different. That’s how a series stays fresh. I’m a Mega Man fan and that franchise has changed itself across its various different sub-series and each of those are pretty well liked across most of the fanbase.

Point is that there is room in Castlevania for games to try something new. Especially since the series has been dead for 18 years and none of the original developers are even working at Konami anymore. It would be foolish to think it would be exactly like the Igavania titles. Then again if you did want that, then just play Bloodstained. I don’t know why this is a complaint when that option exists.

I do think a criticism can be made on how well Belmont’s Curse handles certain aspects of its own formula. This game does have problems which we will get into in due time. But the complaint that it “doesn’t feel like Castlevania” is a little unfair. Because if you actually play the game and view it for what it is, Belmont’s Curse is fucking great. Flawed most certainly, but a very solid game that is worthy of the Castlevania name.

The story of Belmont’s Curse takes place in 1499. For those who don’t know the Castlevania timeline, that means it takes place 23 years after Castlevania III Dracula’s Curse, and 20 years after Curse of Darkness. Don’t worry, you do not need to have played those games to understand the plot since it is very simple. Dracula is being resurrected in Paris and Trevor Belmont is sent to investigate.

But Trevor is not the protagonist. Instead, he entrusts the duty of investigating to his daughter, Rose Belmont. Making this the first Castlevania game with a female Belmont. Castlevania Legends doesn’t count since it’s non canon. This is really cool to see. It’s about time the Belmont’s had a family member without a Y chromosome.

As a Belmont, Rose is a perfectly capable hunter, but she does have one big drawback. She suffers from a curse she inherited from her mother, Sypha Belnades, that threatens to kill her if she loses control of it.

A lot of the game’s story centres around Rose struggling to deal with the curse while battling Dracula’s forces. One interesting element are Rose’s Tarot Cards inherited from her mother. Which she uses to entrap Dracula’s minions as she defeats them. Allowing them to communicate with Rose from the cards.

This can lead to some fun exchanges, but I don’t think the game takes full advantage of this. Only the first three cards talk to Rose frequently throughout the game, with the rest not amounting to much outside of their first appearance.

Even with these added wrinkles, the story is typical Castlevania fare. Let’s be honest, the stories in Castlevania never really go beyond Dracula being a massive bastard, go kill bastard man. Despite its extensive lore I always found the story to be one of the series weaker elements. Especially when it went full anime in the GBA and DS era.

That said the story isn’t bad. Rose is a likable protagonist with a good character arc, and it has plenty of callbacks and references to past Castlevania games. Not just in a member berries way either, but in a way that actually tries to expand on the series established lore. Some of its revelations are a little weird, but I really like what they did here. Admittedly I am not as familiar on the lore as others, so take that with a grain of salt. Your mileage may vary when it comes to this.

What’s cool about the story is that it winds up being the third part of an unplanned trilogy. Remember how I said it takes place after Dracula’s Curse and Curse of Darkness? That’s not just it’s timeline placement; it actually tries to follow on from the events of those games. Hell it even has Curse in its name. Meaning we can call all three of them the Curse Trilogy. I love when these weird little unplanned sets prop up in larger franchises. They’re such a weird anomaly.

What helps sell the story is the voice acting. Despite my issues with the music, the actual sound of the game is great. The sound effects have a nice punch to them, and the voice acting is excellent with some recognisable names like Abby Trot, Erica Lindbeck, Liam O’Brian, Ray Chase, and even some voice actors from the Netflix series giving some pretty solid performances. Say what you will about the Netflix series, and one day I will, but it was well acted despite how poor the writing was.

It certainly helps make the dialogue scenes a lot more interesting. Which is needed because the scenes are not all that visually engaging. That is one flaw with the story, the visual presentation is dull. There are some nice-looking cutscenes, but they are infrequent and rare, and most of the dialogue scenes are just characters standing around talking with no real animation to make them visually interesting.

Granted this is what most of the other games were like, but those game’s cutscenes were short. These cutscenes are a little bit too lengthy and could have been easily trimmed. The dialogue in the game is pretty good, at least it doesn’t drop a swear word every ten fucking seconds, but it’s one of those instances where they use two sentences to say something they could say in one. It could have used an editor. Look who’s talking I know.

The sad part is that the actual visuals of Belmont’s Curse are great. It’s got a great sense of scale in some of the backdrops. Some parts of the environments can look a bit flat, but when they go big, they really make the world feel grander. It does a good job of making you feel lost in a larger world.

