A bigger, more ambitious game than Castlevania 1, with a much wider variety of challenges, split paths and extra characters for a decent amount of replayability, and some truly amazing art for the NES. It's also a far worse game than Castlevania 1. It's no secret that Dracula's Curse is the most difficult of the OG trilogy, and in this case, I'd say the game suffers for it pretty harshly. There's nothing inherently wrong with the game being as tough as it is, the problem is that the ways in which it's difficult throws out a lot of the finer details of level design that made Castlevania 1 so engaging and instead repeatedly throws the player into awkward situations that don't quite feel like they were made with the intent of being able to get out unscathed even if you knew what to do.
There's a much greater focus on sections that require a more reflex heavy style of play that doesn't quite mesh with the intentionally sluggish movement of your character, with there being multiple sections that feel as intense as the axe thrower hallway in CV1 without the telegraphing that made it feel fair still. This gets particularly egregious when put up against certain obstacles like the falling block tower or the multiple sections that have the player climb up a ton of stairs while getting pelted with fireballs, using your relative lack of mobility as a way to get cheap shots in, rather than encourage a more carefully considered approach to whatever situation you find yourself in. The fact that the game is like this specifically because they were trying to make sure that people couldn't beat the entire game within a couple of days to encourage buying instead of renting leaves an especially bad taste in my mouth, because it really does compromise the experience as a whole. There's enough good here for me to have still mostly enjoyed my time with Castlevania III however, as there is a good variety of genuinely clever sections, and the music and atmosphere is fantastic as usual, I just wish it wasn't so frustrating.
There's a much greater focus on sections that require a more reflex heavy style of play that doesn't quite mesh with the intentionally sluggish movement of your character, with there being multiple sections that feel as intense as the axe thrower hallway in CV1 without the telegraphing that made it feel fair still. This gets particularly egregious when put up against certain obstacles like the falling block tower or the multiple sections that have the player climb up a ton of stairs while getting pelted with fireballs, using your relative lack of mobility as a way to get cheap shots in, rather than encourage a more carefully considered approach to whatever situation you find yourself in. The fact that the game is like this specifically because they were trying to make sure that people couldn't beat the entire game within a couple of days to encourage buying instead of renting leaves an especially bad taste in my mouth, because it really does compromise the experience as a whole. There's enough good here for me to have still mostly enjoyed my time with Castlevania III however, as there is a good variety of genuinely clever sections, and the music and atmosphere is fantastic as usual, I just wish it wasn't so frustrating.