Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
I fought the first boss without the whip because I thought I'd walked past it, when the whip is what you get for killing him.
Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is a 2D action-exploration demo from KONAMI and Evil Empire. You play Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor, moving through a burning medieval Paris in 1499 as monstrous creatures start pouring in from the castle. I haven't played any of the earlier Castlevania games but I watched the whole anime, so I knew the Belmont and Dracula shape of it going in. I fancied something high energy that night and the trailer looked right for it. Seventy minutes was enough to see the demo through, though a clean run end to end is closer to thirty.
Play. Seventy minutes in and I'm keeping an eye out for the full release in a couple of weeks. The demo gives you one whole area, one boss, the whip that unlocks the rest of the map, and enough of the arcana system to see where it's going. It closes on a gated door that needs three gems and points you at two more guardians to find, so you can see roughly how much is still ahead. The art is done really well, and even in 2D there's a lot of depth to it. I've not played any of the earlier Castlevania games myself, only watched the anime, and it still played really nicely for me.
Pros
- Mirror checkpoints give a full heal and refilled potions, with mob respawn as the trade for saving anywhere
- Whip grapple opens up everything that was out of reach, and the hook points are everywhere
- Arcana cards drop from bosses as equippable spells with distinct behaviours
- Art holds up in 2D, with real depth in the Gothic Paris backdrops
I restarted the demo thinking I missed the whip
The first boss nearly ended me the first time I ran at him. I had a slim chance of killing him, I was absolutely atrocious at it, and I barely injured him. I'd been seeing hook points on the walls and I'd seen a whip attack listed in the controls menu, so I spent a decent chunk of the demo convinced I'd walked past a pickup somewhere and backtracking through everything I'd already seen. In the end I restarted. Turns out the whip is the boss reward. The first boss hands it over after you beat him. Classic Metroidvania structure, I'd just not got there yet.
Beating the first boss, two ways
Second time round I knew not to face-check him. I kept distance, waited him out and took him down. When he died he absorbed into a tarot card called The Fallen, and the card throws a corrupted cross through enemies that comes back to Rose on the return.
The whip is the game
Once Rose has the whip, this is a different demo. It's Hack and Slash combat on top of a grappling hook, pulling enemies in close and swinging between hook points on the ceiling. Like Indiana Jones, or Trevor Belmont with his whip. The whip is OP by the time you can whip onto the archer boys who were killing you earlier, and I spent the rest of the demo backtracking to every chest and secret spot I'd watched go past before.
The Arcana cards are the spell system
Mana fills from sword hits, and spells cost twenty. The Fallen is one spell slot, and there's a levelling system called blessings that the game explained to me on-screen but I didn't earn one in the demo so I never saw it in play. The combat loop is simple: swing sword for mana, dump mana on a tough enemy, repeat. Archer boys were the one enemy that kept killing me, until I worked out late in the demo that you can hit the arrows out of the sky with the sword. From there they stopped being a problem.
Plays better on controller
I started on keyboard and mouse. It's doable. Switched to controller after about ten minutes and remapped the triggers to attack and spell. That's where the fighting started to feel right. Underneath the combat there's a Platformer game (jumping, sliding, the whip grapple itself), and the thumbs just do that kind of thing better than the keyboard does.
Mirrors save and the map draws itself
Mirrors are the save points. One tap gives you a full heal, refills your potions and locks in your progress. The trade is that every mob you'd killed in the area respawns the moment you use one. Die anywhere and you're back at the last mirror. The map draws itself as you explore, and you can drop markers on anything you can't reach yet, so when you pick up a new ability you know exactly which door it was for.
Game Info
- Developer
- KONAMI
- Publisher
- KONAMI
- Full release
- TBC
- Platform
- PC
- Multiplayer
- No
- Controller
- No
- Playtime
- 1h 10min
View on Steam
Watch the complete live play on YouTube
Tags: Action, Adventure, Metroidvania, Platformer, Hack and Slash
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