Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is a stylish revival of the classic gothic horror series

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is an incredibly stylish, sleek game. While it demands a sleekness and precision of its players too, in a way that makes its platforming occasionally very frustrating, the reward of completing its many layered chapters makes the entire experience euphoric.

This is a worthy revival of the Castlevania franchise, and one that pays homage to the original, beloved gothic platformer adventure series while also reinventing it, with its own ideas of style and flourish.

After a period of some dormancy, seeing Castlevania back in this fashion should be a relief to long-time fans.

Treading in the footsteps of the Belmont clan

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse begins with the arrival of Rose Belmont, daughter of the iconic monster fighter Trevor Belmont. Years of training and a desire to strike out on her own brings her to Paris of 1499, where monsters of all stripes have invaded to destroy the city.

Armed with a sword and magical tarot cards, Rose must carve out her own legacy in the world of monster hunting, taking on great swathes of undead and towering beasties in exploration and battles that depend on player skill and reaction.

By default, there are no set difficulty levels in Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse. You’re simply given your weapon and tasked with making your way through this gothic, beautiful world of towering spires and grinning ghouls.

By the first boss, you’ll know whether you need to dive deeply into the game’s more layered approach to game difficulty, figuring out where your skills sit.

This game has one of the best-balanced difficulty adjustment systems I’ve seen in a game so far. Rather than selecting from Easy / Medium / Hard, you can adjust how much damage Rose deals with every hit, how resilient enemies are, and how much experience you gain per enemy defeat.

If you feel you’re struggling to put enemies away, adjusting the damage Rose’s weapons cause can give you a slight edge that doesn’t immediately ruin the balance and fun of the game. Pushing up the experience gained can also mean you’re able to ‘grind’ a bit easier, levelling up faster and thereby gaining access to your abilities sooner.

Of course, if you want an easier ride there’s no harm in making enemies a bit weaker, easing your passage and allowing you to focus on the story and art of the game, as well as its more complex traversal mechanics.

Personally, I changed each setting by a small margin, allowing for a fairer fight with The Fallen and letting me enjoy the game without running into extreme roadblocks that stifled my progress. A purist might want to stick to the game’s core difficulty to preserve its sense of hardship and overcoming the odds. I am not a purist.

Revelling in a real sense of wonder

Dialling back the difficulty to a more reasonable setting lets you really appreciate the true beauty and elegance of Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse. Where the original games were more inspired by classic literature and monster films, this game adds in another clever influence: tarot and its major arcana.

Traditional tarot cards are elevated by a classical, medieval style of artwork. Belmont’s Curse uses this as inspiration for its grand backdrops as you explore a gilded version of France, as well as its clever menagerie of bosses. These are brought to life with lush, artful character sprites, all of which are layered and beautiful in approach.

There’s Joan – yes, Joan of Arc – who is angelic in gilded armour and a halo of light. There’s Medusa, here reimagined as a multi-limbed and more snake-like gorgon whose terror is only surpassed by her beauty. Death is on fine form in the game, as a towering and skeletal warrior wielding an impressively largely scythe.

The Brittle King is one of my favourites of the bunch – a being made of stained glass who resembles a window panel, brought to life in rickety, gorgeous fashion, as smashed out of a nearby window. He’s a lot like one of my all-time favourite video game bosses, the Stained Glass Demon from MediEvil.

Another of my favourite bosses in this game, whose name will go unmentioned to avoid spoilers, is a blood-soaked mess, made beautiful by the game’s devotion to visual poetry. Her boss fight comprises a wonderful sequence of pooling, painterly blood that leaps out and dances as you throw your sword forth and attempt to put her away.

Each of these boss fights is designed by its art. Not only are the fights challenging in their difficulty, requiring players to dodge and weave, paying attention to set patterns, they are also entrancing in their beauty. That’s really what elevates Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, and what encourages you to press on through hardship. The notion of discovering something new and gorgeous, hiding across castles and other areas with great secrets.

Frustration and beauty form wonderful scenes

As mentioned, there is the occasional frustration in the journey. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is a lot like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown in many ways. Like this game, it revives a classic franchise with a focus on style and precision… and lots and lots of spike traps and rotating gears.

While much of Belmont’s Curse stays true to the Castelvania formula, there’s also plenty of moments in which it feels strangely derivative in its approach to platforming. From the euphoric highs of charting gothic castles, the basement is still filled with familiar spikes requiring you to dodge and weave along walls to escape certain death.

There’s an element of muscle memory that kicks in as you mindlessly dodge left, right, avoiding roving traps, grapple hooks, and swing through dangerous ravines. For players who know and love the ‘Metroidvania’ genre – a platformer where you must chart areas, gather abilities and then backtrack to unlock new areas – there is pleasure in this exploration.

Belmont’s Curse pulls it off well, with a nice precision in its platforming and demands. But its familiarity may also be disappointing for those anticipating a bit more flavour or uniqueness in this aspect of the game – and as seen so clearly elsewhere. There’s new ideas to spare in the adventure and its many boss battles. But it does eventually lean into more common tropes, particularly in its later stages.

Where this disappointment occasionally makes itself known, the game does at least make up for its in its clever design elsewhere.

As mentioned, bosses are a highlight, as well as its France and tarot-inspired level design. Homages to the past are also well appreciated, with enough flavour of classic Castlevania to balance out its new and ambitious style as well as its clear lean-in to the popularity of Netflix’s Castlevania adaptation.

Belmont’s Curse is a fantastical new adventure that feels perfect for those fans of the Netflix series, as well as those who’ve long missed the original games. With a dual focus on creating something new and evoking nostalgia for the past, it does very well, providing enough for fans on both sides of the fence.

Even when it’s familiar, it’s stylish and interesting. And when it strikes out with its own tone and flavour, it’s truly remarkable. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is a game of great highs, and one that’s buoyed excellently by its most clever, charming ideas.

A PC code for Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse was provided and played for the purposes of this review.

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