It’s also a decently colourful game too without losing a lot of the gothic horror charm the series is known for. It strikes a good balance between being very colourful and animated while also being dark and gothic. It does lean more into the former, and the art itself isn’t as good as Ayami Kojima’s, but it finds a better balance between gothic art and anime than something like Dawn of Sorrows did. It’s good stuff and I like a lot of its takes on the classic Castlevania monsters.

I played this game on the Switch 2. There is no dedicated Switch 2 version as of this review, but the regular Switch version does run better on its upgraded brother. At least when docked it runs well, I haven’t played it in handheld mode yet. I have no idea how it runs there, but when played on my tv the game looked and ran fine for the most part.

I did run into some issues though. There was some stuttering when things got too hectic. This didn’t happen enough to be an issue, but it did happen enough to be an annoyance. The load times between area’s can also be a bit lengthy and the game also crashed on me a few times, though this only happened once or twice and only in specific circumstances. So not too bad all things considered.

That said I have no idea how it runs on the original Switch. I have heard that on the original Switch it has more severe frame rate issues, so you might want to hold off on getting it on that if you don’t have a Switch 2. That version still has some issues, but they aren’t nearly as bad. But if you want the best performing version get it on PC or the other home consoles.

Now that we have all the technical and narrative stuff out of the way, let’s finally get into the gameplay. As a Metroidvania, Belmont’s Curse follows a lot of the conventions that were established in Symphony of the Night. You have a large map to explore with various upgrades to find, you have RPG elements with stat growth and equipment, and there’s plenty of action and platforming.

To be clear, when I said this game tried something new, I didn’t mean that it was a complete overhaul. Because the game does include a lot of what you would expect from the series. It’s just that the way everything is handled is a little different than it was in past games.

Let’s start small and work our way up. The RPG elements have been greatly simplified. Rather than have a variety of different stats we now only have two, Attack and Defence. Both of which improve by gaining experience and levelling up, or by finding upgrades hidden in the world.

I like this change. For one it helps in removing some of the bloat in the design from the Igavania games. Which was always my biggest complaint with those. I always felt like those games gave you a bit too much. Even Bloodstained suffered from this, though I’ll talk more about that when I eventually get around to that series. Maybe next year.

I don’t think you needed those other stats. Because let’s be honest attack and defence were the only ones that mattered anyway.  Sure the lack of an Intelligence stat means we can’t have magic builds, but who really focused on magic in Castlevania anyway. It was always easier and more efficient to focus on raw attack power. Unless it was Order of Ecclesia but that’s only because of the Glyph system and how enemy weaknesses worked.

To put simply, the only time the Intelligence stat has ever actually been worth a damn has been in games with specific systems that work with it. In every other game it has been next to useless. Attack and defence really are the only two stats that mattered, and so Belmont’s Curse making it so they are the only stats is a good change in my opinion.

However, because they are the only stats this also means that Luck is not in the game. So all of the things that were associated with that have also been removed. Which includes things like random item drops from enemies. Enemies can still drop random healing items, but they will not drop any kind of equipment.

The equipment itself has also been simplified. Instead of having a wide variety of equipment to choose from, now you only have three. An Arcana, a weapon, and three Relic’s. I will talk about those in a bit, but to add to this point, the way items work has been simplified as well. There is now only one type of each equipment, and also no usable items. So there really is no need for enemies to drop items aside from health pick-ups.

This means that any kind of equipment you find is now in the world itself. This is another change I like. In my opinion Metroidvanias work best when the upgrades are tied to the exploration. Because that is the main focus of the genre. Having you get upgrades through finding them in the world itself is far more satisfying than having them be a random drop. Because the former rewards curiosity, while the other rewards dumb luck.

The one drawback to this is that there is no need for a shop. Since there isn’t really a need to buy items because, well there are none to buy. While I’m not too upset at this, it does have a bit of a knock-on effect regarding money. Because, since there’s nothing to buy, there’s no reason to earn money to spend. Which means there’s little reason to attack the candles. Yes, you can replenish MP from that but not every candle does that, and since they do not respawn outside of saving it isn’t something you can rely on. So I wound up ignoring the candles in a Castlevania game. That doesn’t feel right.

