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Another average 3D entry in the Castlevania series

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 46 / 51
Date: November 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Castlevania: Curse Of Darkness (2005.)

INTRODUCTION:
Ever since its conception in the latter half of the eighties, the Castlevania series has been my all-time favorite video gaming series. Vampire hunting had never been so cool before this, and it never will be again. All through the years, a number of excellent games in the series have been released. There have been a few games, though, that fell below the mark. The treks the series took into a three-dimensional environment were often among the most questionable. The Nintendo 64 games, while excellent platform-style games that stayed true to the gameplay of earlier games in the series, were far too linear and short. Likewise, the first Playstation 2 entry in the series, Lament Of Innocence, featured beautiful graphics but little else. Now, Konami has taken a second crack at the whole three dimensional thing. The second entry for the Playstation 2, Curse Of Darkness, has finally arrived (the game is also available for the X Box.) Read on for my review, and see how it fares.

OVERVIEW:
Konami released Castlevania: Curse Of Darkness in early November of 2005 in America. The game features single-player combat that fuses elements of action, adventure, and RPGs. At its time of release, the game retails for fifty dollars. It is available for Playstation 2 and the X Box.

REVIEW:
There's not much to say, really. This game is the best three-dimensional Castlevania released so far. Unfortunately, though, that really isn't saying much. While an excellent game, it seems rushed. Keep reading for a look at the game, what it's about, what it does right, what it does wrong, and how it fares overall.

-THE STORY:

It is three years after the conclusion of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (released on the NES in 1990 in America.) Trevor Belmont and his cohorts have defeated Dracula, at least for now. However, in his death, Dracula put a curse on the land. One that corrupted people and plagued all of Europe. And one individual who is seeking to gain power and conquer is an old pupil of Dracula's. You play the role of another of Dracula's pupils who gave up serving the dark lord. Your former ally had your lover murdered, and now you're out for revenge. To stop him, though, you'll have to regain abilities you renounced when you initially gave up serving evil.

-THE GOOD:

-GRAPHICALLY, THIS IS THE BEST CASTLEVANIA TO DATE! Just one look at these graphics, and you'll definitely agree with me here. The Castlevania series has never looked so good in three dimensions. The graphics in gameplay and cutscenes alike are awesome.

-YOU CAN FIND ELEMENTS AND USE THEM TO CREATE NEW EQUIPMENT! This is one of the more innovative features of the game, and one of my personal favorites. By finding enough of a certain element or two, you can combine the elements to create new weapons, armor, or accessories. There are different elements everywhere, so this feature stays fresh all the way through.

-THE GAME USES THE RPG LEVEL-UP SYSTEM. This was something Lament Of Innocence lacked, and I'm glad to see it made an appearance here. Now, there's actually a purpose to fighting through legions of bad guys. The RPG elements are one of my favorite things that some games in this series offer - I just wish more of them had them.

-DEVIL FORGERY IS ONE OF THE GAME'S UNIQUE FEATURES. You can find demons in the castle, and summon them to assist you. Every one has different abilities, and like you, they level up when enemies are killed. As you collect crystals, they can evolve and become stronger. A very nice feature.

-THE GAME CLEARS UP MANY OF THE MAJOR FLAWS THAT LAMENT OF INNOCENCE HAD. For one thing, the combo system is gone. This thing was totally out of place in the Castlevania universe, and was one of the major things that caused Lament to be branded a Devil May Cry rip-off. Alternatively, many of the complex and annoying things the earlier game had are done away with here. This makes the experience more enjoyable.

-THE BAD:

-THE GAME, AS A WHOLE, SEEMS RUSHED. I'm guessing that this game could have been something more elaborate, if only Konami would have taken their time with it.
However, I'm guessing that they rushed to get it out as quickly as possible, both so that it would be readily available for the 2005 Holiday Season, and so that they could cash in on the success of the excellent Dawn Of Sorrow for the Nintendo DS. Seriously, couldn't they just have delayed the game and worked on it longer? Nintendo has no problem delaying games to fine-tune them (just looked at how many times they delayed The Legend Of Zelda - Ocarina Of Time for the Nintendo 64!) Come on, Konami! I'd rather have games delayed and made excellent rather than rushed and made mediocre - and I'm sure other gamers feel the same.

