I wasn’t really sure what I wanted from a new Castlevania in 2026. It’s been gone for so long, and there have been so many great Metroidvanias in the meantime, that I think I was expecting Belmont’s Curse to feel a little behind the times. But it really isnt.
Rose is much faster and more mobile than I expected, and the more abilities you unlock, the more fun she gets to move around with. The whip still feels like the main event, but there are different weapons and Arcana to mess around with too, and I ended up changing things around pretty regularly instead of just finding one setup and using it for the whole game.
There’s also way more platforming than I expected. Some of it gets pretty difficult, and every now and then I wished the movement was just a little more precise when the game was asking me to do something specific.
But I also kind of like that Belmont’s Curse can still be a pain sometimes. Enemies get placed in exactly the wrong spot, bosses can take a few tries before you figure them out, and there were definitely sections where I knew what I had to do and still kept messing it up. It feels like a true Metroidvania.
I just needed to stop comparing it to old Castlevania games.
Once Dracula’s Castle opened up a bit, I stopped worrying so much about whether it felt like Symphony of the Night or whatever else I had in my head. I was too busy spotting ledges I couldn’t reach yet, finding weird little routes off to the side and remembering suspicious walls from an hour ago that I suddenly wanted to go back and check. In other words, I basically stopped thinking about “the new Castlevania” and just started getting lost in the game.
I’ve seen people arguing about whether Belmont’s Curse really feels like Castlevania, and I do understand why. It doesn’t move like Symphony of the Night and it definitely has ideas that feel more like newer Metroidvanias. But after actually playing it, I’m not sure that matters much to me. I’m still hunting for secrets, getting annoyed at enemies knocking me off ledges, fighting Death and convincing myself there absolutely has to be something hidden behind that wall over there. That’s Castlevania enough for me!
The opening takes a little while to get going and some of the harder platforming can definitely be frustrating, but neither really bothered me once I was properly into it.
TL;DR: Faster and more modern than I expected, but still full of secrets, annoying enemies, hard bosses and all the stuff I actually missed about Castlevania. A few rough bits, but I’m already thinking about going back for 100%.
8.75/10