Castlevania: Curse Of Darkness Review

This was originally written on Wednesday 27 Feb 2008 at 5:39 pm, but unpublished on the Fanzine until now. Hope you enjoy! Oh, and i’m back to updating finally! Expect more reviews and articles to come in the near future!

Alright, so I finally started playing the game for the first time earlier today. As you may already have heard, I only bought this game back on Saturday…but I hadn’t played until today. So far I only invested about 2 hours, but that’s enough to give my first thoughts on it. Once I played some more, i’m planning to do a more in depth review. For now though, here it goes!

Graphics: For a 2005 game on PS2, the graphics are solid enough. Nothing is especially breath-taking so far, but the character and monster design is solid. My biggest fault with the graphics (and the game in general actually) is how much the levels lack discernable features, to even tell where your going!

Music: I like all the tracks I have heard so far, and they seem on par with Castlevania’s best soundtracks. So far I only heard about 3 different tracks, but they are all solid.

Gameplay: Solid and responsive controls, and nothing seems especially complicated to pull off. Hector’s attacks can seem a little slow at times, but it’s nothing too bad. Unfortunately, the gameplay is not without it’s faults. The level designs while having nice concepts, leave much to be desired in their execution. The complete lack of variety in textures makes getting lost very easy, just because all the damn rooms end up looking the same! This leads to my second gameplay issue…the cameras! While nowhere near as bad as in some other 3D action games, you sometimes get attacked before you can even tell there’s an enemy in the room with you. As a result, you’ll probably end up slashing your weapon wildly…just to make sure nobody is in there with you. There is also a “stealing” system apparently, but I have yet to attempt it. The return of RPG style leveling up and equipment is very welcome, and helps to nullify some frustrations which may have come from enemies sneaking up on you.

Overall: Were it not for the level design problems, and the occasional camera issues,this game would be practically perfect. The gameplay is addictive, with an excellent musical score. For the $17 or so I paid for this used, it was already well worth it. This turned out to be far more enjoyable than I had expected it to be.