Aaand relax.
Having fought the first three bosses, slain a familiar parade of public domain monsters, and enjoyed many a crack of Castlevania’s new whip, I can confirm that Evil Empire hasn’t followed up The Rogue Prince of Persia with its first bad game. If you’ve been longing for this series to confidently get back to its Symphony of the Night-era glory days, you’re in luck. Frankly, I’m happy just to see Castlevania finally back from the dead.
“It was completely crazy,” says Emmanuel Nouaille, creative director at Evil Empire, when I ask how it feels to make a new Castlevania game. “It was a blast of course. Just a dream come true.” Tsutomu Taniguchi, the game’s producer at Konami also assures us that he’s happy to be making the first new Castlevania after 12 years of coffin rest.
“But at the same time, I feel a lot of pressure,” he says. “It’s a happy pressure.” Tanighuchi’s translator urges us to look at his smiling face so we know he’s telling the truth.
Putting on a brave face? No, there’s plenty to smile about here. Belmont’s Curse introduces Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor ‘star-of-ancient-Vania-games’ Belmont. Let’s hope Rose hasn’t read her game’s subtitle, eh? Father and daughter arrive in the ruins of Paris, which has been overtaken by the forces of darkness, naturally. Trevor goes off to make his own investigations while Rose starts exploring Paris and smacking monsters around, occasionally taking a break to cryptically refer to her unnamed mother.
Intriguing…
A dull, tedious part of me will always want my 2D Vanias to be pixel art affairs, but I’ll begrudgingly concede Belmont’s Curse is a looker. Backgrounds pack so much detail into its far-too-on-fire take on Paris that often it’s borderline 2.5D. Castlevania has also never felt smoother to play, and certainly never this welcoming. You start off with three health potions, and can even stack more on top of that. Floor slide and wall jump platforming techniques are available right from the start instead of being stingy unlocks. Enemies drop health-restoring food infrequently, but not as ridiculously rarely as in the earliest games, where you could easily forget they contained a food system at all.
Blasphemy? Possibly, but from the first boss onwards, Belmont’s Curse grows a fine set of fangs.
Kid Dracula?
As in ’80s and early ’90s Castlevania bosses hit suddenly and hard, punishing even the most minor mistakes by snapping your health bar over their knee. Fights outside these behemoth bouts scale up quickly, too: Belmont’s Curse loves needling cowards by having threats constantly pursue you across the screen. Fail to deal with some flying gargoyles and they’ll stalk you right into your next battle with a big flame shooting horror, multiple harpies, and bats so irritating they must have flapped right out of Pokémon’s caves.
For the first time since Order of Ecclesia way back in 2008, a year so distant it might predate Dracula, the series is finally a proper metroidvania again. Given that Evil Empire has never made one and is known for roguelikes, surely the studio must have considered giving Castlevania a similar spin? “It’s the first Castlevania we’ve released in quite some time, so we really did want to give homage to the 2D action exploration games,” explains Taniguchi. He stresses that Konami still gave Evil Empire plenty of autonomy, but it looks like everyone aligned on making a metroidvania pretty swiftly.
“We had a lot of discussions at the beginning as to what makes Castlevania special,” says Nouaille. “We have a lot of different gameplay styles in the history of Castlevania.” But the team decided it had to be what Konami officially calls a “2D action-exploration game” early on. “We didn’t talk a lot at the beginning about doing another style of gameplay.”
Belmont’s curse hits all the metroidvania staples with gusto. Weird hooks in the walls and other progress blockers have you covering the map screen in reminders to make a return trip. There’s a vast amount of secrets to discover, with a pleasing frequency of surprisingly smashable walls. Best of all, it rewards you for taking the time to examine its map screen properly, connecting routes in your head and then whipping and swinging your way to the treasures they’re hiding.
There’s no waypoints or guide arrows here (now that would be blasphemy). Instead, ghosts tell morbid stories that offer clues as to where you should go next. One spirit tells us a tragic yarn about seeing someone dragged under the roots of a cursed tree. Aha, so there’s a route beneath those roots! Score! Oh, and, er, sorry for your loss. It’s nice to know that if we’re completely stuck we can scroll through these hints, even if some are a little patronising. It’s not a good idea to look Medusa in the eyes, you say? Hope you didn’t notice how hard I just rolled mine…
Old rope
Only Indiana Jones rivals this series for most iconic whip, and Evil Empire has probably given us its best incarnation yet. This whip lets you swing over gaps and yank yourself towards enemies, the latter obviously being something of a mixed blessing. “The whip is not just a tool for traversal,” explains Nouaille. “It’s used for both combat and traversal. We focused on having something simple to use with a lot of responsive aspects. We like to create a movement like a dance.” The idea was to give the player a whip that they actually “use like wings.”
I thought I was committed to the fast swipes of the basic sword until I cheated on it with the lovely chuckable spear
Staying airborne as long as possible by whipping from enemy to enemy is like playing the Spider-Man: Vampire Hunter game I never knew I wanted. Swinging off enemies gets steadily more vital in the increasingly cruel platforming sections, too, pairing beautifully with another power that can morph certain platforms and walls in and out of existence.
Leap-whip-whip-morph-whip-morph-slice-leap is incoherent gibberish to you now, but trust me; that’s exactly what’ll be playing through your head just a few powers in.
The game constantly chucks new weapons at you. I thought I was committed to the fast swipes of the basic sword, until I cheated on it with the lovely chuckable spear. Each weapon and spell has criteria you can fulfill to upgrade it, too. At the most basic this is simply a case of killing enough enemies, but more interesting challenges stand in the way of the bigger unlocks.
These pair nicely with unlockable talismans that offer boons, like more damage delivered when you’re airborne, gently pushing you into trying different playstyles. Evil Empire can’t simply smash up your toys each run like it could in Dead Cells and Rogue Prince. But it’s great to see the team still knows how to encourage you to experiment regardless.
My only issue so far is that, in the nearly two decades since Order of Ecclesia, metroidvanias have been through about five renaissances. The whip is a fine weapon, but it doesn’t challenge Nine Sols’ revelatory talisman-slapping or even Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s sublime swordplay (at least, not yet). Getting turned to stone by Medusa’s flying heads raises a smile of recognition, but I instantly know to waggle the analogue stick to break free.
Should an epic battle against the forces of darkness feel this much like slipping into a favourite pair of comfy slippers?
At least one of the bosses being Joan of Arc is new, and certainly a novel way to try to butter up a British games journalist.
After three hours of play, Belmont’s Curse is a very good metroidvania, and full of potential to be an outstanding one. If it’s ‘merely’ a greatest hits collection then that’ll only be a mild disappointment. But I’d be delighted if Evil Empire has some more tricks up its sleeve and whackier weapons worthy of Dead Cells’ almighty arsenal. I’ve got everything crossed for something as sublimely silly as Aria of Sorrow’s soul-sucking vacuum cleaner.
If Belmont’s Curse can deliver on that, then never mind Dracula; this could well be the entry that finally dethrones the almighty Symphony of the Night.
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