// KOTAKU — GAMING
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse: The Kotaku Review
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is relentless. Sometimes it feels like you’ve been shunted into this never-ending funnel of platforming challenges, emphasis on “challenge,” and once you’ve surmounted one, just when you think you’ve been given a moment to breathe, you’re immediately shuffled into another, harder one. It’s oppressive, it’s frustrating, it is actively damaging my hands as I white-knuckle-grip the controller. And I loved (mostly) every second of it.
In Belmont’s Curse, you are Rose Belmont, only child of Trevor and Sypha Belmont who originated in 1989’s Castlevania III and were more recently seen in the animated Castlevania series on Netflix. The game pulls a lot of characters from that show and adds some new ones too, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed getting to know them through a magical deck of tarot cards Rose carries, a gift from her late mother. As Rose racks up boss bodies, she absorbs their powers, turning them into spells she can use throughout the streets of Paris or within the walls of Dracula’s castle. Throughout the game, her vanquished foes talk to her, with Leon Belmont and Joan of Arc acting as mentors, while Medusa antagonizes her like a rival in a shonen anime. Conspicuously absent from the gaggle of gorgons and ghosts is the third member of the Netflix Castlevania series throuple, Alucard. He’s mentioned, his portrait shows up often, and you can break into his room to swipe his sword and shield, but man, it would have been nice to see my dhampir husband in the pale flesh. DLC perhaps. Maybe? Please???
The spells themselves are fun. One drops a giant fist from the sky, while another is the holy cross that Castelvania-heads will recognize from previous games, dating all the way back to the original. Each spell has powerful upgrades you can unlock by completing “Works of Mercy,” special combat or exploration quests. You almost don’t want to do them, however, as the spells, in combination with your weapon and trinket loadout, can make you almost too strong for the game’s combat challenges.
But there’s not much that can help you with platforming, and platforming feels a little weak. Rose is so much less responsive than her genre colleagues in Hollow Knight: Silksong and elsewhere. Her movements, especially her whip grapple, feel unforgivably slow in situations where hair-trigger timing is critical to stay alive. There’s a mismatch between how fast the game permits Rose to act versus how fast she needs to be to complete some challenges. It’s like compensating for a limp. It can be done, but I’d rather not be limping in the first place.
That said, I still felt a frenetic thrill jumping, dashing, and narrowly avoiding pits of spikes or collapsing fists. Equally thrilling was simple map exploration. Every undiscovered part of the map, represented by a void of squiggles until you make your way there, was a black box I was eager to break into because there would always be a reward waiting for me. Most times it’s a treasure—some kind of trinket or weapon Rose can use.
But even if there wasn’t, the mere act of going there and seeing all there was to see was a reward in itself. Embedded in the map is a brilliant legend the game doesn’t explicitly tell you about. Areas that are purple still have something waiting to be discovered. Areas that are brown are ones you’ve completed. Merely turning a map portion from purple to brown was worth whatever platforming hell it took to get there. A little treat that let’s you know “You have conquered this in full.” And the map is pleasantly huge. You will not weep, for there will be plenty of rooms for you to conquer.
Exploration, detailed scenery, varying biomes with interesting puzzles to figure out.
Floaty controls, a difficulty curve that starts high and ends low, no Alucard 🙁
Combat in Belmont’s Curse, however, is poorly tuned. The first boss fight against Leon feels like a skill check, harder than a first boss should generally be in order to ensure you