-TOO SHORT! More likely than not, if you're a devoted gamer, you'll cruise through this game in less than a week. As such, the game definitely comes of seeming more like a rental title than something you should shell out fifty bucks for.

-TOO EASY! Looking for the same challenge games that came earlier in the series offered? If you're looking for a challenge, you're not going to find it here. Sorry.

-I FIND THE MATURE RATING QUESTIONABLE. Quite honestly, this game is no more violent than any Teen-rated Castlevania game - the only difference is that the violence is in three dimensions. Granted, this is the ESRB's fault, not Konami's.

-RELEASES LIKE THIS MAKE ME QUESTION WHETHER OR NOT THERE WILL EVER BE A GOOD THREE-DIMENSIONAL CASTLEVANIA. Yes, this is a good game, but it's not a great one. All the great Castlevania games are two-dimensional. This is Konami's FOURTH attempt at making a great three-dimensional Castlevania game, and once again, they have fallen flat on their backs. Maybe they ought to stick to making the series consist of side-scrollers.

OVERALL:
Overall, I think I've made my final opinion of this game pretty clear. It's a good game, but it's certainly not a great one. It's the best three-dimensional Castlevania so far, but even that isn't saying much. I strongly recommend the game as a weekend rental, but not as something you should go down to the store and lay down the fifty bucks for. Even if you're a die-hard Castlevania fan like myself, rent this one. Don't buy it. You can get through this game in a single rental, and it will put you out six dollars rather than fifty. Just trust me on this one.

EDITION NOTES:
Not a whole lot to say here. The game is a recent release, and as such, it is readily available in most major stores that carry video games. It's also readily available as a rental title in most video stores and on most online video game rental services.

The Curse of 3D Castlevania Games!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is a game that even the die-hard Castlevania fan might not much get into. Lament of Innocence wasn't a terrible game, but it wasn't great. And Curse of Darkness just goes to show that when a 3D Castlevania game marches forth, it has problems. Sometimes scary problems. Like Lament of Innocence, it had so much potential to be good--this title more so. But it doesn't deliver, and that's a sad revelation to admit to, especially after having so much enjoyment with the DS smash: Dawn of Sorrow.

Ever since the 1997 all time best, Symphony of the Night, so many main characters in the series have to be like Alucard in SOME way. Hector in Curse of Darkness is no exception. He looks a little like Alucard.

But we're not here to discuss that. Hector is a Devil Forgemaster, one who has given up his powers. Dracula is dead, but the land is overun with the curse of monsters on the world of Valachia. Hector, however, isn't concerned about what kind of shape the world is in. He's more concerned about an evil Devil Forgemaster by the name of Issac, who has killed his beloved. If you couldn't guess, it's time for revenge. And so Issac leads Hector into a place full of traps and obstacles he must overcome. And by doing so, Hector will slowly recover his Devil Forgemaster skills and whatnot. The story actually unfolds with excellent voice-acting, but there isn't much story.

Since Symphony of the Night we've been given this Metroid style exploration when it comes to Castlevania. This is marvelous, and once again, makes its way into the 3D world of Castlevania. You explore a large castle riddled with goodies. This includes weapons, subweapons, armor and much more.

Playing the game can be quite fun. Most of the game, as you might have guessed, is spent running through endless hallways of defeating monsters. That isn't as boring as you might think. You can perform some cool looking combos on enemies, but each one must be finished with the circle button. You can also lock onto enemies and perform combos. This makes the camera go crazy, though, but this is forgiveable. Battling without locking on is actually much better, and it isn't too hard to do without. Although, if you want to steal from your enemies, you'll have to lcok on to 'em. Speaking of stealing, it's nice that you can actually do that. Many a time a monster will leave himself open for stealing. This usually occurs while it recovers from taking damage. Again, you must be locked on for it to happen.

Likewise, unlike Lament of Innocence, they actually use the level up system. In other words, there's actually a point to battling through hordes of monsters this time.

