Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
Konami
Initial release: November 1, 2005 (United States and Canada)
Platform: Sony PlayStation 2 (reviewed), Microsoft Xbox
Also known as: Demon Castle Dracula: Curse of Darkness (Japan)
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| images c/o Castlevania Wiki |
I love Castlevania. Other than Mega Man and Metroid, it's probably my favorite platformer series. But there was a period in the early 2000s where the series sort of lost its way; while the handheld games were building on what made Castlevania: Symphony of the Night so great, Konami was experimenting with the franchise in other ways that I don't think really have stood the test of time. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is the second of Konami’s attempts at bringing Devil May Cry-esque “stylish action” to the franchise, but the result is even more of a mixed bag than Lament of Innocence.
Let's get the basics out of the way. Curse of Darkness is chronologically a sequel to Castlevania III, the 1989 game. The game is set in 1479, three years after Trevor Belmont whipped Dracula's ass, and we're placed in the shoes of Hector, a pretty boy in the vein of Alucard who used to work for Dracula as a "devil forgemaster," someone who uses magic to summon familiars (and thereby providing Dracula with the army he used to assault Europe in Castlevania III. Given the timeframe, Dracula would have been synonymous with the real-life Vlad Impaler, though I have my own ideas on how to square real-life history with Castlevania lore. Short version is they were two different people but got conflated later. Or maybe one took all the credit for the other, who knows? Anyway, moving on...) Mechanically it's a sequel to Lament of Innocence, leaning on the popular stylish action genre but adding a healthy dose of jRPG bullshit. More on that later.
At some point during Dracula's war, Hector wound up turning on his former master, maybe out of a guilty conscience. The frustrating thing is that this game, its prequel manga, and the Netflix series are the only times the franchise ever acknowledges the concept of devil forgemasters. And in this game there are only two: Hector and the game's primary villain, Hector's rival Isaac, who is so queer-coded he could have come out of an 80s cartoon. There's a reason they made him completely different for the Netflix series. In any case, Hector has sworn revenge on Isaac for killing his wife/girlfriend/whatever before the game starts (the prequel manga supposedly lays it all out, but I didn't read it.) Isaac did it as revenge for betraying their dead boss. They don’t get along. (Worth pointing out that all of this is thrown out for the anime, and both of them have very different backgrounds and motivations.)
Isaac leads Hector on a chase across the countryside. Along the way he meets a bunch of weird characters, including a sinister monk named Zaed, a witch named Julia who runs a shop, a fop in Victorian-era clothes named Saint Germain, and a very pretty-boy rendition of Trevor from Castlevania III. Yeah, this was in the era when every Castlevania protagonist needed to look like they survived an explosion at the goth club. Saint Germain is probably the most interesting of the lot, as he reveals himself to be a time traveler (hence his clothes) involved in… some sort of time stream management? Do you think he knows Booster Gold?
Anyway some stuff happens and Isaac turns out to have been possessed by ~DRACULA’S CURSE~ all along in a plot by Dracula to get Hector back to fighting shape so that Dracula’s soul
can take over his body, aided along by Zaed (who turns out to be Death,
go figure.) Oh,
and Julia is Isaac’s sister. And Trevor gets stabbed by Isaac and is
never seen again, though Julia apparently has him in her care or some
shit. And then Dracula uses Isaac’s body instead and then Hector kills
him anyway.
Why are you playing Castlevania for the story? Go watch the Netflix series.
Anyway, Lament’s biggest problems were the combat and the level design. Curse of Darkness intended to improve on these, but these improvements are purely cosmetic. The combat is certainly more dynamic and fast-paced, but... well, we'll get to that. The levels have more varied environments, many of them borrowing from Castlevania III, the game’s immediate predecessor in the series’ in-universe timeline. You’ll traverse mountain passes, aqueducts, a forest, a zombie-infested town, etc. Unfortunately the game is even more linear than Lament of Innocence. While there are multiple branching paths and dead ends, all roads lead, ultimately, to the same place. The worst thing about the level design is that every room and corridor is huge and identical to the others, and it takes ages to get anywhere because you move so slowly. While occasionally there are some links back to earlier areas, as well as teleporters that you link up as you find them, there’s very little reason to backtrack except to visit the shop. And it’s clear, towards the end, that the level designers had given up. By the time you reach the final level, Dracula’s castle, the game abandons all pretense of exploration and puts you through roughly ten copies each of the same identical rooms and corridors, over and over and over, and many times the exit is locked until you clear the room.
This wouldn’t be so bad if the combat wasn’t fucking infuriating. While you can lock on to your enemies, it seems to serve little purpose other than to keep the camera on them, as the tracking is non-existent. You WILL be swinging at enemies and missing them entirely. Often. Making matters worse is the “Innocent Devil” system in which familiars fight alongside you, level up, and occasionally evolve. The familiar system replaces the items of previous Castlevania games, but the problem is is that for them to be of much use, you’ll need to evolve them a lot — and if you don’t grind, you’re eventually going to hit a wall. I detest this kind of forced grinding. It’s one of the worst aspects of the habitually overdesigned jRPG genre. The familiar system itself is also poorly documented in-game, forcing you to rely on guides to know which way to evolve them. On top of all that, hearts are much rarer to come by, as is money, as is items. Torches and the like no longer guarantee an item drop of any sort, and the shop basically robs you.
Let’s talk boss fights, shall we?
They’re
bullshit. Each one is progressively more bullshit than the last. The
very first one isn’t so bad, but they get progressively worse. The most
irritating one has to be the skeleton on the zombie shark, which takes
forever to bring down. Your
more human enemies, meanwhile, are absolutely infuriating. You fight
Trevor and Isaac twice, and both times they are ludicrously fast while
you’re still stumbling around swinging your sword or whatever into the
space they just stepped out of. The
worst, however, is Saint Germain, who is a cheating bastard. Aside from
constantly teleporting around, he will frequently manipulate time to score some cheap hits, for example poisoning you and then speeding up time to do
tremendous damage to you unless you take a serum. When you finally
manage to kill him, he… fuckin’ rewinds time to give himself more health. After that I gave up and watched the rest of the
game on YouTube and I do not regret this decision at all. The game is
dull as dishwater; I’d been dragging my feet going through it because
it’s just endless drudgery punctuated by frustrating bosses. Even the soundtrack is largely unremarkable, a big sin for the franchise and especially annoying considering how Lament of Innocence’s soundtrack almost made up for the rest of that game’s shortcomings.
All in all, this has to be one of the most disappointing entries in the franchise. It’s a misunderstanding of what makes games like Devil May Cry fun, combined with bad jRPG design that’s poorly explained and adds little to the gameplay. You’re better off playing Castlevania 64.