Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

Vengeance runs deep…

NA release: 1th November 2005
JP release: 24th November 2005
EU release: 17th February 2006
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Eurogamer Review: 6/10
Platforms: PS2, Xbox
Version Played: PS2

The second PlayStation 2 Castlevania takes on the same kind of gameplay as Lament of Innocence being a Devil May Cry-inspired hack-n-slash game. Whilst I enjoyed the story of Lament of Innocence and hated the gameplay, I ended up having the opposite opinion for Curse of Darkness. The story is quite dreadful while the combat is a lot more enjoyable.

You play as Hector, a Devil Forgemaster that betrayed Dracula during the events of Castlevania 3, somehow allowing Trevor to defeat Dracula (although it’s never explained how, other than Hector quitting Dracula’s army, you’ll have to read a comic for the unsatisfying answer). Three years later, Dracula’s other Devil Forgemaster, Issac, has killed Hector’s girlfriend, causing Hector to reclaim his powers to enact revenge. A few mysterious figures along the way manipulate events, and you’ll even fight Trevor Belmont, who is treated quite terribly in this game.

A Devil Forgemaster is a human with the ability to create and control demonic creatures to assist them. This lets them have a monster fight alongside them. During the game, you’ll unlock a few different types, with a fairly complex Pokémon-esque evolution system for each one. Using different weapons will allow you to gather gems to evolve them in different ways, giving them new looks and powers. A couple even include powers used for navigation, although these are very rarely used and amount to nothing more than keys.

The combat feels much quicker than Lament of Darkness, letting you swap swiftly between different enemies to keep in control of the room. Your “Innocent Devil” (the creatures you control) will automatically attack, but you can either let them use their special abilities themselves or select one to use when you choose. You can also control the camera this time, so you won’t have issues fighting behind obstacles – although that may also be due to the lack of obstacles.

Curse of Darkness’ biggest issue is the levels. They’re just square rooms and long corridors, with nothing interesting to look at. The draw distance is also abysmal, so even in areas that should give you a great sight, it’s just a grey fog. It makes every area of the game just seem really boring, and I did have to chuckle when the penultimate level is called “Infinite Corridor”. It’s a good description for the whole game.

The game has some of the lightest metroidvania elements I’ve ever seen. The game is essentially played level by level, but at a couple of points you need to backtrack to a previous level to find a different exit (you’ll know because there’s a warp point next to it). Towards the end of the game, you’re even automatically warped to the room with the new exit. Which is a good job, because the game has long outstayed its welcome by that point. But then you have to contend with the dullest version of Dracula’s Castle ever, which is just a near endless onslaught of the same boxed rooms and corridors for far too long.

The better combat does help one aspect of the game immensely: the crafting system. Instead of finding new weapons, you’ll have to create new ones. You’ll get new “recipes” throughout the game (I have no idea what causes new ones to appear, you’ll just notice a “new” on the pause menu) and use resources dropped by enemies to create more powerful weapons and armour. This, combined with a levelling up system, gives a lot more meaning to the combat as well, although by the end of the game I was still running past a lot of enemies to get the game over and done with.

Once you complete the game, you can play as Trevor Belmont, with his trust whip and classic sub-weapons. Each sub-weapon has a basic attack and a more powerful spell. You don’t level up from defeating enemies (and there’s no crafting system), but instead must find hidden items to level up your stats. Instead of being an alternative take on the story, it’s just playing through the game with all the cutscenes removed, and you still fight Trevor. Replacing his fights with Hector and having Trevor finish the game due to not thinking Hector is good enough would have been a much better option.

Curse of Darkness started strong due to having good gameplay, but the terrible level design and boring characters and story just let it down a lot. You should not be ready for a game to end when there’s still many hours left to go, but that is what Curse of Darkness manages to do.

Fine

But where LoI gave rise to hope that things would change next time, Curse of Darkness feels like confirmation that, actually, what happened was Konami looked at what Castlevania was, tried to imagine how that would work in 3D, gave up and then just grumbled a bit before making a straightforward hackandslash with an inventory system.
Tom Bramwell, Eurogamer

Remake or remaster?

A collection of the N64 and PS2 games would be good. Hector’s run speed really needs to be increased, though.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Curse of Darkness.