Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

by Konami

Product Features

• Master the unique new skills of Devil Forgery to develop and enhance Innocent Devils - allies that will help to conquer enemies, evade traps and solve challenging puzzles
• Stronger RPG and adventure game elements featuring character growth based on accumulated experience points
• Arm yourself with axes, swords, spears and a variety of other powerful weapons
• Utilize an advanced combo attack system to destroy the dark creatures of the night
• Explore larger, open environments rather than the small, confined areas of the castle

Product Details

• ASIN: B0009Z3K9O
• Item Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,435 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness delivers an entirely new storyline and main character to the classic game world. In Castlevania the story always revolved around the Belmont family and Dracula, but now there's a new character with new abilities: Hector, a Devil Forgemaster who once refined his skills under Dracula. Fueled by revenge for the murder of his girlfriend, Hector sets off to confront the evil forces of the night. Armed with the powerful skill of Devil Forgery, he must find his way back to the ruins of Dracula's castle and uncover an intricate web of deception -- completely unaware that it is all a sinister play, orchestrated to lure him home.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Another mediocre 3D entry in an otherwise great and long-lived game series, November 8, 2006

By 

Onikaze (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (Video Game)

It seems that Konami just can't bring the richness of the old 2D Castlevania games to life as a 3D game. First "Lament of Innocence" (LoI) presented us with a lackluster 3D rendering of the Castlevania series, and now "Curse of Darkness" (CoD) follows in its footsteps. For those who remember the old side-scroller Castlevania games, you'll remember that there were a lot of little details that made the game a visual feast. As you made your way through Dracula's castle, haunted paintings would come to life, the spirit of a watchman wept for his dog when you slew it, and ghostly dancers would spiral about in a macabre pirouette as you made your way through a ballroom.

With CoD, you get none of that. While the graphics themselves are respectable, the level designs are fairly bland and straightforward. In fact, it's pretty obvious where the collision boundaries lie, because there is absolutely no interaction with the environment - aside from smashing a singular kind of sconce for money, hearts, and other goodies. So in a cave there may appear to be an interesting alcove here and there, but your character can't even approach it because it's past the collision boundary set for the room. There are some visual effects, like rays of moonlight filtering through windows... but there are none of the spooky little details gamers have come to love from Castlevania games. Overall, the level designs are linear and boring, which often makes it a chore to have to backtrack through them once you get an "Innocent Devil" (ID) that allows you to access a new section of an area you previously fought through. Overall the animation on the characters in the game is good, but the CGI sequences are somewhat stiff looking, despite some decent rotoscoping used to convey the characters' body language.

In CoD, you'll be able to pick up raw materials left by enemies and forge them into new weapons and armor. While this sounds cool, the end result isn't much different than finding new weapons, and can sometimes lead you into trouble if you haven't saved your game recently. Occasionally you'll find some special materials that lead you to believe that you'll be able to use them to forge some dynammite weapons. Unfortunately, while this is sometimes true, at other times you wind up forging something silly like a frying pan, squeaky hammer, broomstick, or cowboy hat. The large diversity of weapons is basically an add-on, and not really of much use. For the most part, you'll probably find yourself working your way up the fairly decent ladder of swords. There are also axes, spears, "knuckle" weapons like claws, and special weapons which are sometimes useful, and other times more silly garbage. As a result, you'll get some good items as you progress, but also wind up carrying around a lot of extra, useless items that simply clutter up your inventory. Finding new weapons would have been a lot more straightforward, as the combining system seems forced , awkward, and ultimately pointless.

Likewise, you also forge your Innocent Devils. Most of them look fairly uninteresting, and a few of them look downright silly. Your nemesis, Issac, parades around with a fairly impressive looking devil in many of the CGI sequences, but you get stuck with throwbacks from The Wizard of Oz. At times these IDs prove handy. In fact, one of the IDs... the silliest looking of them all... can take out the first form of the final boss in almost 2 hits!! But, a lot of the time they just get in your way, blocking the view by flying in front of the camera and such. Also, there are moderately extensive evolution trees for your IDs.

