A beautiful Castlevania game, while in some aspects the gameplay and it's details feels simplistic and easy, I consider it a comfortable kind of easy. I quite enjoy the story, the acting was pure theatrics as it should be and voice acting was above my expectations, without spoilers, the origin of Vampire Killer made me tear up and I never had trouble believing Leon's determination. Only character I say was kind of a wasted potential was Joachim, I expected to see more of him or him to be explored more but no, he's just there, beat him and bam. I guess they had to put someone in their own mode as per series tradition and didn't have anyone better, I also imagine he was picked on how fun to play as they felt, which is fair. Music is great, especially Anti-Soul Mysteries Lab is straight up fire, Dracula got the best damn gay club raves in town! Overall it's a great origin story that I'm glad they got to explore. I also really gotta admire how well they transitioned the gameplay and atmosphere into 3D this time, all that experience with the N64 titles payed off. I really like how they reinvented and changed the sub-weapons to work in this enviroment, Cross is easily the best one tho, very OP....now that's some good Christian propaganda huh? lol
Bosses are pretty fun, I expected a more variety to the two health bars thing, maybe some having just one or three but nope, same throughout...this is what I meant earlier, I expect this game to have a biiit more detail, mix it up a little but it doesn't..making me go, huh alright I guess. A bit underwhelming but also not the worst in the world. Tho the game can feel a bit formulaic once you figure it out.
And holy shit, The Forgotten One is terrifying. His presence alone is what gave this game an M rating, that's awesome!
I do not regret doing his boss battle! Oh yeah he did have three phases, so that's some mixing up!
Now for the bad quickly besides Joachim, camera is...not always very flattering and because it has to be locked to an angle, almost every room feels like it has an unused square dedicated to it cuz of it, not sure how I feel about that...platforming, especially the ones where you gotta do a whip swing was easily the hardest part of the game for me and sometimes just landing on a platform period, luckily we don't have the instant death situations of the N64 games anymore but good god, it's hard enough to line these things up with this camera angle (there's a whole right stick there guys, which you didn't even use) but who's bright idea was it to have those dark rooms on top of it?! Heh...bright...good thing these bottomless pits (tho sometimes you see Leon land on the bottom with the scream triggering anyway) just spawn you back up and again, not do it the N64 way. I am aware of it's DMC inspiration but I realized this game is technically not unlike an isometric game, if this thing was on a GBA I'd drop it so quickly and so hard I tell you lol.
I dunno how to feel about only equipping in real time...it's pretty weird but at the same time I don't mind it too much, it's no Silent Hill 4 that's for sure.
Game runs excellent at 60FPS 1080p on PCSX2, I used a widescreen patch which looks much better than I expected, pretty damn native feel. Tho it kinda stretched the HUD where atleast the healthbars look longer than they realy are and it caused the other minor issue of the HUD being over Leon's model in the menu and the rotating items when you examine them overlapping a bit on the text cuz they're a bit to the center instead of left.
I went for 100% Map, which means all optional bosses, upgrades and items too...what I didn't do is go for all the relics or item drops or whatever and...frankly I'm not insane lol. I also really appreciate us not having to cover every single square of a room or something, that'd be a nightmare and I'm glad developers had the insight, pretty sure they'd hate that themselves.
I also wanna say, this game basically feels like the early framework of it's type for me, and that has some parallels with other parts of Castlevania for me. If the N64 games were Castlevania Legends, I guess then this is Circle of the Moon and would that make Curse of Darkness the Aria of Sorrow? (I prefer Harmony of Dissonance among the GBA titles tbh but nobody will get it if I use that game as the parallel, I also haven't played CoD yet so we will see). Another parallel I see is that both this game and Circle are missing a key component that would make them much better if they had it...Circle lacked a Shop, while Lament lack an XP system, which is odd cuz it really feels like both games should have these features, oh well...
From this day on, the Belmont Clan will HUNT the NIGHT!
Bosses are pretty fun, I expected a more variety to the two health bars thing, maybe some having just one or three but nope, same throughout...this is what I meant earlier, I expect this game to have a biiit more detail, mix it up a little but it doesn't..making me go, huh alright I guess. A bit underwhelming but also not the worst in the world. Tho the game can feel a bit formulaic once you figure it out.
And holy shit, The Forgotten One is terrifying. His presence alone is what gave this game an M rating, that's awesome!
I do not regret doing his boss battle! Oh yeah he did have three phases, so that's some mixing up!
Now for the bad quickly besides Joachim, camera is...not always very flattering and because it has to be locked to an angle, almost every room feels like it has an unused square dedicated to it cuz of it, not sure how I feel about that...platforming, especially the ones where you gotta do a whip swing was easily the hardest part of the game for me and sometimes just landing on a platform period, luckily we don't have the instant death situations of the N64 games anymore but good god, it's hard enough to line these things up with this camera angle (there's a whole right stick there guys, which you didn't even use) but who's bright idea was it to have those dark rooms on top of it?! Heh...bright...good thing these bottomless pits (tho sometimes you see Leon land on the bottom with the scream triggering anyway) just spawn you back up and again, not do it the N64 way. I am aware of it's DMC inspiration but I realized this game is technically not unlike an isometric game, if this thing was on a GBA I'd drop it so quickly and so hard I tell you lol.
I dunno how to feel about only equipping in real time...it's pretty weird but at the same time I don't mind it too much, it's no Silent Hill 4 that's for sure.
Game runs excellent at 60FPS 1080p on PCSX2, I used a widescreen patch which looks much better than I expected, pretty damn native feel. Tho it kinda stretched the HUD where atleast the healthbars look longer than they realy are and it caused the other minor issue of the HUD being over Leon's model in the menu and the rotating items when you examine them overlapping a bit on the text cuz they're a bit to the center instead of left.
I went for 100% Map, which means all optional bosses, upgrades and items too...what I didn't do is go for all the relics or item drops or whatever and...frankly I'm not insane lol. I also really appreciate us not having to cover every single square of a room or something, that'd be a nightmare and I'm glad developers had the insight, pretty sure they'd hate that themselves.
I also wanna say, this game basically feels like the early framework of it's type for me, and that has some parallels with other parts of Castlevania for me. If the N64 games were Castlevania Legends, I guess then this is Circle of the Moon and would that make Curse of Darkness the Aria of Sorrow? (I prefer Harmony of Dissonance among the GBA titles tbh but nobody will get it if I use that game as the parallel, I also haven't played CoD yet so we will see). Another parallel I see is that both this game and Circle are missing a key component that would make them much better if they had it...Circle lacked a Shop, while Lament lack an XP system, which is odd cuz it really feels like both games should have these features, oh well...
From this day on, the Belmont Clan will HUNT the NIGHT!