Customer Reviews

Castlevania: The Belmont Legacy

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Words cannot express how excited I was to learn that a Castlevania comic book miniseries existed. Castlevania, for me, has always been one of the highlights of video gaming--a series renowed for its sweeping story telling, incredible action, and deep characters.

Unfortunately, such praises cannot be placed on this book.

I suppose that IDW publishing was hindered before they started; after all, "The Belmont Legacy" is a re-telling of "The Castlevania Adventure," easily the weakest game in the entire Castlevania mythos. That being said, it's sad that they were unable to take that story and improve upon it.

Oh, the book starts off well enough, with a future vision of the vastly superior "Belmont's Revenge" game. Dracula, in this vision, is a positively evil being, one bent on revenge against the protagonist. But, unfortunately, it proved to be only a vision and a hint at a good story.

The book quickly reverts back ten or so years, with the protagonist (that being Christopher Belmont) getting married. Alright. So far, ok. Dracula is then reborn out a blood ritual. And then reborn in a blood ritual again a few pages later.

Woah. Back up. We see Dracula getting born twice. Was once not enough? Did he need more power? What's the significance of this act, other than the fact that Dracula somehow fails to find clothing for the entire run of the series?

Yes. You heard me right. Dracula, the prince of darkness, the evil vampire portrayed by Bela Lugosi, the villian of so many movies and books--is butt naked. And seems remarkably uninterested in clothing himself, either.

That's strike two.

Another problem that abounded throughout the story was an over-abundance of characters that truly meant nothing to the comic. Take, for example, the evil countesses' father, who spends all of the first 1/6th of the comic plotting to resurrect Dracula, and then quickly disappears after his daughter gives him a push to the floor.

The book quickly degenerates into a near-unintelligble montage featuring Christopher's party getting eaten, being turned into vampires, getting killed, coming back, and getting killed again, coupled with some damsel in distress scenes, all silly-puttied together with some wonky transitions.

The dialogue, likewise, is ultimately sophomoric. There are few thought bubbles. IDW didn't even get the period costumes right.

Essentially, IDW had a blank slate with which to finally add some depth to "The Castlevania Adventure." At this, they failed.

You have been warned.

I love Castlevania I'm a huge fan of the series and when I saw this I knew I had to own it. Well after reading it, I wish I hadn't bought it. As a fan of the games it's nice to have in the collection, as a comic book fan it shouldn't be in my collection.

I was expecting to get a cool comic to read, but what I got instead was something like a hardcore manga. It was awesome and all, just more mature then I had expected it to be. So for those of you out there thinking of purchasing this for your little boy/girl to read- think again! If though you would like to keep it to read for yourself, I definitely believe that this book is worth looking into.

Honestly, I loved this comic. I am a huge fan of the Castlevania series and I really felt that this comic did the franchise justice. It has a classic adventure feel that I feel the Castlevania series is meant to invoke.

When I read the reviews for this I considered not buying it. But, having an obsession with the series, I decided to give it a chance. I really don't know why other reviewers felt the need to bash this so badly.

The comic adds some points of interest to the Castlevania continuity. For one, people in the comic are initially skeptical about Dracula's power. Trevor Belmont would have been the last Belmont to battle Dracula before this story. Christopher Belmont wonders if the legends were completely exaggerated. Other Castlevania games have implied that the curse of Dracula is covered up by the Church. So this story is in keeping with that.

Also, this is the only Castlevania story to REALLY show just how brutal Dracula is. There's a picture of a dead guy impaled through the mouth and out the....you know what. So it's not hard to imagine why so few people are willing to face Dracula.

I also bought the Curse of Darkness manga. I will go review that soon. But I will say right here that this comic alone is far better than both volumes of CoD put together.

Buy this. And let IDW know that they need to make more of these.

Oh, and, Pascha is hot.

I bought this book as a fan of the Castlevania games (especially Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1) and its progeny), and I admit my expectations were low. I was braced for MST3K fodder, and even I was unprepared for just how bad this book is.

The art is solid. Except a sketchy panel here or there, it is well-rendered in a mainstream American style, but does not fall into American comic book art's worst excesses. The coloring, though hardly inspired, is generally rich and effective.

However, the further one strays from the "drawing" toward the "writing" aspect of the comic, the more flawed it becomes. Page layouts and narrative pacing are sometimes muddy, although perhaps I've been spoiled by good manga in those areas. The character designs differentiate the players but fail to elevate them, and the costuming misses any coherent historical flavor or stylistic flair. The characters speak in stilted pseudo-archaic language that sounds more clunky than heroic and merely distances the reader---as one suspects it distanced the writer; the overwrought words are occasionally fumbled with amusing results, as when "familiars" was used to mean "epithets" or when a woman was advised not to "besmirch" a man.

And then there's the story. As a previous reviewer mentioned, the choice of Christopher Belmont had potential, but it was a blunder to touch on the more promising Belmont's Revenge (in which Christopher had to rescue his own son from Dracula's control) before backtracking to blander territory. This story invents Christopher's wife, Illyana, only to put her in an improbably sexy heroine costume and have her blunder her way into becoming a hostage. Dracula, meanwhile, was apparently channeled from Bram Stoker's Dracula (Collector's Edition) not Castlevania, and spends the entire story stark naked, showing off a "sexy" sculpted physique even in his bestial forms. He batters and brushes aside fanatical devotee Sona Bartley (because even bad guys know that bad girls are dirt; Sona is further degraded later on through more senseless nudity), and instead lusts after Illyana Belmont for no apparent reason---close reading even leaves a nasty impression that he raped her, at least metaphysically. This mess is resolved in a none-too-coherent welter of minor characters and action scenes... Or is it!? One can only hope that the obvious sequel-fishing of the last page is an empty threat.

None of this would seem to matter if the name "Castlevania" hadn't been placed on the cover---but it was, turning mere mediocrity into betrayal. In the mid-'90's, a tie-in like this might have been understandable, but for a book published in 2005, with advertisements for Castlevania: Curse of Darkness for PS2 and Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow in the back, there was no excuse for flubbing the series' aesthetic so horribly. Castlevania's gothic elegance and haunting grandeur was replaced by half-baked anachronism, its heroic drama by a trashy obsession with sex. Castlevania's Dracula, the dreadful, aristocratic Dark Lord and vengeful widower, was replaced by a pulp romance cover-model. Even the games' classic Special Weapons are tweaked to be fancy-looking rather than properly straightforward and nostalgiac.

I have to stand pretty far back from all this before it's even funny.

I read comics all the time, and I read all different kinds. I also play a lot of video games and Castlevania just happens to be one of my favorite series. Having said that, I must say this book sucks. The story is unbearably bland. There is so much good material to pull from with this title and none of it made its way into this book. It stars Christopher Belmont, a lesser know member of the Belmont clan from two lesser know games for the Gameboy. Chris was a terrible choice for a Castlevania comic. So many things were done poorly, like the introduction of the whip and other classic weapons. The ghosts and ghouls that made the games were completely over looked, save one. The battle with Dracula was as uneventful as it could have possibly been.
The art in it would be considered average at best for any other genre, but for a horror story it really sucked. It reminded me of a Saturday morning cartoon. Castlevania has already developed a very distinct style. Even if you chose not to mimic that style exactly, something more gritty would have been nice.
I understand that this title could be enticing for a Castlevania fan. I also know that a fan of the series will probably want to check this book out for themselves anyways. I won't say don't read it, but I will say I warned you.