Fans of side-scrolling metroidvania games have been eating pretty well for the last few years. Games such as Hollow Knight: Silksong and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have provided solid entries in the genre, each offering fascinating worlds, expansive maps, and deep combat. What’s more, the rising tide of good metroidvania games is raising all boats, as developers draw on one another’s good ideas to enhance their work and find new ways to push the envelope.
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is another in that recent lineage of search action titles, taking the solid foundation of Konami’s storied vampire-hunting, monster-killing franchise, and enhancing it with some of the smart elements like parries, dodges, and Estus flask-like healing abilities, that have become common in recent genre entries, as well as new ideas of its own. I recently played about three hours of Belmont’s Curse, which included taking on its first three bosses, and came away with a strong sense of how Konami and developer Evil Empire are giving Castlevania a new lease on life.
In Belmont’s Curse, which is a canonical story in the Castlevania series, you play as Rose Belmont, daughter of the legendary vampire hunter Trevor. It’s been 23 years since 1989’s Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, when Trevor killed the Prince of Darkness. But the Belmonts return to action when monstrous forces descend on Paris, with Rose taking the lead in trying to find out what’s going on and who is behind it.
I played from the start of the game, when Rose and her aging father arrive in a burning city overwhelmed by horrors. They split up, with Rose heading into the city while Trevor searches for the bishop who summoned them. What follows is classic Castlevania, as zombies, living gargoyles, medusa heads, and other creatures surge forward to attack her.
At first blush, Belmont’s Curse feels pretty similar to other side-scrolling action games. Rose starts by wielding a sword, and in combat, you’ll mostly use a sliding dodge and back step to avoid incoming attacks, so you can reposition to get behind enemies and start wailing on them. You carry three potions that you can use if you’re hurt in battle, and while it’s possible to find additional potions or health-restoring cooked chickens, your main three potions are restored when you save at a magic mirror, which also respawns enemies.
In addition to melee attacks with your weapons, Rose also carries a deck of arcane tarot cards that allow her to cast magic spells, starting with a fireball you can whip at enemies mid-fight. The cards are what sets Rose apart from other Belmonts, and gives Belmont’s Curse its own flavor. Each card you unlock lists three Acts of Mercy, which are particular goals to fulfill with the spell–for the fireball, an early goal is to use the spell to kill 20 different enemies. Once you’ve done that, you earn a point you can spend to unlock one of a few Blessings that upgrades the spell in particular ways, like extending its range, enhancing its damage, or providing other unique effects.
The tarot system incentivizes you to use the spells you like to make them more interesting, while also rewarding you for learning to use the ones you aren’t a fan of in order to transform them in a way to better fit your loadout. It’s a cool addition to the traditional variety of weapons and charms you can add to Rose’s repertoire, allowing you to slowly alter how she plays. But what makes the tarot system even cooler is the way you unlock new spells as you play: by defeating bosses.
Not long from the start of Belmont’s Curse, I ran into a ghost that told me the area was being terrorized by some hulking monster that was claiming the souls of Parisians for some unknown purpose. You can find a few of these ghosts in every new area of Paris as you explore it, but they’re often tucked away in tough-to-reach places that will force you to explore and test your platforming skills to reach. The ghosts are a cool addition to your normal metroidvania exploration, though, because they provide clues about where you can find local bosses, what you can expect from them, and what alternate paths you can take to reach them. Those clues get stored in your menu, giving you a chance to prepare for the fight.
I ran across the monster the ghost warned about, called the Fallen, soon after, guarding a huge gate leading into the Parisian catacombs. It was a tough fight, with the boss leaping around, throwing Castlevania’s boomerang-like cross, and swinging across the arena using a whip. Bosses in Belmont’s Curse hit hard, and while they’re not quite as difficult as more soulslike-inspired opponents in games like The Lost Crown or Silksong, they’ll still put up quite a fight.
Defeating a boss allows Rose to absorb the creature into her tarot cards to unlock new spells and abilities. With the Fallen absorbed, you gain a spell that lets you throw his powerful cross, giving you an alternative to the fireball, with its own set of Blessings to unlock. It’s similar to the Tactical Soul system of previous Castlevania games, but the emphasis on gaining powerful boss abilities makes them feel specific and important.
