Since its inception, the Castlevania series has long been about evildoers resurrecting Dracula to take his rightful place as the dark lord. Funnily enough, this is also an analogy for the series itself, which often takes long gaps, only to remind players of its cruelty long enough for us to get complacent.
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is the first Castlevania game in 10 years. Given the influx of Metroidvania games filling the void, it honestly surprised me that the series took this long to receive another title. This entry follows Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor and Sypha Belmont. Even if your only exposure to the series is from the Netflix animated show, you’re likely to have a fairly strong attachment to these characters.
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Coming at around 15 hours (or four if you’re looking for that speedrun achievement), this is a tight-knit retro return for the franchise. Where last year’s Hollow Knight: Silksong was impressive for its breadth of refined content, Belmont’s Curse is far more concise. But that’s not to say it’s a more casual friendly game, oh dear god no.
What immediately struck me was the game’s difficulty. It does not pull its punches. Right from the get-go, you’re treated to an experience that will consistently frustrate and test you, but in a way that’s enticing. By the end of my playthrough, the Cenobites from Hellraiser were probably blushing at how much of a masochist I was becoming, given how often I ran back to certain areas.
All this is to say that Belmont’s Curse is a more-than-worthy entry in the Castlevania franchise, and dare I say, might be one of the best Metroidvanias to come out in recent years.
More Mania, Plenty of Castle
The game opens with a letter from a priest to the Belmont family, informing them that Paris is once again burning and mysterious dark forces are laying waste to the unprepared city. We see Trevor and Rose row suspiciously into town, fully aware of the threats ahead. Shortly after, the pair split up, with Rose eager to prove her worth as an independent Belmont.
The story is pretty barebones, I must admit. The game offers some neat lore and character moments for Rose and the Belmont family, but ultimately it’s more concerned with delivering a fast-paced Castlevania game. Which is fine, in my opinion. Some may find the game a bit too predictable or tread familiar ground, but I think the allure of revisiting this universe and seeing where some of these characters ended up is more than enough.
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At the start of the game, we learn that Rose’s mother gave us special tarot cards that point the way to various bosses. After defeating them, Rose can absorb their power, and they become side characters that talk to us like personalities in Disco Elysium. Even better, they bicker and banter with each other, with some cheering us on and others actively praying for our downfall, like a violent Statler-and-Waldorf act from the Muppets.
Belmont’s Curse can feel pretty isolating while roaming its immaculately designed landscapes, so these voices occasionally interject to offer guidance (or hostile quibbling) and end up feeling fairly welcoming.
Much in Castlevania tradition, there are three different endings to Belmont’s Curse. The first is the bad ending, which you can trigger by trying to fight Dracula way too early. The second is achieved once you reach the bare-minimum threshold for defeating the final boss, and the last is the true ending, which you unlock after completing a few side quests and equipping a certain ability in the final fight. All of these are pretty intuitive, I will say, and it’s very possible to do these without a guide.
But Castlevania isn’t really known for its strong storytelling (the Netflix series is for that). What it’s known for is its brooding environments and difficulty, which the game delivers on spectacularly.
Still Tough As Hell
I’ve foreshadowed a bit why Belmont’s Curse is difficult, but let’s get into the weeds of why. You start off the game with a measly simple spell and sword and are thrown against some simple mobs that on the surface aren’t too tough, but teach you the general loop of the game. Early on, learning how to dodge, what your punish windows for attacks are, and how to handle multiple enemies at the same time are vital skills to pick up on.
Notably, Belmont’s Curse doesn’t have a difficulty slider, so the game doesn’t offer a simple way to adjust its difficulty. Granted, boss runbacks aren’t the most frustrating like in some Metroidvanias, getting stuck on the same boss for a period of time can feel like banging your head against a wall. You can choose to adjust some sliders, such as how much damage Rose does, how resilient enemies are, and how much experience they give. That might be enough to tip you into a win, but I opted not to touch them because I’m stubborn and, admittedly, my ego is too fragile. From what I could tell, levelling up felt like a placebo effect and did very little. I think I only saw my damage number go up by one point every now and then, but it felt purely aesthetic.
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It’s also why I think the first boss in the game is by far one of the hardest. Fighting The Fallen is a pure skill check to make sure you’re paying attention to the tips the friendly ghosts give you and adapting to this game’s combat. To be honest, I didn’t click with the game’s combat at first. It felt way too heavy, and fighting against more agile bosses felt pretty unfair. But, admittedly, I was also being stubborn and fighting against everything Bloodborne taught me.