Now, you do have usable healing items, but they work on Dark Souls logic. You have three healing potions that can be used to recover some health, and these recharge when you visit a safe room. I know what you’re thinking, so to ease some concerns this is the only Soulslike element in the game. It isn’t like those at all; you don’t need to worry about that. Really this kind of healing system is in so many games now that it feels less like a Soulslike mechanic and more of a general healing mechanic at this point.

I don’t mind this system. It works really well for Castlevania and acts as a good safety net for some of the game’s trickier sequences. My only complaint with it is that you can’t upgrade the healing potions. You can’t find additional potions aside from temporary ones you get from enemies, and you can’t improve the potency of the potions at all. What you have at the beginning is what you will have at the end.

This isn’t too bad. Three healing potions is more than enough to get through most of the game. You can find yourself running low during some of the longer stretches between save rooms, but enemies can drop refills too, and the game is generous enough with these drops that these longer runs aren’t too arduous. So you don’t really need to upgrade them. I just find it odd that you can’t when other games with this system have let you do so.

But you can already see how much this single change to how stats work has shifted a lot more of the game. I didn’t even intend to show that as I was writing this by the way; it’s simply how it went. But it highlights how deliberate the changes are. I never felt like these changes were arbitrary or done for the sake of it.

They put thought into what they changed, and knew that if some things worked differently, then other things would have to work differently. Because game systems are like gears in a machine. Interlocking pieces that work together to make things operate. Change one component without considering how it would affect the others, and it doesn’t work nearly as well. While I do have issues with the game, I can’t say it isn’t well designed. It’s clear everything was crafted with clear care and attention to the design.

But as I said it does have issues and one of those is with the Relics. These pretty much work as you would expect. They’re like the Trinkets from Mina the Hollower or the charms in Hollow Knight. Special items that give certain benefits when equipped. One thing I will give it over those games is that you can swap equipment on the fly. No need to do so at certain points, you can change weapons, relics and anything else from the pause menu.

That’s convenient, but it also sounds like it would be kind of broken. The reason those other games don’t let you change things whenever you want is because it would trivialise a lot of the challenge. I mean if you could switch up builds at any point, then you’d basically have an answer to every situation.

Castlevania games have always let you swap equipment whenever you wanted, but it made sense in the older games because they had a ton of different options to choose from. Along with enemies that had different weaknesses to certain weapons and abilities. Hell in some games you could even have two builds to swap between to suit the current situation.

Point is, just because the older games let you swap between builds doesn’t mean that would work here. It runs the risk of making you too overpowered. But don’t worry because they have a solution. To prevent the Relic’s from becoming too broken they decided to make them utterly boring.

The Relics are completely uninteresting. Most of the effects are standard. Increased attack in the air, more healing potions per save room, take less damage at certain health thresholds, hints at where secrets are, doing more damage after using a magic spell. It’s all stuff you’ve seen in a bunch of other games with nothing unique or interesting to make it stand out.

Come on get creative with this. Have a Relic where I can jump higher, but the knockback is worse. Have a Relic where you can kill anything in one hit, but you die in one hit. Have a Relic that changes the sound effects to something funny or something I don’t know. Have fun with this shit. This is duller than beige wallpaper. Even my metaphor was fucking boring, that’s how uninteresting this is.

I know the idea is to combine the Relics to create different builds, and you can create some very strong combinations to make the game much easier. There are certainly ways of playing around with the system to make it a bit more interesting. The problem is I don’t find the game difficult enough to incentivise that kind of experimentation.

Not that the game can’t be challenging. It does have moments where it can be an absolute bitch. Mainly in some of the late game bosses like Death and Isaac. Those took me a few tries to beat. Everything else I was able to beat pretty comfortably. So long as you pay attention to the enemy patterns and get as many upgrades as you can, nothing should give you that hard of a time.

Look at Mina the Hollower for instance. That game was incredibly difficult at times; almost to a fault. It was absolutely brutal and never let up. However, despite the difficulty being a big source of frustration, it also made experimenting with the Trinkets far more engaging because it was often the best way of handling many of the game’s challenges.

Belmont’s Curse never quite reaches that point. It never gets challenging enough to make experimenting with the Relics feel necessary. The only times it did was in a handful of the boss fights. Even then, once you find a build that works for one boss it’ll work for pretty much all of them. So basically, once you find a build you’re comfortable with, there is no reason to change it.

That extends to the weapons and Arcana as well to a certain extent. Once you find the weapon and Arcana that works best for you, you’ll probably just stick with them. Although I do think the game creates a better incentive to experiment with those than it does with the Relics.

