MadCap's Game Reviews - "Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse"

So...anyone notice that the first four Castlevania games have a parallel to many movie franchises nowadays? The first one is the original, the beloved classic. The sequel took things in a direction that nobody liked and was largely forgotten. Now we come to the prequel, Dracula's Curse. With two stories of Simon Belmont under their belt, Konami decided to wind back the clocks to Simon's ancestor Trevor - the first person of the Belmont line to battle Dracula. Hmm...for some reason I feel like I've dealt with this before somewhere.

...nah, probably nothing.
But yes, for Dracula's Curse, it's just that - a prequel set a few hundred years before Simon Belmont decided to become an acolyte of the Church of Devo, where Trevor Belmont is the one to crack that whip. Called into service by the Church, Trevor is brought out of exile from Wallachia to kill Dracula. Apparently, the church realized that it's kind of stupid to exile a man who can hit things repeatedly with whips when he's the only person who can stop the Prince of Darkness.

Seriously. They exiled the Belmonts for "magic powers". Whatever the hell that means.

And so, Trevor is set upon his path to fight the good fight and slay Dracula once and for all. Unlike Simon in a century or two, however, he isn't going it alone. Alongside him for this fight are the mage Sypha, a pirate by the name of Grant Danasty, and Dracula's own son Alucard. Trevor can only take one of his three potential companions with him at a time and he has to find them all first. However, they can all change up the game in interesting ways.

Sypha has no real good physical attack but has access to power magics. Grant has the ability to climb up walls and even do that amazing controlling your direction has your jump ability. Alucard...well, he's Alucard. He hasn't quite grown up into his Symphony of the Night badassness just yet, only able to turn into a bat and shoot fireballs. I imagine throwing him into an NES game as his future self would just be plain unfair.

I will say that this game is brutual with a capital 'B'. While the first two games in the franchise are no push overs, be prepared to eat your controller in frustration. The monsters are at their best so far in the franchise and they want you to know it. Also, the level design will have the unobservant or the unlucky screwed over quickly. The phrase Nintendo Hard comes to mind and that's more appropriate with the Castlevania series than many others. There are moments where the challenge is cheap as all get out, but that makes overcoming the challenges all the sweeter.

It really felt like Konami was hitting their stride as far as the series went - there's a phrase you don't hear in 2019 too often - and were bringing up the best. The gameplay was as fun and involving as ever, them having learned the lessons from Simon's Quest and deciding to do better. The art design is great, too, though that's true of all of the first four games in the franchise. Speaking of which, we'll be getting to that one next time.

We've seen the original, the sequel, and the prequel. To complete the Hollywood formula, all we need now is a remake. Unlike the Hollywood formula, though, Super Castlevania IV is actually pretty damn good.

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse comes to us from Konami for the NES. It is available by port for various systems, in particular the PS4. 

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