Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

The bar for this type of game is higher now, and it seems the castlevania series is simply struggling to keep up. [Dec 2005, p.106]

Where Curse of Darkness succeeds is with its secondary features - the devil forging and the item-creation system. [Dec 2005, p.126]

Curse of Darkness picks up after a few hours, but never really hits its stride -- despite nice bosses, cool abilities, and the large amount of real estate.

For players that can muddle through the often copious and tedious battles and sometimes lackluster environments, this is a worthy Castlevania adventure -- and thanks to the devil forging and item creating, a rather unique one at that.

Curse of Darkness is often a lot of fun in its own right, but if you're not the kind of player that can tolerate "grind"-style gameplay -- and indeed, often thrive on this -- then you might get bored here.

It's the best 3D Castlevania yet, but comes nowhere near being as good as the 2D efforts -- even the ones released recently. It's an interesting take on the Castlevania mythos, but won't sate die-hards and won't convert casual players.

Don't get us wrong: the latest Castlevania isn't a bad game, if you can swallow the endless combat repetition. It just falls well short of this series' legendary heritage, and can't hold a candle to the handheld Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the Nintendo DS.

Ambitious gameplay is marred by lazy design, leaving this wallowing in mere decency when it could have been devilishly enjoyable. [Feb 2006, p.96]

Just like Lament of Innocence, the presentation and core gameplay fails on almost every level, making it difficult to differentiate it from any other generic action game out there.

Despite a solid combat system and a good presentation, this latest Castlevania is cursed with extremely monotonous levels that prevent it from being an engaging action-adventure game.

In all its mediocrity the game just does not have that special something. Corny cutscenes are not enough of a reward to justify endless combat through unimaginative enemy hordes. [Mar 2006]

An underwhelming experience.

I liked the game's attempts at innovation through the weapon system and the devil forging bits, but ultimately, you're just going to be mashing the X button nearly all the way through the game.

A flawed, yet entertaining game. Like previous 3D attempts at the series, it never comes close to the greatness of the GBA and recent DS versions, but it's fun if you don’t mind wandering.

The main problem with Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is its sheer monotony. Most of the levels, although graphically sumptuous, barely vary as you progress through them. But worse than that, the core gameplay itself becomes immensely tedious as you find yourself battling exactly the same set of limited creatures over and over again. [PSW]

What annoys me here is that Castlevania was always doing several smart things at once and this one, conversely, is founded on a presupposition that pandering to the klepto sword-swinger niche is all Konami needs to do.

The weapons system is an awesome idea, and the specialized combos and moves for each weapon makes things seem pretty fresh.