To get to that though we need to talk about the combat. Like in any good Castlevania you’ll have plenty of enemies to fight. But unlike the older games, these enemies aren’t as big a roadblock. There’s no contact damage in this game for one, and with Rose’s new dodge slide and the generally wider level design, it makes it much easier to avoid these guys.

You will still want to fight them, how else are you going to level up, but they don’t feel as big an obstacle as enemies in the other games. I think this is because Belmont’s Curse isn’t as pure a platformer. Castlevania has always been a platformer at its core. Sure it had more action game elements than something like Mario and Sonic, but those were in service to the platforming.

You weren’t just killing the enemies because that was the goal of the game, you were doing it because they were in the way of the platforms you needed to jump on. Killing them was just the most efficient way of getting around them. The action and the platforming were perfectly intertwined.

That is still mostly the case in Belmont’s Curse. But the game does make a clearer distinction between a platforming challenge and a combat encounter. Sections where you get locked into a confined space and have to kill all the enemies, and raw platforming with almost no enemies at all.

It still feels cohesive enough, but the combat and platforming do feel like two distinct parts of the whole than one intertwined component. This approach does work for the game though. It allows for pure combat and platforming challenges with a good amount of variety. No two sections feel the same, and the platforming in particular can get pretty demanding.

The combat less so, but it will still test your skills. There’s a greater emphasis on learning how enemies work and knowing when to use the dodge slide to avoid their attacks. One caveat though, that dodge slide does not possess invincibility frames. In fact the defensive options you do possess aren’t exactly what I’d call top tier. You have a parry too, but the timing for it isn’t the easiest to get down and I found it a little unreliable.

Here’s the thing though, you won’t really use these that often. Oh you will use the slide a lot, but more as a way to position yourself behind enemies than to strictly dodge their attacks. Because combat in this game is more focused on timing and positioning than it is on getting big combo’s and styling on enemies.

You’re attacks have a slight delay to them. Which sounds terrible, but this is Castlevania. The series was built on the very idea that your attacks, jumps and basically everything you did really would be stiff and deliberate. It was a game about patience and learning the right time to act.

In that regard Belmont’s Curse is just like the old Castlevania games. Because it has that kind of deliberate pace to the combat. Weapons do have basic combo strings, but enemies don’t have hit stop. For the casuals that don’t understand the lingo, that means attacking them won’t interrupt their attacks. You will take many hits if you go in guns blazing.

Instead, you want to try to keep your distance and only attack when you see an opening. Some weapons do have longer ranges than others, and those do make the combat a bit easier to deal with. But you’ll still need to watch yourself when facing multiple enemies at once. This game rewards patience, not brute force. You need to learn to manoeuvre around these guys more than just wailing away at them.

You’ll also want to learn how to use the Tether. This is the first big movement upgrade you get in the game, and it works like a grappling hook. You can latch onto certain spots to reach higher areas or swing around like Spider Man. But you can also use it to grapple onto enemies, and this is one part of the game I love.

In Belmont’s Curse every ability has some functionality in both exploration and combat. The Holy Light ability is used to go through blocks, but it’s also how you parry attacks. The Smash is used to break through floors but can also be used as an attack on enemies below. Unlike in past games where you had abilities exclusive for movement and moves exclusive for combat, here each ability works for both.

The Tether in particular is used for swinging around but it can also be used to tether onto enemies which will not only bring you closer to them, but it’s how you can use each weapon’s unique special move. It’s one of the best methods of getting in and staying on the offensive. This Tether is the best part of the game. Some of the better platforming sections are centred around it, and it makes the combat way more entertaining. I loved zipping around the battlefield and taking these guys out. There is a slight delay to it so you can’t spam it, but it’s a very useful tool.

The combat is a lot of fun. While basic enemy encounters aren’t too difficult, the bosses certainly pose a fun challenge, and it is satisfying learning the enemy patterns and taking them down. And despite it relying more on patience and being deliberate with your actions, it’s still fast paced and exciting.

If there’s one big drawback with it though it’s with the enemies themselves. Because contact damage isn’t a thing here, a lot of the classic enemies had to be reworked with new attacks. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to do shit. In some cases it works, like the Axe Armours aren’t all that different and the Medusa Heads end up not being nearly as bad as they were in the old games.