With the Fallen absorbed, you also gain access to the Arcana Whip it used during the fight. This isn’t your classic Castlevania whip, but instead a traversal item that allows you to grapple onto holds that are scattered all over the world. The whip is another great idea in the toolbelt for Belmont’s Curse and helps give the game its own identity, because you can use the whip to pull yourself toward enemies. That effectively turns any enemy you encounter into a grapple point, giving you the ability to zip around in combat by using enemies to move yourself around, or to reach locations that would otherwise be impossible. Hit the attack button as you’re speeding toward an enemy, and you’ll automatically do a high-powered whip attack when you arrive that’s specific to the weapon you have equipped.
The last cool addition with the tarot cards comes from the fact that they’re essential to the story Belmont’s Curse is telling. When Rose absorbs a boss into the cards, she’s able to speak with them, and they become characters in the story from then on. The Fallen tells Rose that some outside force was controlling his mind and driving him to gather souls for it, but with the creature defeated and absorbed, that spell is broken.
I spent the rest of the preview searching through the streets of Paris to find two more bosses, each of which holds a key to the Catacombs. The second boss can be found atop a huge tower, and accessing it requires finding alternative paths around and under it in order to reach mechanisms to lower drawbridges and create platforming paths to climb it.
At the top, I fought the game’s second boss, a fiery, corrupted Joan of Arc who wields a powerful sword. Where the Fallen was a fast enemy that leapt around the arena, fighting Joan is more of a duel, forcing you to dodge her huge broadsword as she stabs, slices, and swings it toward you. Hitting the boss also kicks fireballs out into the air near her, and when enough of them spread across the area, they produce columns of flame you need to dodge.
Defeating Joan earns you her powerful fire column spell, as well as her broadsword. That sword is much slower than the one you start with, but also much more powerful. Through the course of the preview, scouring Paris for secrets and side paths, I found several different weapons to use that totally changed how Rose plays, like a pair of gloves for close-range punches, and a spear you can use as a melee weapon or throw from across the screen. Each of those weapons also comes with its own dedicated whip attack, too–in the case of the gloves, for instance, using the whip attack caused Rose to uppercut enemies into the air so she could juggle them.
Joan also provides you with a new traversal ability that’s useful both outside of and in combat. Once she’s absorbed, you can generate a halo of holy light around Rose that cuts through certain walls and floors so you can pass through them. When you’re fighting, you can use the holy light as a parry move, bouncing back projectiles or strikes if you hit it just before an attack lands.
The final portion of the demo took me to a cemetery, and eventually, I followed the clues given by ghosts into a hole beneath a tree in search of a creature hidden beneath the cemetery’s giant fountain. Hidden underground were ancient Roman baths filled with Medusa heads–giving me a pretty good idea of what I’d find at the end.
Sure enough, Medusa was the third boss waiting for me in Belmont’s Curse, and she provided a very different experience from the other fights I’d faced. She’s huge, but with the throwable spear, I was able to hang back on a distant platform, out of the range of her clawed arms and thrashing tail. Of course, Medusa also has the ability to use her gaze to turn you to stone, but thanks to a clue from a ghost, I knew to turn my back when she used the ability, causing it to pass over Rose harmlessly.
After dodging a bunch of dirty looks, lasers shot out of the heads of Medusa’s snake-hair, and massive claws, she too was defeated and joined the others in Rose’s tarot deck. But while the Fallen seems amiable and Joan of Arc is outright helpful once they join your team, Medusa stays antagonistic. Having those characters around and dealing with their different personalities and agendas makes for an interesting story in Belmont’s Curse, and I’m excited to see how the idea of lugging around a mean snake woman who claims she can see the future and wants you to fail plays out over the course of the game.
The preview ended when I returned to the Catacombs’ door, having picked up a new spell and weapon from Medusa–her powerful gaze that can turn enemies to stone, and a sword and shield reminiscent of what would have been wielded by Perseus in the Greek myth.
After three hours, I’d gathered a host of different items and weapons, and building different combinations of them greatly changes how you’ll face down any threat you might run across. That flexibility is what I found most impressive in Belmont’s Curse, with the game providing you a huge number of build options, while rewarding you with Blessings as you find your favorite ones. Together with a story that has you recruiting your enemies to your side–or just forcing them to accompany you–as you work to figure out what’s going on in Paris, Belmont’s Curse looks to add a lot of good ideas to a familiar, updated, and well-realized take on the Castlevania series’ formula.
