For those claiming that "This isn't real Castlevania": God forbid a franchise evolves or changes. Whether good or bad we should allow others to make their own expressions when it comes to developing any title ever. Stop criticizing products using non arguments that show no intelligence behind their structure. This blanket statement tells no actual criticism.

As for those criticizing this sad excuse of a criticism...I can't take it anymore! Just play the game and shut up! Who cares what some rando on the internet said?! How does their critique, especially such a bad, no context or proof or goodwill behind it whatsoever, influence you or your opinion? It doesn't? Then why are we in this situation to begin with?

Look, I loved this game, still do matter of fact. But I'd rather not talk about it ever in my life again because any discourse i've seen or had in my life so far about it has been encapsulated by two stupid quotes: "This isn't real Castlevania" and "Idk what they are talking about I'm having a blast". Any discussion has been relegated to these two extremes and it is tiring. The game released 5 days ago. I finished it within 2 days and withing another 2 of being part of the community surrounding it has become insufferable. As of writing this post I've gotten all achievements I was missing and now I will go back to pretending it never existed.

This singular issue has made me realize how toxic reddit can be. There can't be any discourse. There can't be any debates. Belmont's Curse is either hot shit or liquid gold. Any attempt at making any of either side seem even partially valid is problematic and stupid. Mind you, I'm writing this after having a conversation with two people of this community on discord that were exactly like my post describes. Games are supposed be fun is all.

I think am I at the point where I won't finish this game. The Talos boss fight is so needlessly stressful and then add a 1:30 timer towards the end with another needlessly stressful platforming section. Nah, I'm done.

Edit: Tried the boss again for another fucking hour and couldn't beat the clock. I uninstalled the game, I am not going to continue playing a game that is stressing the fuck out because they added a bullshit time platform section for a boss.

Congrats Evil Empire, you killed all my joy I had for a game I have been waiting forever for. Hope your happy with yourselves.

Because I do.

So just to start I definitely like the game . I’d give it a 7/10. But can we talk about all the freaking obstacle courses ?!?! It’s by far the worst part of the game. It’s constantly thrown in your face ….

Zelda fans when Ocarina of time remake released a trailer: I admit I didnt played the original, but will play that for sure

Metal gear solid delta, when released: I never played the original, maybe it is better play that or emulate?

Final Fantasy vii remake: same thing

Castlevania fans when belmonts curse release: NOOOO, DONT LOOK A LIKE THE GAME I PLAYED AS A KID

....

Its is Very obvious they DIDNT played CV as a kid. This is a Very niche franchise. Ever was. And if you have more than 35 and still are getting mad with chidren in the internet, youre pathetic

So it took me 24:32 to do 100% going in blind, I did have to look up a guide for two of the puzzles I couldn’t figure out.

The speedrun took me 2:48 with all of the assist modes activated.

I mean that it feels like the devs were much more ambitious with it but didn't have enough time and had to ship a bare minimum package.

So far 90% of the relics I've found boil down to "deal more damage under certain conditions". The only one that has a tangible effect on gameplay is the family portrait which I believe you get for playing the demo.

And the weapon upgrade feel weird as well. They are all visually distinct but are just boring linear numerical upgrades. At this point why not replace the higher tier weapons with upgrade materials so you can upgrade the weapons you like? Again it feels like they wanted to make each weapon tier more distinct but didn't have the time or resources.

I joined this sub as I was hyped for belmonts curse but this place is kind of a dumpster fire. I had a blast with this game. It's not perfect but definitely doesn't deserve the weird "not a Castlevania" bullshit. Need some better mods on here or updated community rules.

What IS it with you? This is the first real Castlevania game we’ve gotten in over a decade. The graphics are beautiful, Evil Empire clearly put a ton of care into this game. It’s a classic 2D metroidvania, and the gameplay is very fun. And you don’t like it because… why? The protagonist is female? It doesn’t “feel like a Castlevania game”? The art is “too similar to the anime”? If one of these is the reason, you are pathetic. This is the exact same gameplay as every other metroidvania in the franchise, just with Motion Twin’s own flavor added to it. You may as well hate SOTN or AOS for the same reason. The art styles may be similar to the anime, but that doesn’t make it any less good. And if you are complaining because the protagonist is a woman, I hate to tell you this, but that doesn’t mean Konami is pushing some “woke agenda”. It doesn’t mean the protagonist is any weaker than any other protagonist. It just means that you are sexist. Yes, there are genuine reasons not to like this game, but these three reasons are the most common, and also the most vague. You are all so ungrateful that you are looking for any reason, no matter how stupid, to bitch about something that is a genuine good addition to the franchise. Grow up.

**Edit:** A lot of you seem to have missed this, so I’ll say it again: There ARE plenty of reasons to not like this game. The three reasons I pointed out are largely only reasons people have when they are looking ti complain. I have never said this game is perfect, or that you can’t dislike the game. What I did say is that many complaints are weak and exist only because people want to dislike it.