In some cases though the new attack patterns make them far more annoying. The Fleamen were already an irritating foe, but here… well ok they’re about the same. But now they grapple onto you and drain your health, and their faster movement still make them a pain in the ass. So yeah, these guys still suck.

Then there’s the Bats. I hate these little fuckers. They’re super quick, they dart around sporadically so they’re hard to hit, and they keep respawning, so you’re just forced to ignore them and run away. They aren’t so bad on their own, but when you have to deal with other enemies on top of them then they can go from an annoyance to a full-on irritation. I never thought I’d see a Castlevania where the Bats were the most annoying enemy, but here we are.

Another issue is with the enemy variety. You’ll fight a lot of the same Skeletons and Cursed Armours throughout the game, with many enemies being palette swaps. They do try to change it up occasionally, but it can still get very repetitive fighting the same enemies over and over. It certainly doesn’t match up to the older games in this regard. Those games had a shit ton of different enemies to deal with. This game could have used a few more baddies to fight or at least use some more than they did. You barely see the flying armours for instance despite them being one of the more interesting enemies to fight.

The real variety comes in how you deal with these enemies. You have two forms of attack, your weapons and your Arcana. Your weapons are your primary means of attack and there are seven different types to find that each have four levels of strength. With the stronger levels having more damage and different properties that can affect how they play.

You will have to hunt for these, and because of that you’re guaranteed to find a stronger weapon of a different type than what you might currently be using. You’ll want to experiment with the different weapons in case you need to make the switch. Since if you do find a stronger weapon then you’ll want to use it to make your life easier. That’s just common sense. Also, since you can switch weapons on the fly it helps to have a good secondary weapon that might be better in certain circumstances.

As for the weapons themselves, you have the short sword which is kind of the Coke Classic of the weapons. The most basic one; good for all situations but doesn’t offer many major advantages. The great sword is the slower but stronger weapon, while the twin sword is about speed. The sword and shield meanwhile offers a more defence focused playstyle.

For the non-bladed weapons, we have fists for a close-range combo focused playstyle, and finally the spear and the classic whip for those who want to fight more from a distance. There’s a weapon that fits any playstyle. My personal favourite being the spear for its great range, speed and its projectile attack. I guess the Lecarde family had it right this entire time.

I wouldn’t call any weapon bad, but you will definitely gel with some more than others. I personally didn’t get much out of the fists or twin swords, but you may think they’re the best. They’re their to allow more playstyle options, and I love a game that allows more player expression.

Then there’s the Arcana which to put simply are this games equivalent of the Sub-Weapons/Tactical Souls/well any special moves from any of the previous games really. The secondary attacks meant to compliment your main weapons that cost magic to use.

These are what the tarot cards I mentioned earlier are for. Whenever Rose seals a boss within one this unlocks a new Arcana. There are fifteen Arcana to unlock, technically sixteen but I’ll leave that for you to discover on your own, and they each have a different ability that works as a compliment to your main weapon.

The Arcana surprisingly don’t take much from any of the abilities from previous games. Aside from the first one which is just a basic fireball that’s in every game like this, and The Fallen card which is the cross (because everyone loves the cross) all of them are original.

They get pretty creative too. There’s one that summons gargoyles, a shield that launches shards of stained glass when it breaks, blood spikes that slowly damage foes over time, summoning a giant fist to slam down on enemies, and a medusa head that turns enemies to stone. That last one in particular is very funny to me because it’s an ability ripped directly from the God of War series. Meaning that Castlevania somehow ripped that off yet again. You love to see it.

You can only have one Arcana equipped at a time, which is a bit of a shame since I think there’s some potential in having a few equipped at once. Then again that may have been a little too broken, so I can see why they didn’t let you do that. At the very least it would have been nice to have two builds to swap between like the older game. I mean it isn’t too hard to swap between them, but faffing about in menu’s is always a pace breaker no matter how short it is.

The Arcana are a lot of fun to play around with. Some more so than others, but even the weaker ones have fun applications to figure out. The Arcana can also be upgraded to make them stronger, and the method with which you do this is pretty interesting.

The Arcana don’t improve through experience points, instead each Arcana has up to three mini challenges that earn points that can be spent on the upgrades. Said challenges can range from something as simple as kill a certain number of enemies with the Arcana, to something a bit more advanced like killing certain types of enemies with them, healing or avoiding damage with them, or getting kills in a very specific way.