Your IDs evolve by collecting "Evo Crystals" that are dropped by slain enemies. The kind of crystal dropped depends on the weapon you are using. Different crystals will make the IDs evolve in different ways. The problem is that while there are many combinations to evolving an ID, they require you to fight through levels over and over simply to gain enough crystals (generally between 40 and 90) to evolve your ID. This wouldn't be a problem if the levels weren't uninteresting and the battles weren't repetitive. But, as a result of the bland design and uninteresting combat, you probably won't care enough about the game to want to evolve your IDs in all of the ways possible.

Another problem comes from the fact that the leveling system is like an experience point-based RPG system. As you gain EXP, you level up and with your level increase comes raises in hit points, damage, defense, etc. You can get up to level 99, but by the time you're close to the end of the game, you'll only be around level 50 or 60 without any real "grinding" (fighting simply for EXP, not to progress the game).

This creates a problem in relation to the relative ease of the game. For the most part, the monsters and bosses are no real challenge regardless of what level you're at. You just dodge their attacks and hit back when you can and you beat them in no time. In later levels, you may get so sick of bashing the same monsters over and over that you'll just run past them and not worry about fighting them.

That is...... until the final boss. The final boss has two forms and deals a LOT of damage in the second. While there are a few useful odds and ends dropped here and there for healing items, the kinds of healing items you can actually purchase are almost worthless. You can only find one or two healing items that fully recharge your health. The ones you can buy will give you 200 to 50 HP back. The added problem is you can only carry 3 to 5 of these, so your healing ability is VERY limited if you've been using special healing items through the game instead of hoarding them for the very last boss.

So, the problem this creates is that the game is very easy until the very end. Then it is so hard that you'll almost have to level up to 99 just to have a fighting chance. By this time, however, you probably will be so sick of the game that you won't care about beating it and will just be glad to wash your hands of it.

Fortunately, you can find the ending CGI sequence on YouTube so that you're not forced to fight the final boss if you're just sick of it.

It's a pity. The Castlevania series was such a rich tapestry of gothic details in the 2D games, but seems to have become just a watered-down vaguely horror-based button masher in its 3D incarnations. Seriously, Nightmare Creatures was a better gothic game than any of the 3D Castlevania games to date.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than I expected, January 15, 2006

By 

PLM (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (Video Game)

Overall the game is better than I expected. I did like Lament much more because it really had the Castlevania feel we have come to expect. I was fearful this would be another Devil May Cry game but it is different enough to keep me interested.

The Innocent Devil concept is a nice try but not really what I want from this type of game. I want an action game and not an RPG and this game has too many RPG elements for my liking. I want to play the game instead of powering up Innocent Devils and creating new ones and getting them up to speed. Combining things to make new weapons confused the heck out of me at first. Again, I want an action game not a RPG. Stealing stuff from your enemies is fun. The need to sit in every chair to complete the game at 100% is moronic.

Gameplay goes ok but the Innocent Devils can be more of a hinderance sometimes than a help. Fighting certain bosses can be a pain with them as well. Having to guess what you are hacking at because the boss becomes transparent so you can still see you character is a pain. The camera angles are not always stellar either.

Still...it is more fun to play than I was expecting and stealing from your enemies can be fun. It still has the overall Castlevania feel but Castlevania without the whip just isn't right. I suggest renting it first or buying it used. I don't think it is worth a $40-$50 pricetag. $20 yes but not much more than that.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars too judgemental, November 5, 2005

By 

J. Mcgann "ghoulsnight0ut" (manchester, connecticut United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (Video Game)

the game is taking a hell of a lot of flack when it really isn't that bad! the story is predictable, but it's been established that the game of the bad guys in castlevania is to steal a man's woman and watch him squirm. the music isn't bad, i think of it as being like symphony of the night but with a slight dracula's curse sound. two games in the series with the best music. as far as difficulty goes, it's hard until you realize you should concentrate more on dodging than the offensive. in the fight with trevor, i thought it was impossible to get his life down. i later realized i had to watch for his weak points and move in. so if anything, that's a better point in a game. in the process of that, i wasn't getting angry with it because of the real fact that you're fighting a belmont! so he was kicking the hell out of me, but i thought it was awesome. so yes it's not the best castlevania ever made, because we all know which one that was. but this game really is what castlevania is when thrown into the third dimension. love it or hate it, just give it a chance.