You also have little helper monsters. You can compare them to the familiars found in other Castlevania games (like Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorror), but the better comparison would be Pokemon. They lend their assistance and gain experience from defeating enemies, just as you do. It's nice not to have to go at it alone, but we Castlevania veterans would prefer to go at it alone. Each enemy also drops evolution crystals. Collect enough of them and your monster will evolve. You won't grow to like them, though. That's the sad part, and they don't really enhance the gameplay. The monsters have special abilities, though. Golem like creatures can open heavy doors, imps let you bury underground. But you can't help but admit it would be nice if your little innocent devils were actually characters. Also, no evolution crystal is the same. You can take advantage of the system by collecting different types of crystals and seeing how your little buddies evolve.

One of the nice things about being a devil forger, you can make your own weapons! And Hector can do it at any time he wants! That's right, no running back to some stupid shop to do it! Monsters often drop raw materials, and you can use them to make new weapons or make your current weapons stronger. You can do this simply by opening the menu. I don't know about you, but that's pretty satisfying to me to be able to do that.

The weapons have their own little downside however. With the exception of the sword, none of them are highly helpful in combat. You start the game off with a short sword, and you'll grow accustomed to its fast speed and easy use. Other weapons just aren't fast enough, and enemies aren't weak to a certain weapon "type". This makes the weapon crafting system a little useless at some points. Unless you're a person who likes to use "cool" looking weapons as opposed to swift and powerful weapons, you won't have THAT much use for the weapon crafting system, except to power up your sword. Thus, experimenting with weapons garners no fun.

It is pretty cool, I must say, to be venturing somewhere that isn't Dracula's castle. Instead you actually venture through the world of Valachia. Meaning you'll trek through swamps, mountains, valleys and a lot more. So if you're tired of Dracula's castle, this is quite a change.

The problem with this "world" is that you don't see enough of it. There's not enough detail to it. You have to follow a beaten path (so it isn't really that different than Dracula's castle in Lament of Innocence), so you can't go off and just explore the places you're at. The game also suffers from what Lament of Innocence suffered from: the lack of detailed enviroments. You'll no doubt run down the same path/hall/corridor several times over. If it weren't for the map you'd find yourself lost, thinking you must be in one of those "looping" ares, or that you took a wrong turn and ended up running in a circle.

The monsters are also not so great. What I love about the 2D Castlevania games (especially in the new Dawn of Sorrow) is how much variety is thrown into the monsters. The attacks they use on you. Even if they're the same looking monster, they throw in some new attack that you don't expect. Curse of Darkness (like Lament of Innocence) has no variety. You'll run into the same batch of monsters constantly, and they'll never do something new. Later in the game you'll find yourself fighting nothing but reincarnates of different colored monsters that do nothing new. Likewise, all the monsters you'll ever see are encountered pretty early on. The moment you run into an Axe Armor, you've run into 'em all! They'll never change.

I sound like I'm being picky about the enemies thing, but I'm not. It takes away from the challenge of the game. The fact that reincarnates don't do anything new makes it more true. And that's not the worst part: the game overall just isn't a challenge. The bosses can be, at times, but if you've been playing 3D action games, I think you'll find even the more challenging bosses to be no challenge at all. The early boss battles in the game are fairly easy. Later on, however, they get start to get hard, and that's when battling them actually becomes fun. Again, though, if you're an action/adventure pro, you'll probably beat most of them on your first try.

I wish I could say the graphics are great. Hey, Hector looks great in combat. But the enviroments don't have enough detail. Too many of them are simple everyday enviroments we've been seeing for a long time now. Where's the detail? You know... like... maybe the leaves on a tree moving? We're at that point where there could be some kind of interation with the enviroment, instead of it seeming like we're running through a still-life painting. Visually, it doesn't look half bad. It's just that there could be so much more. The bosses look cool, and the framerate doesn't slow down at all, but there isn't enough variety, or detail.

However, I must say this: the music sounds AWESEOME! As usual, the Castlevania games have some of the best music there is to be heard in gaming! Is it better than Symphony of the Night? No, it's not. It isn't better than Lament of Innocence either (which also had steller music), but it is still among the best you'll ever hear in a video game. Likewise, the voice acting is actually really really GOOD! I just wish I could've heard more of it!

Curse of Darkness had the potential to be a good game. But there are a lot of things that keep it down. It's a fairly fun game to play, but it lacks innovation. You won't be able to separate it from the other action/adventure 3D games. It's got nothing that makes it stick out.

