Castlevania: Curse of Darkness review

Wing of Faith

I've been gone too much for too long, so I want to make it up to you guys with a whole bunch of reviews.

I'll start off with Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, since I promised Xian83 I'd review it.

Some game series have a failure or two, sometimes many. It’s an honest to goodness fact. But, some games refuse to let their failures get them down. Castlevania is one of those games.

It’s been a long time since Castlevania made its debut in the 3D arena on the Nintendo 64, and after two subsequent 3D titles (both of which were very warmly received), Konami decided to try it again. Here’s my review of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness picks up on the Playstation 2 where Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse left off on the NES almost twenty years ago. Turns out, when Trevor Belmont and company destroyed Dracula, he left a curse upon the land that made people violent, illogical, and just plain mean (as if they needed help). Anyways, although this game is a direct sequel to Castlevania 3, it does NOT directly star any of the characters from the now famous NES title (though Trevor remains an important character in the game’s story). Instead, the game revolves around one of Dracula’s former minions, named Hector, who betrayed the Dark Lord during the events of Castlevania 3. Hector wants revenge for the murder of his wife at the hands of Isaac, his former comrade, and that’s the basic gist of the game. I can’t tell you more about this, because the game doesn’t delve too deep into Hector’s past, but then again, it didn’t need to.

Hector is a Devil Forgemaster, which is a pretty fancy name for what is actually a demonic version of a POKEMON TRAINER. Throughout the game, Hector acquires Innocent Devils, or I.Ds, and each one has a unique set of abilities that allow them to assist Hector in combat, and also allow him to reach new areas, which in turn allow the player to collect power ups and powerful weapons, and also to reach new segments of the game, which moves the story along. I.Ds are pretty stupid though, and will often interrupt your combos by hitting your foe before you finish them off.

The game plays how I would guess Symphony of the Night would have played had it been a full 3D game. Hector can collect weapons and I.Ds, just like Alucard could collect weapons and familiars. Thing is, Hector has a basic attack string which can be launched by mashing the attack button up to five times, with a nice variation of fighting styles and speeds, which means that certain weapons can handle certain situations better than others. In addition to this, pressing the circle button at different points in the combo ends the combo early with a powerful finishing move that depends on the point in the combo at which it was launched. These finishers are more powerful than your average attacks, but are often slower, and leave Hector wide open to an enemy attack. But, they are also quite stylish and flashy, and successfully make you feel warm and fuzzy inside when you manage to kill Isaac or Death with a fully powered finisher.

Also, Hector can put his Devil Forging talent to other uses, like forging weapons. Unfortunately, this requires a LOT of item grinding, which we all hate. However, Iga knew about this beforehand it seems, and added in a “Steal” feature, where you can steal certain rare items from enemies. This ability is CRUCIAL if you want to get Death’s Scythe, the most powerful weapon in the game, but it’s still annoying in its own way, as once again, your I.D will often screw this process up by striking your foe before you can steal the item, meaning you’ll have to wait all over again for another opening.

Now then, these are all cool innovations, but the combat system itself frankly sucks when compared to Lament of Innocence’s awesome combat system, which felt far more like an action game than Curse does. Curse feels more like an action RPG, ala Kingdom Hearts and Crisis Core. You can just mash away at the attack button until a fight is over, which makes for a pretty dull experience.

Occasionally, you’ll enter a room where you must defeat all the enemies to move on, much like in Lament of Innocence. Difference is, here you have to kill the SAME ENEMIES in every room. The bestiary is simply not expansive enough, especially when compared with Symphony of the Night and Lament of Innocence, and this makes combat dull and unentertaining.

The 3D character models and cutscenes are stunningly detailed. There’s a level of detail included in the outfits and FMV’s that far exceeds what Lament of Innocence had to offer. But, this is counterbalanced by the generally poor appearance of most of the areas. Notably bad areas are the Baljhet Mountains and the Infinite Corridor. Notably good areas are the Abandoned Castle and the first half of the Garibaldi Cathedral, which actually look like a castle and gothic cathedral. There’s the slight problem of lack of content though in indoor stages, with rooms and hallways basically being boxes, unlike in Lament where they had much more content, like statues and carvings to ogle when you weren’t busy killing the local monsters. It didn’t bother me on my first run through the game, but on subsequent runs, it killed all of my desire to explore the areas for full map completion.

While we’re on the subject of locations, this particular world is HUGE. Each area is quite long, especially given the fact that you are treading this entire game ON FOOT. Hector’s not slow by any stretch, but some of the areas just seem to go on FOREVER because of the length. “Infinite Corridor” indeed. Most of the game is spent simply trying to get from “point a” to “point b”, and that is NOT fun.

One area where the game excels is the boss battles. There’s not a boring fight in the bunch. From the Crazy Armor to the final fight with Dracula, each boss battle ups the challenge and enjoyment factor, and during each battle, you forget how long and awful the stage you just slogged through was. As you get closer to the end, the boss battles become faster and more frantic, and by the end of the game, things get to the point where you feel as if your arteries are about to explode from the sheer stress.

Even if the stages are dull and repetitive, the game SOUNDS perfect. All the voice acting is splendidly done, and the game features such talent as Crispin Freeman (always a good choice), Reuben Langdon (Dante fangirls may squeal now), and Steve Blum provides a perfect voice for Dracula, which almost makes us forget the awful English voice he did for Vincent Valentine in Advent Children. The music is once again handled by series mainstay Michiru Yamane, and aside from a few weak tracks, the soundtrack is every bit as good as Symphony of the Night.

Grading this game was difficult. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness may not have lived up to the legacy left behind by Symphony of the Night and Lament of Innocence, but just because it isn’t a new “best game evah” doesn’t mean it’s bad. The game has many good points, and even though there are equally many bad points, the game ends up shining in the end. No one ever said trudging across a whole country on foot to kill the Lord of Darkness would be laughs and giggles, and this game doesn’t claim such. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness makes the player feel Hector’s pain, and I give it props for that “flaw”, because when you look back on this experience, you can realize just how intriguing an experience this was. As annoying as the faults of this game are, they do not make completing this games, as Adam Sessler put it in his review of Symphony of the Night, “an act of masochism”. The new features, clunky as they are, and the qualities put into it by the actors and music are just what this game needs to push it out of the realm of terribleness, and into the realm of forgettable enjoyment.

I award Castlevania: Curse of Darkness with a score of 6 out of 10.
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Warrior of the Dark Moon · Lair Staff/ Moderator Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 365

The Pokemon Trainer line is epic.

Nightmare · Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 6:12 am Post subject:

I'll be honest with you, I didn't like it. Confused

Xian83 · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:11 am Post subject:

Thanks for the review. *hug*

Although a 6 out of 10 wasn't what I was hoping for...

Lovely Mai · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:29 am Post subject:

Isaac = REASON TO BUY THE GAME!!
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Esperenza Grace · Chieftain Joined: 10 Apr 2008 Posts: 151

Hector was poorly executed, and Isaac was too flamboyant for me. The gameplay was full of holes, and all around, I consider the game HORRIBLE.

Say what you will, but that's my take.
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