Castlevania: Belmont's Curse

• Genre: Exploratory Action Platformer (MetroidVANIA)
• Spoiler Free Review: Pretty much.
• Time Played: 20 hours.
• Too Short/Long: It's pretty solid where it's at.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Really good. It's definitely a little bit different than most Castlevania soundtracks, but it's also much more removed from most Castlevania games in terms of when it was created, but I thought it was for the most part really good.
• Why I played: Castlevania. I've always been a huge Castlevania fan and it's been a long time since we got a "proper" Castlevania - 18 years in fact. I actually do enjoy the Lords of Shadow series, but it's definitely something apart from the standard series.
• Jank: For the most part it's pretty solid. One or two instances of the character having to be replaced somewhere by the game because they were stuck under or above something, and just a couple moments of frame rate drop. The bigger problem I experienced, and I'm not sure if this was a bug or like a memory leak or something, but the game did crash on me like 5-6 times. It was always while interacting with the map, and usually pretty close to, if not right after a save, so no, or very little lost progress, so just booted the game right back up. I played on Switch, and I assumed there would be a Switch 2 version/upgrade and am very surprised there's not. It probably would have run a bit smoother had it been.
• Difficulty: This was pretty solid. There was a good deal of variety in level design, so a lot of the platforming challenges felt challenging at first, but then fun enough to navigate once you learned them. The combat also felt pretty well balanced to me. Some boss fights were maybe a bit too short, taking only a minute or two first try, but I prefer that to them being drawn out.
• Something I liked: The backgrounds visuals really popped and were far more captivating than the backgrounds of the majority of 2d games, I found myself constantly admiring the backgrounds. I also loved the Arcane whip and it's essential part in the gameplay of this game.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm extremely pleased. I played a few other metroidvania's this year after having fallen off for awhile (0 in 2024, only 2 in 2025), and while they were fun for what they were and each had a gimmick of their own, this is in a class of it's own.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would. This is among the best Castlevania games. It's definitely a much more modernized Castlevania, while still playing tribute to the past. It has a lot of a fan service for long-time fans, but you don't really need to know anything to pick this one up right away.
  

I finished Castlevania: Belmont's Curse last night and I'm still kind of processing it, and usually that doesn't happen unless a game really blows me out of the water. I'm not sure it blew my mind like that, it certainly isn't life changing or really breaking any new ground. It was just really fun, a really good time. It's a good game, and I enjoyed it the whole way through.

A complaint I think I've made before about a lot of modern metroidvania's is the focus on the combat while exploring. A lot of these games wear me down because every single enemy is a fight for my life. This Castlevania just so happens to treat it more like... Castlevania. You have basically 4 tiers of enemies before you get to bosses.

Annoying little guy - One shot, even from the beginning of the game. Probably flies and is hard to hit.
Regular guys - 2-3 hits the first time you encounter them, 1 shot later on. Might have an "elite" skin that takes two attack chains or so.
Big Guys - you do actually have to fight them, dodge some moves, multiple attack chains on them. Later on, they may take a whole attack chain. Also might have an "elite" skin.
Really Big Guys - These are almost like mini-bosses. See above for how to fight, but they really only get demoted to less attack chains, probably never one. Big ass skeletons that take up the whole ass screen and such.

So once you've made some progress and are back tracking, the only things really in your way are the Big guys onward. Another aspect is that you're rarely if ever locked into combat, and enemies don't really chase you down. Some other games do that. Not that it inherently makes the game bad, but if you're talking a huge gigantic map with tons of back and forth exploration, that can grow tiring when you're just trying to get from point A to B. Belmont's Curse never really felt tiring... in that aspect.

I saw some complaints about this game. I actually saw a lot of complaints, and it really made me made because I largely disagree with the majority of them, but one I saw a couple times was addressing the fast travel. For a game of it's size, some people would say it doesn't have enough save rooms/fast travel points, and I don't entirely think that's fair. I think the balance of them is pretty fair. Do I sometimes wish there was a faster route? Maybe, but when I was very end game and decided to try to 100% the game, I didn't really find it that troublesome at all. Early game the fast travel points are much further apart because it works two different ways, and there is a particular area that maybe if you don't explore you don't get the best version of fast travel. Sometimes being too generous with those save points/fast travel locations can suck the fun out of it, you get to experience the game less because you're so close to always making forward/linear progress, but I get that having them too far apart can grow tiring, and maybe those who don't make an effort to do everything don't get the better versions?

Almost all other complaints I saw I felt like were what I would consider "invalid", not that people can't have different tastes or opinions, but that's all it was, rather than something more tangible at fault of the game design. "It uses too many buttons" I find to be one of those "invalid" complaints. Our controllers all have the same amount of buttons, there are literally tons of games that use all the buttons. People who play PC games often use even more "buttons". Skill issue.

That complain is probably tied more to the platforming challenges this game offers. There are these floating rock formations you can stand on or wall jump off of in the game you can dissipate with one of the buttons to travel through. A lot of the challenges use those, surrounded with spike traps, along with the other button - my favorite button, the Arcane Whip, to latch onto and swing from grapple points, in addition with needing to do some sliding and air dashing. I think it all works really well together, but I think this complaint comes from people who maybe have the opposite tastes as me and actually prefer the approach of metroidvanias I complained about above - where it's more combat focused and each enemy is a challenge, requiring parries and precise timing, rather than navigating your fight with them through this kind of platforming.

I love the Arcane Whip. One of my biggest complains about the Castlevania series had always been "not enough grappling", you have a whip, and it's used from time to time for certain games, but not entirely all too much. It's a necessary/primary mechanic in this game. There are three different kinds of grapple points, pull-yourself-to, swing, and... pretty much any enemy. The enemy one will pretty much act as the pull-yourself-to, but if you immediately attack you'll do a special grapple attack. It is kind of funny you pull-yourself-to even small enemies like bats, but I guess if you were actually attacking them in anyway, they would just die and it would be pointless to pull them to you. So all in all, I'd say it works pretty well and I'm glad that a Castlevania game finally fully embraced grappling with the whip(a whip I suppose, there are also whip weapons, which are separate).

Overall, this might be one of if not my favorite Castlevania games. It could just be because it's been awhile since I played a new one, but I definitely think it's up there with my favorites, Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon, Order of Ecclesia... actually now that I put them all there, I can say I like it more than any of them. Even Symphony of the Night as I'm sure everyone I say this to will groan at me for in the days to come.

The only game I'm not sure if it's better than is Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which I've previously declared as the best "Castlevania" game, again, to much protest, but if we're being honest Bloodstained is just a more modern, improved upon Symphony of the Night.