If you MUST have this game, however, I'd say wait for a price drop. If you're really looking for a good Castlevania game, I'd suggest getting a hold of "Dawn of Sorrow". It's a much better game.

The Good:
+Great Music! Some of the best in gaming!
+Good weapon system
+It's pretty fun to play
+You can steal from enemies!
+Great Voice acting!

The Bad
-Little innovation
-Lack of cutscenes to advance the story
-Too much of the game gets recycled too fast
-Too easy
-The game doesn't look bad, but there's little imagination in the environments
-Not a whole lot of different enemies
-It's too easy
-Boring level designs (not enough of them)
-You just can't help that the game has almost no innovation! It's no different than your average action/adventure 3D game

Get Dawn of Sorrow, or one of the other 2D versions of the game. They seem to fare so much better than this one does. Even the die-hard fan of Castlevania has to admit this one is rather bland.

A step down from Lament of Innocence? Sad but true...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: November 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I was really looking forward to this game. Lament of Innocence was fun, but just, well, lacking in several departments. CoD appeared to have the same graphics engine, but they added back in more of the role playing elements, and it appeared to have more Symphony of the Night type attributes, so I thought it would be a step up (if a small one) from LoI.

Alas, I was wrong. I almost bought this game at full price, but decided to rent it instead. I'm very glad I did. This game is, in my opinion, worse than LoI and not fun to play at all. Everything comes off as dull and uninspired. Yeah, you power up with experience, but that alone doesn't make it much more interesting. The Innocent Devils are a novel idea but just don't come off as being that fun (even developing them isn't interesting), and the ability to create your own weapons and armor from items you find, which seemed very cool when I heard about it...just isn't that interesting I'm afraid. Sure, there are a ton of weapons, but most of them are useless, and rarely do you get a weapon that makes you feel like you've really gained an advantage. The stealing ability is just tedious.

And the camera...oi, I hate it. It is hard to control and poorly positioned almost always when you let it go on its own. At first I was excited to hear you could control the camera (the static one in LoI got on my nerves) but it actually made it worse. It is very detrimental to combat and gets confused very easily when action really heats up. Plus, you can't look up, only side to side. This really annoyed me as well. If I'm given camera control, I want to be able to look in ALL DIRECTIONS!

Overall, I'm sad to say I think this is a VERY poorly designed game, and the worst part of all is the level design. Huge, expansive, flat, and boring as hell. Uninteresting tunnels stretch on and on as you slowly have to run down them and maybe 'yaawn' occasionally battle a few skeletons and 'yaaaaawn' and then you walk through a door to another tunnel exactly 'yaaaaaaawn' like the last. How can they even call this Castlevania!? There is NO platforming (even less than what meager bit there was in LoI), Hector runs infuriatingly slow, monsters are sparse, a pain to battle in most cases, repetitive, and just plain uninteresting, and the environments are just so bland and generic! The environments are even less interesting than LoI. And I don't care what anyone says, the music in this game ISN'T THAT GOOD!

I didn't even feel like I was playing a Castlevania game. Indeed, it is Castlevania in name only. Beyond the name, it's just an inferior Devil May Cry clone. As a hardcore Castlevania fan, I hate to bash it this way, but it's sadly true. There are hardly any ties to or trademarks of the series. It was cool seeing Trevor, but that's about it. I have finally given up on this series, unless they release a true 2D Castlevania for a console again (why, oh why can't you just do it!? With modern graphics a 2D Castlevania would be a smash, and I don't understand why they can't see this).

Yeah, I know, I'm just wishing on stars. Castlevania fan or not, rent this one, don't buy it.

An average game in all respects

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off Konami have been very misleading with the info they provided about this release. They said that there were lots of unlockables and extras to compensate for Lament Of Innocences lack of them. There are hardly any, and the ones that are there are very poor.

The game is a far cry from Symphony of the Night on the PS1 which is regarded as the best ever castlevania game. In this there is a very rushed feeling, there is no character portrait you are referred to as "player". The item list is small, and not very exiting. Combat is decent and you can pull of some impressive attacks, especially with the unarmed fighting style. The music is dull and very repetitive.

