Several years ago, well into the post-launch support of Dead Cells, the crew at Evil Empire (who by that point had taken lead on the game from Motion Twin) pitched a Castlevania-themed expansion to Konami. Dead Cells was already a success, Konami wasn’t actively doing anything with the license, and Castlevania is a perfect fit for Dead Cells. Everyone involved was apparently sufficiently satisfied with it, as we’ve now gotten our first proper Castlevania game since Order of Ecclesia in 2008 from that same team.

Completely unsurprisingly, Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse looks great, plays great, and feels like a proper Iga-style Castlevania game. It takes place in 1499 directly following the events of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse or the Netflix Castlevania series. Trevor Belmont and his daughter Rose have followed Dracula’s trail to Paris (naturally, as Motion Twin and Evil Empire are based in France), and then a Castlevania game happens. You do Castlevania things: explore a city, fight bosses, absorb orbs, find Dracula’s Castle, solve a bunch of puzzles, uncover secret rooms, collect a huge arsenal of spells and weapons, and eventually murder Dracula (for now).

I’ve played and enjoyed (to varying degrees) all mainline 2D Castlevania games save for Rondo of Blood / Dracula X (which I should probably fix) and Bloodlines, and Iga’s run of games is legendary. Most people prefer Symphony of the Night but I have a soft spot for Aria and Dawn of Sorrow. The last two entries, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia were good but they started straying from the tried-and-true formula, to the point that at the end there Order of Ecclesia didn’t even have one big inter-connected map, you went on quests to different locales with their own smaller little maps.

Belmont’s Curse is a return to tradition. It’s one big interconnected map. It’s broken up into regions (Paris Streets, Catacombs, inevitably Dracula’s Castle, etc), but each region is heavily inter-connected with all the others so it feels cohesive. You’re never dropped out to a world map, there’s fast-travel, but if you want to go somewhere typically you have to figure out how to navigate the maze of the map and just go there.

From a mechanics standpoint the game is very traditional: Rose starts off with a sword, a fireball, a slide, and a two-phase back-dash and that’s it. Major Bosses unlock a new tarot card spell, and most will also reward an ability (foundational kit you’ll always have access to), or a new weapon, or some times all three. If you’ve played literally any Castlevania game you can pretty safely guess basically all the kit you’ll pick up over the course of this game, but the really defining change here is that the first boss rewards you with a whip ability that becomes a core aspect of both movement and combat.

For movement the whip acts as a grappling hook, allowing you to long-jump to specific points, and also allowing you to swing from other specific points like in Super Castlevania IV (though it is now significantly less janky). For combat you can grapple to nearly all enemies immediately putting you in easy attack range. Additionally, if you precisely time an attack right after a grapple-dash you get a special move based on what class of weapon you have equipped: swords get a big “dash-through” attack, fists give you an uppercut, whips perfectly position you for a crit-combo, and so on. Enemy grappling can also be hilariously abused, because you can grapple to flying enemies (even tiny bats!) to sequence-break your way to platforms you really shouldn’t be at very early in the game.

A common complaint I’ve read about Belmont’s Curse is that Rose feels slow/heavy, and yeah, compared to most Metroidvania games she’s pretty slow, but have these people ever played a Castlevania game? Simon is slow as hell. Trevor is slow as hell. Alucard is slow as hell (when he’s not animation-cancel-chaining back-dashing everywhere). Soma is slow as hell. NES-era Castlevanias also had notoriously unreliable and goofy jumps. It’s just how basic movement works in these games, and Rose feels fine comparably. Furthermore, similar to Iga’s games, Rose’s mobility improves dramatically as you start unlocking her full kit. I never came across anything quite as ludicrous as Alucard’s Wolf or Bat forms from Symphony of the Night, but once you’re air-dashing and grapple-chaining and grapple-dashing through enemies mobility completely stops being an issue.

That said, as usual, I do have a couple incredibly minor quibbles with the game. First off, the beginning of the game is brutal, right out the gate they hit you with a first boss that is simply a hard skill-check. I mentioned it earlier, but at that point all you have is a sword, slide/back-dash, and a fireball you can shoot about twice. There’s no gimmick to the fight, they just expect you to get good. I knew to just tough it out, but I would not be surprised whatsoever if a significant number of people refunded the game right here. The run-back to the boss isn’t that bad, and there’s some delicious wall-chicken conveniently hidden right outside basically all boss fights, but it’s still a huge jump in difficulty very early in the game. (Interestingly, they actually did something for people who hate boss run-backs: the pretty comprehensive accessibility settings have an option to just have you respawn directly outside boss doors when you die. Nice.)

Next up, and sort of in the same vein: Difficulty is weird. I think the bosses are all balanced pretty much “flat”. The early bosses are just as inherently difficult as the late-game bosses, but early on you have limited kit and low damage output and late game you have tons of options and high damage output. Does this mean I want the bosses to be bullet-sponges with a jillion HP? Of course not, but there should be something to make sure your optional end-game bosses aren’t complete pushovers.

A couple of the puzzles are very obtuse. There were two I straight up would not have solved without a guide, but on the other hand, there were a couple I solved without even realizing they were puzzles to be solved in the first place? It’s a very weird mix of difficulties. One thing to keep in mind: the map tells you if the room-group you’re in is “solved” or not based on its color, but if you’re hovering it on the map (because it’s the room you’re in, duh), it will always look a specific color. So you have to wiggle the selector to make sure you can see the actual state.

Finally, and sorta most-petty: the soundtrack is potentially the biggest letdown of this game. It’s not bad, but it’s also potentially the worst Castlevania soundtrack. They somehow managed to turn Bloody Tears into a subdued background loop of Lo-Fi Beats To Murder Zombies To instead of the generational certified banger it’s supposed to be. Again, I must stress, it’s not bad, it’s just nowhere near as hardcore as a Castlevania soundtrack is supposed to be, and that’s sad to me.

I finished a 100% run in about 18 hours, and I’ll be going back for the speed-run achievement when Microsoft finally rolls out Mythic Achievements for the complete 100%. Truly wonderful game, highly recommended, Konami please let Evil Empire & Motion Twin keep making these for as long as they want.