Castlevania: Belmont's Curse | Review

Video in English, published by the channel DayOne.

About this content: The summary, key points and topics below are generated automatically from the video transcript. They reflect the content, opinions, claims and predictions presented in the video and do not represent a position, validation or fact-check by Game ARX.

Video summary

This video presents a day-one review of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, detailing its story set in 1499 France, gameplay mechanics, movement systems, level design, visual presentation, and audio elements.

Key points

• The game takes place in 1499 France, following Rose Belmont as she attempts to stop the resurrection of Dracula.
• Combat involves a mix of melee weapons, tarot card arcana spells, and a dodge mechanic where enemy contact does not cause damage.
• Traversal features platforming abilities like jumping, sliding, and using a whip for movement.
• Progression elements include boss souls, red and blue seeds for upgrading health and magic, and an experience-based leveling system.
• Fast travel is limited to specific locations, which can require extended travel times across the map.
• The presentation includes saturated color palettes, stellar animations, fully acted cutscenes, and an orchestral soundtrack.

Topics

Castlevania Belmont's CurseReviewGameplayPlatformingCombatUpgradesStoryAudio and Visuals

Video transcript

Transcript from available captions; it may contain errors.

Castlevania Belmont's Curse's evil empire step out of the shadow of their Dead Cells DLC and make a name for themselves. Their take on a Castlevania title is damn near picture perfect. It teeters on the brink of absolute greatness with only a few issues keeping it from the creme de la creme. This is the day one review of Castlevania Belmont's Curse. The game takes place in 1499 France. You play as Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor Belmont and the late Sypha Belnades. Sypha, who had been afflicted by Dracula's curse, died during childbirth. Trevor has been raising Rose for the last 23 years that have passed since this direct sequel to Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse. We move from Transylvania to the developer's home turf of Auvergne, France. For anywhere from 5 to 25 hours, depending on which of the three endings you want to go for, you will go throughout the city into the unknown as you attempt to stop the resurrection of Dracula by his minions. It's a familiar story told with numerous fully acted cutscenes. Graham McTavish is back from the Netflix show to voice Vlad Tepes himself. Though this version of the character is far more evil than the one that he voiced on Netflix. No spoilers as always, just expect to see a lot of familiar faces, some fun new ones, and to have to rack your brain if you want the true ending. It's worth it as the gameplay is mwah, sublime. I wish this was a spoiler-filled review because that would be the only way I could properly talk about why the platforming is so incredible. It takes time, though, before Rose gets some of the genre's best movement. So, you're just going to have to trust me on it. I don't want to spoil everything for you. She is a capable fighter, starting with a sword and basic movement abilities. This being a Castlevania game, you can expect to find more weapons and power-ups as you defeat bosses. Sypha left her daughter a deck of incredibly powerful tarot cards. They have the ability to absorb the power of those that Rose defeats, granting her powerful arcana spells. Finding these bosses will require constant fighting through the streets, sewers, and more of Paris. I mean, Dracula's castle's all over the advertising, and trust me, it is just as dense and monster-filled as ever. Belmont's Curse does a great job of layering secrets into areas in ways I would never have assumed my first time going through them. Rose can jump, slide, and eventually do a lot more, and the way they sneak things in is brilliant. It's masterful in when and how you upgrade, baiting you into exploring areas past where your progress was stymied by a progression blocker. One word of advice, once you start unlocking Mirrors of Life, which are your checkpoints, think about Aria of Sorrow and learn an important mechanic way earlier than I did in my playthrough bud. Your dodge offers no invincibility frames, by the way. Instead, enemies will only hurt you with their attacks. There's no touching an enemy equals damage here, and that took me a little bit to get used to. But, once I did, the mix of Rose's melee, arcana, and movement became a tight, predictable dance of death. Key to your movement, outside of moves that I will not spoil, is a whip which you will unlock really early on. And while there is a whip weapon type, this whip is for movement, letting you pull yourself towards enemies and pinions in the environment. The platforming sections in the latter part of the game, especially those that are optional, are as good as any as I I played in the genre. If you are as big a fan of the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown as I am, you are in for a treat. Upgrades come not only in the form of boss souls. Throughout the game, you'll find red and blue seeds. Four of each will raise your health and magic meters, respectively. A lot of the optional side content ends up being finding these seeds or chests. Those chests can be full of weapons, which come in a variety of power sets. Along with weapons are artifact-like items that give you passive bonuses. The UI to use all this is flipping gorgeous and really easy to read. The most brilliant part is the experience-based leveling system. Whenever you kill a monster, they drop blue and yellow orbs, which you immediately absorb. The blue restores your magic, while the yellow gives you experience. As you gain levels of experience, your base damage and defense stats rise. You can also find red and blue books throughout the levels that add to your damage done and damage taken, as well. Having a powerful, refined weapon that hits three times harder than the default, mixed with your higher level, makes retracing your steps to clear out the map pretty easy. It doesn't, however, make it quick to ever go from one zone to another. Cuz while there are a couple of ways to fast travel, they do require you to get to specific places to activate them. You can't just do it from the map. It's not the end of the world, but during the review process, when I was trying to find every boss, it became a a bit of a faff, as the brevs would say, to go from one end of the map to the other, taking like 10 or 20 minutes sometimes, just to see the area of the map I cleared offered up a weapon or an item, and not the boss path that I was trying to find. But, I didn't really mind too much in the end, because Belmont's Curse is beautiful. After the initial trailers, I had big fears. The game looked fine, but it was stiff and had a lack of color that turned off. At launch, it's all fixed. As you might have seen in the demo, the animations are stellar and the color palette is saturated with deep hues and gorgeous artwork. Boss and enemy attacks stay easy to read even in the most hectic of moments. Playing on an Xbox Series X and the Xbox PC app, I was able to jump across console, handheld, and desktop with ease. I have heard from colleagues that the Switch version's input delay is rough without a proper Switch 2 port available at review. But, no matter where you are, the soundtrack is nothing but bangers. While it isn't the weird, funky synth of Symphony of the Night, I think I might like it even more. There are some big orchestral tunes mixed with stellar modern-sounding tracks. I'm sure Piers might take umbrage, but I loved it. I don't know what to say. The voice acting, pretty good. There's nothing weak or in the way performance-wise with Rose doing a lot of the talking, especially with the tarot cards that she unlocks. She converses with those that she's collected, and that ends up being a lot of your inner monologue, so to speak. Having conversations with series familiars and maybe a historical figure or two alike was a highlight. Bug-wise, I only ran into one really weird one with the Xbox PC app. Whenever I opened the game, I had to very quickly close the auto HDR on pop-up message, or else my game just would never load. As long as I quickly closed it, it loaded fine every time. It's an odd bug that may never make it to release, but you never know, so I thought I'd mention it. Wrapping things up, the music, gameplay, levels, bosses, and looks are all incredible. It's classic old-school Castlevania in many ways for good and bad with a handful of modern conveniences, some devilishly tricky level design, and a decent story combining for something that is, well worth your time. >> [music] [music]