The game ending though brief is good and satisfying, though there aren't that many cutscenes in the game. Also Konami said there were 150 enemies, that's very misleading most of them are different colour versions of older ones. Thus you might see the same creature take up 3 or 4 spots in the listing. There is also no returning characters/enemies like the Succubus which is a shame.

Trevor Belmont is back and the interaction between you and him is good and interesting. Also the dialogue is decent and instead of bad sounding modern speech they talk as if in the period which is great.

Also the game is far too easy and those whining about it being too hard ought to stick to childrens games, You will rarely lose a fight in this game except against the end boss.

Overall an OK experience but falls way short of expectation, and with Konami lying to customers you have to question their interest in the series anymore as they can do better than this.

Overall 6.5/10

Another mediocre 3D entry in an otherwise great and long-lived game series

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It seems that Konami just can't bring the richness of the old 2D Castlevania games to life as a 3D game. First "Lament of Innocence" (LoI) presented us with a lackluster 3D rendering of the Castlevania series, and now "Curse of Darkness" (CoD) follows in its footsteps. For those who remember the old side-scroller Castlevania games, you'll remember that there were a lot of little details that made the game a visual feast. As you made your way through Dracula's castle, haunted paintings would come to life, the spirit of a watchman wept for his dog when you slew it, and ghostly dancers would spiral about in a macabre pirouette as you made your way through a ballroom.

With CoD, you get none of that. While the graphics themselves are respectable, the level designs are fairly bland and straightforward. In fact, it's pretty obvious where the collision boundaries lie, because there is absolutely no interaction with the environment - aside from smashing a singular kind of sconce for money, hearts, and other goodies. So in a cave there may appear to be an interesting alcove here and there, but your character can't even approach it because it's past the collision boundary set for the room. There are some visual effects, like rays of moonlight filtering through windows... but there are none of the spooky little details gamers have come to love from Castlevania games. Overall, the level designs are linear and boring, which often makes it a chore to have to backtrack through them once you get an "Innocent Devil" (ID) that allows you to access a new section of an area you previously fought through. Overall the animation on the characters in the game is good, but the CGI sequences are somewhat stiff looking, despite some decent rotoscoping used to convey the characters' body language.

In CoD, you'll be able to pick up raw materials left by enemies and forge them into new weapons and armor. While this sounds cool, the end result isn't much different than finding new weapons, and can sometimes lead you into trouble if you haven't saved your game recently. Occasionally you'll find some special materials that lead you to believe that you'll be able to use them to forge some dynammite weapons. Unfortunately, while this is sometimes true, at other times you wind up forging something silly like a frying pan, squeaky hammer, broomstick, or cowboy hat. The large diversity of weapons is basically an add-on, and not really of much use. For the most part, you'll probably find yourself working your way up the fairly decent ladder of swords. There are also axes, spears, "knuckle" weapons like claws, and special weapons which are sometimes useful, and other times more silly garbage. As a result, you'll get some good items as you progress, but also wind up carrying around a lot of extra, useless items that simply clutter up your inventory. Finding new weapons would have been a lot more straightforward, as the combining system seems forced , awkward, and ultimately pointless.

Likewise, you also forge your Innocent Devils. Most of them look fairly uninteresting, and a few of them look downright silly. Your nemesis, Issac, parades around with a fairly impressive looking devil in many of the CGI sequences, but you get stuck with throwbacks from The Wizard of Oz. At times these IDs prove handy. In fact, one of the IDs... the silliest looking of them all... can take out the first form of the final boss in almost 2 hits!! But, a lot of the time they just get in your way, blocking the view by flying in front of the camera and such. Also, there are moderately extensive evolution trees for your IDs.

Your IDs evolve by collecting "Evo Crystals" that are dropped by slain enemies. The kind of crystal dropped depends on the weapon you are using. Different crystals will make the IDs evolve in different ways. The problem is that while there are many combinations to evolving an ID, they require you to fight through levels over and over simply to gain enough crystals (generally between 40 and 90) to evolve your ID. This wouldn't be a problem if the levels weren't uninteresting and the battles weren't repetitive. But, as a result of the bland design and uninteresting combat, you probably won't care enough about the game to want to evolve your IDs in all of the ways possible.