This boss will throw a cross at you, which will also return to him. Its hitbox means you can’t jump over it, and you can only hit it to make it disappear. A friendly ghost will vaguely tell you this if you’re paying attention. That said, once The Fallen drops below half health, he’ll also chain a Scorpion-like grab move that takes up half the arena, which he’ll chain fairly fast. If you end up getting pushed against a wall, it’s possible he’ll run a gauntlet of his standard combo, the cross, and the whip, which for a first boss, is frustratingly difficult to react to and often means death.
This might seem obvious to most people, but boss fights are closer to puzzles than they are hack-and-slash tests of how reactive you are. The fight against Medusa, for example, is all about keeping your distance, throwing spears from afar and recognising when you have to hide behind a rock to avoid her big damage-dealing attack.
There are some neat gimmicks in fights, too. My personal favourite fight in the entire game is against Carmilla, who isn’t the toughest boss, but definitely tests you in a unique way. You’ll have your standard health pool, but the fight gives you a countdown from eight to zero. If you get hit, your counter goes down, and if it reaches zero, you instantly die. Towards the end of the fight, Carmilla will try to do this to you, but if you have enough counters left, she’ll fail and let you free-hit her until she goes down. It’s a stunning spectacle and proof you’re improving at the game through a real counter.
Now That’s A Castle
In the first section of the game, you roam the streets of Paris to hunt down three bosses and unlock a door. The immediate comparison that came to mind was Diablo 3, where you spend the first act in Tristram in an environment noticeably void of what you’d expect from the series. In Belmont’s Curse, by the time you’ve beaten this third boss, you may be twiddling your thumbs wondering where is this infamous “castle” you’ve been promised. Stick with the game, and your patience is rewarded, because it delivers on the spectacle.
The map here is huge. Almost too huge. I spent hours exploring three different areas without running into the major bosses. I found nearly every clue, all of which pointed me in the right direction, but it was the last step that would allude me, until suddenly it didn’t.
This had mixed results for me. For Carmilla, you’ll locate her in the Library after completing a star sign jump puzzle. You’ll discover these patterns to progress in the area via notes, or, if you’re like me, by accident-jumping around in different patterns until one works. I, a silly bee, forgot to repeat the final star sign and spent an hour dashing around the map looking for the answer. This one was on me, and I spent a good bit laughing at myself for the rookie blunder.
The discovery for the Painter, however, was a pretty negative experience. When you first enter the Castle, you can choose to take on Talos or Carmilla first. You’ll also keep getting vague hints about the Painter along the way. Whether you fight Carmilla or Talos first is up to you (or whoever you can find first), however you’ll need to have defeated Talos before you can reach The Painter. One of the hints will tell you that different portraits of Alucard point the way to him. When you open the minimap, you can see which direction Alucard is pointing, nudging you toward his room.
First, some of these paintings point in the completely wrong direction, which felt like a wild goose chase. Even worse, when you get to the room for the Painter, which is the exact room you think it is, the solution is to jump and stomp on the ground to reveal a hidden tunnel underneath. The game has no other visual indicator of where on the floor you need to jump or how high.
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By sheer luck, stomping on the ground revealed the way, and I was able to enter the area, which didn’t even result in a boss fight, just a conversation confirming that a painting of the Notre Dame is more than meets the eye. I’m not lying to you when I say I scoured the entire castle, walked back to old boss arenas, explored the world multiple times before having to ask a fellow reviewer for the solution because it just wasn’t clicking.
It’s why I’m a little torn on whether or not Belmont’s Curse needed a system like in Star Wars: Jedi Suvivor, where pathways that couldn’t be opened up show up as yellow or green later in the game. I don’t think this is a perfect system, as it gives too much away and removes the satisfaction of uncovering new areas after beating your head against a wall trying to find a solution. That said, I wish there were more indicators that would rule things out.
It’s something I’m conflicted on, as I can acknowledge I had the information right in front of me, and the game’s UI does spell it out. But in those instances where I was running around for hours, fighting the same monsters and finishing the same jumping puzzles, it made exploring feel like a dreaded chore.
A Bloody Good Time
Annoyance with some puzzles being a bit too elusive, I still think Belmont’s Curse is an absolute blast. The boss fights are wonderful spectacles, the platforming puzzles are challenging enough to make Hollow Knight‘s White Palace look Bubsy 4D, and the soundtrack is oozing with atmosphere to steep in. The game delivers on everything you’d want out of a Castlevania game, and is more than a worthy successor to Symphony of the Night.
With the Metroidvania genre having some worthy inclusions over the year, it’s hard for me to say if Belmont’s Curse is among the best out there. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and if you’ve played a lot of games in the genre, it’ll feel pretty familiar. That said, I think it does highlight what makes Metroidvania’s so enjoyable and enticing. If you’re coming off a Silksong run and looking to scratch that Metroidvania itch, Belmont’s Curse will help tide you over.
Quest Daily Scores Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse:
8/10
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
A code for Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse was supplied to QD for the purpose of a review.