I really like this upgrade system. It’s a system that tests your knowledge of both the Arcana and the level design. Forcing you to get creative and learn the ins and outs of the Arcana in order to complete the challenges. It is possible to cheese these a little bit, but even that requires some knowledge on the level design and enemy patterns. So it really feels like a system that rewards skill and knowledge rather than grinding or brute force.

Fully upgrading the Arcana will also provide a little more insight into the various bosses. It’s not much but some of it can be interesting and gives the characters a bit more depth. So, you’re given an incentive to upgrade them all. Not a huge incentive admittedly, but it’s something at least.

All this combined makes the combat system very satisfying. Not perfect by any means, but it’s engaging enough and has enough player expression that anyone can pick it up and have fun with it. It does have a slight learning curve in needing to learn enemy patterns, but once you get into the game’s groove it’s not too hard to get to grips with.

I said before that aside from a few bosses the game isn’t that difficult, but if you do find the game too daunting it has plenty of accessibility features to help you get through the game. Nothing I needed, but it’s nice to have these options for those who aren’t as good at these types of games.

Now I still died a few times, and some of the runbacks you have to make when you do can be a bit irritating. If you don’t make liberal use of save points your ass will be trekking back through a good chunk of the level to get to where you were. It isn’t as bad as Silksong got, at least based on what I heard since I never played that, but it can be a spirit breaker when you’re sent way back.

Which I guess leads us into the level design. The final and arguably most important element of any Metroidvania. And if we’re judging the level design in a more general sense then I would say it’s pretty good. It’s got a decent variety of locations, has plenty of secrets to uncover, and offers some interesting environmental puzzle solving.

That last part is one of the elements of Belmont’s Curse that makes it stand out the most compared to other games in the series. There are many puzzles where you need to pay attention to the environment for clues in order to solve them. Ranging from the blatantly obvious like following notes you find, to the very subtle like following paintings in the background.

Most of these are quite clever. With the sole exception of a side quest involving going into the save mirrors. That I don’t think is explained very well and I only figured it out by complete accident. The rest of the time though the puzzles are very intuitive. You’re given just enough of a hint for these things to point you in the right direction without them spelling it out for you.

Even the bosses are things you need to track down. The game will give you clues and you need to decipher them and figure out where the bosses are. I like that because it makes you feel like a hunter tracking its prey. That is what the Belmont’s are after all.

Admittedly this was something that took me a while to adjust to. Since past Castlevania games didn’t use much environmental puzzle solving, I wasn’t mentally prepared for them going into this. I actually wound up running past a lot of optional area’s during my first visits simply because I was just following the map like I did in a lot of the other games. I skipped almost all the second and third tier weapons for a good chunk of the game because of this. You really need to pay attention in this game. Otherwise you will miss a lot of the game’s content.

Because trust me there is a lot you can miss. Belmont’s Curse has entire areas that are completely optional. Levels that you can miss entirely if you don’t explore thoroughly. The game even has three different endings to uncover, with the true ending requiring you to complete the optional areas and challenges.

So you’re encouraged to take your time and look around in order to find everything. The game is good at letting you go at your own pace. It’s very open ended in how you tackle everything. Even the mandatory objectives can be done in almost any order you want for the most part. It has its linear moments, but you are given a lot of freedom in how you go through the game.

There is a lot to do in Belmont’s Curse. It is a much longer game than most of the other Metroidvania titles in the series, and that usually would be a problem for me. I have criticised other games in this series for being a little too long since my favourite Metroidvania’s are usually the short ones. Because I find their quicker pace more fitting for the genre.

But I actually don’t mind the length of Belmont’s Curse. Mainly because the game isn’t designed to be rushed. This is a game where you really need to take your time and take in your surroundings. Does this slower pace work for me? Not fully, but it works for how the game is designed, and when you adjust to the pace the game wants it’s very engaging to explore.

That said I do have a few issues with how the map is designed. One is the actual map itself, the one you pull up in the menu. This one uses a more painterly map style used in more modern Metroidvanias as opposed to the grid style used in the older games, and I’m personally not a fan of it.

I always felt like they sacrificed practicality for style. These kinds of maps may look better, but I don’t think they’re as good at highlighting area’s you haven’t been to yet. I remember Ori and the Blind Forest’s map being particularly bad at that. This could just be me though. I admit that these kinds of maps aren’t inherently bad, I just don’t find them as useful as the classic map style of older Metroidvanias. This is more a preference than an outright issue.