Another problem comes from the fact that the leveling system is like an experience point-based RPG system. As you gain EXP, you level up and with your level increase comes raises in hit points, damage, defense, etc. You can get up to level 99, but by the time you're close to the end of the game, you'll only be around level 50 or 60 without any real "grinding" (fighting simply for EXP, not to progress the game).

This creates a problem in relation to the relative ease of the game. For the most part, the monsters and bosses are no real challenge regardless of what level you're at. You just dodge their attacks and hit back when you can and you beat them in no time. In later levels, you may get so sick of bashing the same monsters over and over that you'll just run past them and not worry about fighting them.

That is...... until the final boss. The final boss has two forms and deals a LOT of damage in the second. While there are a few useful odds and ends dropped here and there for healing items, the kinds of healing items you can actually purchase are almost worthless. You can only find one or two healing items that fully recharge your health. The ones you can buy will give you 200 to 50 HP back. The added problem is you can only carry 3 to 5 of these, so your healing ability is VERY limited if you've been using special healing items through the game instead of hoarding them for the very last boss.

So, the problem this creates is that the game is very easy until the very end. Then it is so hard that you'll almost have to level up to 99 just to have a fighting chance. By this time, however, you probably will be so sick of the game that you won't care about beating it and will just be glad to wash your hands of it.

Fortunately, you can find the ending CGI sequence on YouTube so that you're not forced to fight the final boss if you're just sick of it.

It's a pity. The Castlevania series was such a rich tapestry of gothic details in the 2D games, but seems to have become just a watered-down vaguely horror-based button masher in its 3D incarnations. Seriously, Nightmare Creatures was a better gothic game than any of the 3D Castlevania games to date.

too judgemental

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

the game is taking a hell of a lot of flack when it really isn't that bad! the story is predictable, but it's been established that the game of the bad guys in castlevania is to steal a man's woman and watch him squirm. the music isn't bad, i think of it as being like symphony of the night but with a slight dracula's curse sound. two games in the series with the best music. as far as difficulty goes, it's hard until you realize you should concentrate more on dodging than the offensive. in the fight with trevor, i thought it was impossible to get his life down. i later realized i had to watch for his weak points and move in. so if anything, that's a better point in a game. in the process of that, i wasn't getting angry with it because of the real fact that you're fighting a belmont! so he was kicking the hell out of me, but i thought it was awesome. so yes it's not the best castlevania ever made, because we all know which one that was. but this game really is what castlevania is when thrown into the third dimension. love it or hate it, just give it a chance.

Second Verse, Same as the First...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"Castlevania: Curse of Darkness" is a game that fails in two very important areas. First of all, it does very little to improve upon the formula of its predecessor, "Lament of Innocence" -- and there was already a lot of room for improvement. Second, and of equal importance, is the fact that it fails to evoke the "Castlevania" brand nine times out of ten. With little in the way of nostalgia going for it to longtime vets of the Konami series, and very little to offer that's new in any way, it's very nearly a bust.

Fortunately, there is something to be said for mindless hacking and slashing. This "Curse of Darkness" has in great supply. Combat is frequent, fast, furious, and smoothly animated. The controls are highly responsive, making for some excellent arcade-like battle sequences. Enemies are many and varied, and far more memorable than their "Lament" counterparts, and this is true of boss encounters as well. Here, at least, the developers decided to take the initiative and move forward a few steps.

Level designs remain unchanged since "Lament," however. The flat, narrow and generally unadorned corridors were one of that game's greatest flaws -- and the same is true of "Nanobreaker," another Konami effort from the same producers. You might rightfully expect something to have been done about this after two games were fashioned of the same broken mold, but you would be mistaken if you were to assume as much. Although the environments are diverse and strive to have their own gothic personality, each one is basically the same as the last once you move beyond the aesthetics. Even though "Curse" offers more outdoor areas, they are merely a novelty, as they are designed in the exact same fashion as all those halls and corridors. The word "linear" doesn't even begin to cover it.

One unique gameplay element unique to "Curse" are summoned creatures called Innocent Devils. The game makes much ado about them, and they do prove useful during the course of the campaign, but they certainly don't revolutionize the gameplay inherent in the series. In fact, their presence gives "Curse" more of a generic fantasy vibe than one of "Castlevania" origins.