I didn't buy Belmont's Curse yet as I only somewhat enjoyed the demo and have other stuff on my backlog I want to get through. While there's some aspects I didn't like, I did think the moment to moment gameplay was fun enough for me to eventually pick it up. It weirdly reminded me of Megaman Zero 2 in a way that while I am disappointed it didn't play similarly to previous titles, I'll most likely still have fun even if it might not be my favourite game in the series.

I was just thinking about this yesterday and realized something. I genuinely have no clue what direction the series could take from here on out. From what I know, both dev teams of BC have their own stuff they work on. Will they just focus on future Castlevania titles now? Do y'all think what we got in BC is the new formula for Castlevania going forward? I mentioned this to my friend and he personally didn't think this would be the case as it's a 3rd party dev and he doesn't see Konami fully handing over the keys. I don't know though. I think if the game is successful enough, another game in this style could be released within 3-4 years and would lock in this being the new style of castlevania games.

I personally would like to see a fully original classicvania done by M2. I really enjoyed haunted castle revisited. I also think it's one of the only scenarios we get a new sprite based game and my mind just associates 2d castlevania with pixel art. Maybe you could set it in Leon's era or anything pre-trevor.

Anyways, I'm curious to see where you guys could/want to see the series go moving forward.

Just finished the game. I think I mostly enjoyed it. But I don’t think it was great. It had a bunch of decisions that I thought were either under cooked or outright player hostile.

* I didn’t feel like I ever really knew how I was supposed to fight bosses. The dodge not having iframes but also sort of having them for some attacks because of how the hitboxes are designed felt bad to me. the game seemed to waffle a lot on how it works. the rolling through enemies was inconsistent and sometimes move specific. a lot of it wanted you to move really proactively rather than timed. I felt like the parry mechanic wasn’t really thought out and shouldn’t have been in the game. Ive beaten all the parry games and find them pretty easy but felt it didn’t fit here and didn’t use it except Jean 2, which felt humorously out of place for the game’s design.

* I think removing contact damage was a bad idea. yeah, people complain about it, but the beautiful thing about silksong is that you just avoid the enemy entirely. it’s about motion. you always have clarity about how to move out of the way. it’s clean. here it’s not even clear if you’re supposed move out of the way sometimes. often you’re supposed to dodge through it. often you’re supposed to have dodged through the enemy earlier. sometimes you were supposed to have jumped.

* bosses were mostly too easy. I think Dracula was pretty good though.

* the whip was kind of clunky to me. I don’t think the iframe attack was a good idea. they didn’t even really use it that much for combat / platforming integrations. aside from a couple medusa heads they generally gave you enemies _and_ hooks in the same room, which tended to get mixed up a lot. I think a more context specific enemy grapple like in sekiro would be a lot better than the always on iframe attack thing. downward slam should have been a downward dodge input.

* I didn’t find the mirror world until the end of the game. Too much backtracking exploration was overly tedious with low reward. I didn’t read the note to get to the builder carefully enough and got hard stuck for a while. Exploring earlier areas was ass. even having the mirror world was kind of tedious with the load screens. I really liked the mirror world dungeon for some reason though. probably because I had all movement abilities by then.

* level design was otherwise excellent and the best part. I thought the platforming and enemy placements and gauntlets were good

* I would have just removed xp entirely and done it all through the statues and collectibles. it didn’t seem to really matter anyway.

* the tarot quests were stupid. mehhh.

* writing could have benefited a bit from a less is more style thing. bosses lost a lot of aura being edgy or anime shouting nyaa I’m gonna kill you!!! Medusa in particular was annoying to me. story was formulaic and predictable to me. putting characters in the cards also felt like it was making it clear that they weren’t going to matter at all. only surprise was that there wasn’t some significance to trevor hurting his arm in a way that mirrored Rose’s injury.

edit: oh and the big one. the healing system sucked. Having no sustain aside from pure RNG is not good. Hollow knight is vastly superior on that one.

It's got a great level design and it doesn't hold your hands. The art direction is my favorite so far it's practically a platforming painting. It's so pretty. The item were brilliant to use and platform with it feel like a evolution of SOTN. The bosses was the best part damn like it's legit got me on the edges of my seat. The average enemy is a tad bit disappointing but then again it's so easy I barely get hit I was hoping for more monster like werewolf more night creatures. That is all. I can't really critique the voice acting and the music since I'm deaf I hope it's the best for you guys. But I was hoping for MORE it was pretty short.

Like, everyone is saying it is unlocked too late in the game, but I just discovered how it works just after Talos fight, which is the very first Boss after the prologue/entering the castle, so I don't get it? Are you people not catching the clues to how it works till much later and blaming the game for that? Or am I missing something?

Edit: Alright, two guys already blocked and insulted me on this post for having an opinion that differs from theirs, lmao

I see the game being pretty controversial to say the least, but is the game is worth it, for the record in terms of my metroidvania experience I have all the GBA and DS games, POP the lost crown, the two mega man ZX games, Metroid 1 and super and Kirby and the amazing mirror.

I just ask from any who played it if the game is worth my time or the game not worth it. I always believe you need to form you own opinion, but I do like to hear the opinion of people who played the game, since I feel is a more organic way to form an opinion than from the internet critics or official critics side of things.