What I do think is an issue is the actual size of the map. This game’s map is massive, at least when compared to the older games. It’s not quite on Hollow Knight’s level of sheer magnitude, but it’s a hefty motherfucker. Which isn’t so bad when you’re just running through areas for the first time, but when you need to backtrack through them it can get tiring.

The game does try to make run backs less painful by having short cuts you can unlock. Those certainly help, but you’ll still be running back through a good chunk of the map if you want to find everything. And with how linearly designed a lot of the areas can get, it makes those run backs far more tedious than they need to be.

Which is compounded by how the maps are connected. And yes, that is maps plural. Because calling it one map is something of a misnomer. Truthfully the game is designed more like Portrait of Ruin or Order of Ecclesia where instead of one big map, you have a set of maps that are interconnected. Less one big maze and more like a group of mazes glued together.

And the individual maps are not smaller like they were in PoR or OoE either. Each one is equally huge with tons to find. This can make trying to sweep the entirety of these maps incredibly exhausting. Add on the long loading screens between areas, and going for completion is made far less enjoyable than it should be.

The game does try to alleviate things by having two forms of fast travel. One using The Ferryman character and the other using the save mirrors. But the former only has one per area, which aren’t always in ideal locations, and the latter doesn’t become fully available until after you finish a side quest that takes half the game at minimum to finish. So they don’t help much. It’s still tedious even with these conveniences.

Full disclosure, I did not fully complete this game. I did get all the weapons and Arcana, most of the relics and upgrades, and I did all the major side quests and got the true ending. So I did “complete” the game I just didn’t get absolutely everything. I did try to get 100%, but trying to find some of the secret areas in maps this big is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The game doesn’t even mark items on the map either, you need to manually use the in-game markers for that.

I will say that I find the map weird in what it does and doesn’t mark. Because it’ll mark blocked passages and breakable floors, but won't mark any of the items? I don’t know that just seems a little random.

I also hate that the game will track map completion percentage but will not tell you what you still need to get in each area. There’s no checklist for the collectables or anything. That is just fucking stupid. It’s 2026, that kind of thing should be a standard feature at this point. At least have it be an unlockable or something.

So yeah, I didn’t go for full completion. It just didn’t seem worth the hassle. At least you don’t need 100% to get the true ending. You just need to do all the major quests and those aren’t that bad to finish. I would recommend just going for the true ending and getting what you can along the way.

The only other major issue I have is the pacing. Namely the rate in getting new weapons and Arcana. This game is kind of weird in that regard. Because in the first few hours you’ll get everything at a fairly decent rate, but then you’ll go hours without getting much new, and then when you reach the final stretch, you’ll start getting things one after the other at a pretty rapid rate. The pacing is a little schizophrenic when it comes to the items.

But that is Belmont’s Curse for good and for ill. Despite my issues with the game, I still greatly enjoyed my time with it. Yes, the music is disappointing, but the visuals and voice acting are great. The map has its problems, but the combat and platforming are a lot of fun. The Relics may be boring, but the weapons and Arcana can be creative and interesting. For everything I have problems with, it does two things really well to make up for that.

Is it the best Castlevania game? In my opinion no. Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night are still the kings and this games deviations from some of the series norms might be off putting for some. However, I do enjoy this new take on the formula and would put it among some of the more enjoyable games in the franchise. About on par with Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia. Both of which are games I thoroughly enjoy, so that is high praise from me.

It’s a pretty meaty adventure with plenty of content to sink into. Sadly though it doesn’t have any additional gameplay modes. No modes where you play as other characters, no New Game Plus, no boss rush, nothing outside the main campaign. Maybe those will be added later via DLC, but that remains to be seen. Right now, you only have the main campaign. Which is still plenty, it just would have been nice to have something extra to add to the replay value.

I would recommend this one. I think it gets enough right that most fans of the series will find it enjoyable. Especially for the price. It being a budget title means you are definitely getting your money’s worth. I will even say I liked it more than Bloodstained. Yeah I said that big whoop want to fight about it.

I don’t know what’s next for Castlevania, but I am glad it’s back. Hopefully this means we don’t have to wait another eighteen years for the next one. Then again I’m a Mega Man fan and had to wait nine years for a follow up to Mega Man 11 so… yeah keep your fingers crossed Castlevania fans.