This just doesn't feel like "Castlevania." For all its faults, at least "Lament" managed a few real nostalgic moments. Not so here, apart from some returning enemies and a soundtrack that pays homage to the Nintendo originals. A good storyline might have gone a long way to make this game better than the sum of all its parts, but no such luck here either. The new hero character, the Forgemaster Hector, is brash and unlikable, the actor portraying him always screaming his lines. To make matters worse, it's the usual anime fluff about slain girlfriends, rival peers, and a desire for vengeance... which makes it virtually identical the plot of its predecessor.

Unless you loved "Lament," there's very little reason to go out of your way to play "Curse." Even longtime "Castlevania" enthusiasts aren't guaranteed a good time here. That said, if you have a space in your schedule between "Devil May Cry" games and don't mind some mindless hacking and slashing, you could do a lot worse. It just so happens, however, that you could do much better. Konami really needs to dig deeper than this if they want the franchise to survive for another decade or more.

Augh! it happened again.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Why does Konami keep putting out substandard, C- list Castlevania games?
The word 'tedious' doesn't begin to describe the experience of playing this. Imagine moving a character around that can't walk any faster than a small dog, through the most bland, monotonous environments you could imagine, fighting the dullest enemies you could imagine- over, and over, and over, and over.

It has some good cutscenes and decent voice acting, but you can really tell the overall production values were really low for this. That's a shame...Castlevania has always been one of my all-time favorites. They'd never release such a mediocre Zelda or Metal Gear game, for good reason. This deserves to be a top-tier franchise, but Konami refuses to give it the time/money it would take to really do it right.

Better than I expected

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Overall the game is better than I expected. I did like Lament much more because it really had the Castlevania feel we have come to expect. I was fearful this would be another Devil May Cry game but it is different enough to keep me interested.

The Innocent Devil concept is a nice try but not really what I want from this type of game. I want an action game and not an RPG and this game has too many RPG elements for my liking. I want to play the game instead of powering up Innocent Devils and creating new ones and getting them up to speed. Combining things to make new weapons confused the heck out of me at first. Again, I want an action game not a RPG. Stealing stuff from your enemies is fun. The need to sit in every chair to complete the game at 100% is moronic.

Gameplay goes ok but the Innocent Devils can be more of a hinderance sometimes than a help. Fighting certain bosses can be a pain with them as well. Having to guess what you are hacking at because the boss becomes transparent so you can still see you character is a pain. The camera angles are not always stellar either.

Still...it is more fun to play than I was expecting and stealing from your enemies can be fun. It still has the overall Castlevania feel but Castlevania without the whip just isn't right. I suggest renting it first or buying it used. I don't think it is worth a $40-$50 pricetag. $20 yes but not much more than that.

Average game without much flair.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was greatly looking forward to Curse of Darkness after enjoying the previous PS2 Castlevania so much.

But after all is said and done, this game seems more stale than Lament of Innocence.

First off, the story is pretty much the same exact thing as the previous game. The main characters girl is slain/kidnapped. It is seriously nothing but a rehash. Yawn.

Secondly, while i liked the 'summoned monsters' better than the previous games magic system, the entire weapon/armor set up was tedious.
To get more and better gear you have to slaughter thousands of enemies AND steal from all of them. And some enemies will take minutes, if not hours, to learn how to steal from. Also, money is completely worthless in this game. Why bother even putting it in then?

Also, this game is pretty huge when compared to older Castlevanias but it is empty and totally devoid of atmosphere.
For a 3D game it sure is flat. There really is no need for a jump button in this game as there are only about 2-3 times in the game where you actually have to jump up a ledge.

The great atmosphere, individuality of the levels, jumping puzzles, and tremendous musical score is all GONE from Lament of Innocence.

Still, the game is pretty fun and easy going.. without any difficulties and puzzles. Its also almost entirely linear compared to other Castlevanias...

So if you want a terrific gothic action/adventure pick up Devil May Cry 3. Otherwise i wouldnt recommend picking this up until it hits the bargain bin. There isnt anything here that hasnt been seen or done better elsewhere...

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