So now that had belmont's curse out and i hope its perfomong well and after a such a long we finally have a new game in the series. I was wondering if konami gonna make more games and what's you guys thoughts? Will they keep working with evil empire? Or they might give new project to GameKitchen? The makers of blasphemous and the blasphemous 2 third sin dlc which was very castlevania inspired. Also they had a collab with bloodstained. So what do you guys think?

I saw Dracula do this stomp move in the fight, and I know how Guilty his Gear is feeling.

Please, dont tell me blasphemous is a metroidvania again

I'm about 3 hours into Belmont's Curse and I love every track I've heard. Especially the main Paris one. That melody keeps getting stuck in my head. It's not traditional Castlevania music by any means, but it's driving and epic feeling.

I will say though, I LOATHE the sound mixing in the game. The music is shoved into the background and no matter what settings you change, you can't make it loud and stand out. The sound effects are really compressed sounding..

I've noticed a lot of games do this exactly same sound mixing now and it's so annoying. The music is good IF you could hear it better.

Not gonna lie. He is the hardest boss that I faced. After phase 2, you need to act fast or else you’ll start it again. What they say is true, Talos is probably the hardest boss in this game.

Over the past few days, while everyone was playing and talking about Belmont's Curse, I was playing SOTN for the first time in my life, and I wanted to talk a little about it.

I think it's worth pointing out that this was my first time playing SOTN, not my first time playing a Castlevania Metroidvania, since I'd already played and beaten AoS, DoS, and Order of Ecclesia. So no... I didn't exactly take the usual route. And maybe those experiences have somewhat biased my perspective.

Don't get me wrong, I loved SOTN. I mean, the graphics, the gameplay, the soundtrack, the characters, and everything else are incredible. Top-tier stuff.

But there are a few things I'd like to know whether the community as a whole acknowledges and generally agrees on.

The first one has to do with the game's difficulty, or lack thereof. I'm talking especially about the boss fights, which I found not only weak but also largely forgettable. In SOTN, you just get strong way too quickly, and mechanically, the enemies don't offer much of a challenge. I remember playing AoS and DoS for the first time and having to burn through items and manage my resources like crazy during some boss fights, farm gold, and make use of the shop. Here? Nothing. Almost every boss went down on the first try, and I barely broke a sweat. I'm not even going to get into Order of Ecclesia, because that game is the complete opposite. I find it difficult and punishing to a fault.

The second issue is the game's second half: the Inverted Castle. Holy fucking shit, that part is a slog. If the game weren't so technically impressive, this section would be painfully tedious. It feels like the map wasn't designed to simply be flipped upside down, and that this was done just to artificially pad out the playtime. Because of that, the late game ended up feeling more drawn-out to me than in its GBA and DS counterparts.

Anyway, I'd like to know if these are common opinions within the community, and how much playing the games that came after SOTN first might have influenced my take on it, if at all.

I'm not exactly a young guy. I caught the tail end of the PS1 era, but somehow never got around to playing this game until now. I think the experience would've been even more mind-blowing if I had played it back then, because technically speaking, this game hasn't aged a single day. It's incredible. But the formula? I was already familiar with it inside and out. I've been playing those other entries in the series for years.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I sure hope they don't patch it. 😅

(Photo 1 to show I 100% the game. Photo 2 to see what people think of the time I put Bloodstained.)

So I just finished Belmont's Curse and I have some confessions. First the game did make me salty and rage. But I'm not going to let that affect my over all view of the game.

First of all the good.

Combat: Love it, felt good to fight enemies and bosses were fun to fight. What I expected from a Castlevania game. Some may find it repetitive and that's fair but I didn't mind it. You'll probably find a weapon and arcana you enjoy and stick with that the whole game.

Arcana and Tarot clues. I loved this as it made finding the bosses fun. You could just stumble on the boss room but also if you wanted you could follow clues and track down specific bosses.

Story: Pretty good, nothing fantastic but I didn't hate it. It had a few surprises and cast of characters were entertaining.

The bad:

My biggest complaint is the precision platforming the game demanded of me in a lot of areas. There were points were I honestly thought this was the end of the game because I just couldn't make sections click in my brain.

My fear and concern

I really don't want to series to go in this direction. Difficulty isn't for everyone and I feel there needs to be a balance. Yes I want fun and engaging fights that aren't just press A to win. Yet I don't want my skills to be pushed past their limits.

Thankfully Difficulty sliders exist and they really did help fine tune the game to where it was enjoyable. However it didn't solve the issue of difficult platforming. Maybe just an option to turn off traps or only take damage from traps. Instead of being forced to reset after a misstep.

End of the game and review thoughts.

Game is great and I am happy to see Castlevania return and hope we see more games in the future. I have been a fan since NES days.

I don't see me coming back to this game like I would Bloodstained, but DLC is sure to come and maybe more game modes. A randomizer feels very possible. Even just a new game plus to carry over legendary weapons since a lot of them are tied to very late game bosses.

"But it doesn't feeeeeel like Castlevaniaaaaa!!!" 😭