Castlevania: Curse of Darkness Review

Gameplay (continued)

There are a few problems with Curse of Darkness, though. First off, the game is disappointingly easy (up until the last few battles, anyway) and it becomes a bit of a grind to hack through room after room when it is too easy. The AI is none too bright and your innocent devils will keep you healed up and safe while you just swing away with your weapon. I’m also not crazy about how incredibly slowly your character moves. Also, the same enemies are repeated throughout the game which gets pretty tiresome. Another issue is that the level design is rather bland and uninteresting and the game is constructed with a lot of long boring corridors. CoD does break the Castlevania trend of being set entirely within a castle, but the outdoor environments are little more than the same corridors as inside with a different coat of paint.

None of these by themselves would be deal breakers but when you add them all up they hurt the game quite a bit. I do like the innocent devils and weapon creation features a lot and the game is still worth playing, but it is clear the final product could have been a lot better.

Graphics and Sound

Visually, Curse of Darkness is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Hector looks great and is well animated. But on the other hand, the enemies are bland and repetitive and the level designs leave quite a bit to be desired. The game is sharp looking and maintains a smooth framerate even in the thick of combat, but parts of it are so vanilla that the graphics really don’t stand out among a very crowded lineup of great looking Xbox games.

One area where Curse of Darkness absolutely shines is the sound. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing and uses a similar style to classic games in the series which Castlevania fans will definitely appreciate. The sound effects for combat are also very solid and the voice actors do an outstanding job.

Bottom Line

In the end, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness isn’t a perfect game, but it is easily the best 3D entry in the series so it is still worth playing. There are a lot of really cool gameplay elements such as innocent devils and weapon forging that give the game a lot of variety and replay value, but the experience is hampered by bland levels and enemies and the pace of the game isn’t that great, but overall the positives outweigh the negatives. Castlevania fans will find a lot to like here (it obviously isn’t going to live up to Symphony of the Night or the GBA/DS games, though), and if you haven’t tried this series before -this is the first time it has appeared on Xbox, after all- it is great fun because there really isn’t anything else on the system to compare it to. Like I said, though, it isn’t as good as it could have been so I’m going to have to recommend it for a rental before you decide to buy.