When playing Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, I couldn't stop thinking about Symphony of the Night. Almost 30 years ago, that game reinvented Castlevania as a search-action game, and did it so brilliantly that it earned half of the "metroidvania" portmanteau. Belmont's Curse does not attempt such a dramatic shift. It doesn't change genres or reinvent the series as something entirely new. What it does, however, is achieve a brilliant synthesis, with every component operating at peak performance to deliver a new high for the series. Castlevania is back, and it is fantastic.
Put simply, Belmont's Curse is the total package. A sprawling map bursting with mysteries to uncover, joyous traversal tools that make roaming the map feel great, a story that balances a macabre tone with occasional lightness, a cast of creative and well-drawn characters, and hands-down the best combat of any Castlevania game--in fact, among the best combat of any 2D action game, period.
What makes all of these synergize so well is the addition of the tarot cards, which serve as an elegant way to fuse the game's disparate elements, and makes them all feel like part of one cohesive whole. At different points your tarot deck serves as mission signposting, environmental puzzles, pieces of story lore, characters to serve as dialogue for Rose, boss locations, and ultimately, your pool of spells.
You play as Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor Belmont, who has trained her whole life as the successor of the Belmont clan. Though silver-maned Trevor is still a capable fighter, Rose volunteers to investigate the otherworldly happenings in Paris, France, eager to prove herself worthy of the family name. But Rose is also afflicted with a cursed red mark on one arm, making her dangerously instrumental to the machinations of Dracula and his armies.
The tarot deck is a set of magical cards gifted to Rose by her late mother, Sypha, who passed on the curse to her at birth. Each card represents a follower of Dracula, with honorific names like The Fallen, The Warrior, or The Builder. As you explore the castle you find clues that reveal story details and hints about how to find them, often both simultaneously, and they each have their own roles in Dracula's royal court. When Dracula's castle emerges in the heart of Paris--as you obviously knew it would, this is a Castlevania game, after all--the full deck is revealed, putting the complete array of monsters in your sights. Once you've tracked down and defeated one of Dracula's servants, their tarot card becomes an Arcana you can use as a spell, which then opens its own flexible progression system. It may sound complex, but the system is actually an ingenious way to merge different gameplay elements and make them all feel digestible and cohesive.
As an example, take the first boss, The Fallen. Finding him is a relatively simple task, given that it's meant to serve as a basic primer for finding clues and navigating the winding streets of Paris. When you defeat him, you absorb his Arcana, which grants you two important tools: a recognizable boomerang axe spell, and an arcane whip that allows you to grab onto grapple points to reach new locations. But this new traversal tool is also a combat tool, since the same function can grab onto any enemy; a well-timed strike while grappling toward the enemy can then do serious damage. Then on top of that, the combat tool itself can also be used for traversal, as enemies flying midair can help you reach distant platforms, as long as you can grapple onto them. It all harmonizes beautifully, and exemplifies Belmont's Curse as a whole--abundant with mechanics that complement and fold into others in surprising ways.
Dracula's legion of followers also serve another purpose, as being captured forces them into the tarot where they occupy a mindspace for Rose to speak with. This ultimately gives her characters to bounce off of for story purposes, but the characters are also well differentiated from each other. The Fallen is a gruff creature that comes to feel protective of Rose, whereas Medusa, even imprisoned in Rose's deck, is unsubtly rooting for her to fail and constantly trying to trick her into making moves that will further her master's plans. Lots of characters you find throughout have their own agendas and rivalries, and are often at cross-purposes with Rose or each other, adding a compelling dynamic as they all bicker inside of your head. The regular addition of characters in your deck means that any of them could interject in dialogue to offer some commentary--though the core cast, so to speak, remains the first three that you find.
One drawback of having such a dynamic cast of characters is that the protagonist, Rose, is less interesting by comparison. She's a determined heroine archetype and remains that way throughout. She is a central point of gravity for all of the other characters to orbit around, and works on that level, but I do wish she had more agency herself. She is deadset on her mission from start to finish, and not much more.
Each Arcana spell also comes with a set of three objectives to complete, called Works of Mercy. These can be as simple as defeating a set number of enemies with the relevant spell, but often are more complex to incentivize exploration or experimentation. One notable objective for The Warrior rewards you for finding a particular location, which works thematically with that character's story. One of Medusa's has you petrify an enemy carrying a shield, a reference to the myth of Perseus. Your reward for completing these is opening a node to choose one of three power-ups for the spell; once you've completed all three, you're rewarded with extra dialogue from the Arcana character.
And so you explore the streets and undercity of Paris along with Dracula's castle in freeform fashion, an open structure lightly guides you toward critical objectives for unlocking new equipment that you need to reach other corners and layers of the world. If you're ever stuck you can refer to your tarot deck for clues that you may not have thought about for a while. The environmental puzzles add just enough brain-tickling challenge to make you observe carefully and think through the clues, without grinding your progress to a halt. And the ability to track down enemies and steal their powers makes for a compelling loop that reminded me of one of my favorite series: Mega Man. I was always eager to take down the next boss and see how they would augment my combat and traversal abilities.
Combat is where you can truly see the expertise of developer Evil Empire shine through the most, as its expertise from Dead Cells transfers beautifully to this franchise. Your strikes across the wide variety of weapon types feel forceful and kinetic, and each weapon type has its own advantages and special charged ability. Your basic longsword is well balanced and lets you dash through enemies, while the whip has long reach but only the tip strikes with its full power. I found I favored the lance, with its versatility of long reach as a handheld weapon or the ability to throw it as a projectile, and ultimately stuck with it for a long time even after finding other weapons at higher levels. There are four weapons each across seven type categories, so the seven weapon types offer loads of room for experimentation to dial in on the one you like best, or just swapping situationally.
What makes the combat transcendant, though, is the addition of a parry. This is new ground for a Castlevania game, but it also works differently than the parry I've seen in many other games. As a holy shield gained from your second boss encounter, it works independently of your regular strikes. It doesn't interrupt your attacks, and by default the attack button is mapped to a face button while the parry is mapped to the left trigger. That means you can be attacking while also parrying your opponent's attack, making combat a lightning fast series of choices that puts you on offense and defense simultaneously. As someone who has struggled with many parry systems and never quite got into them in other games, this one made a believer out of me. It just feels so good to wail on an enemy, parry a projectile from behind, and then grapple over to finish them off. Belmont's Curse is full of moments like this, as practically every room you enter is occupied by enemies, and frequent forced combat encounters test your mettle against mixtures of them.
This is not to say combat is easy. Far from it. The cursed streets of Paris and Dracula's castle are littered with monsters and ghouls familiar to Castlevania fans, reimagined for this combat style, and Rose is very vulnerable. It's easy to die even in regular combat encounters, and boss fights take a good bit of pattern recognition to learn tells before you can successfully fend them off. But the combat is so fine-tuned that you constantly feel in control and recognize what you did wrong. Very occasionally the screen would be so full of enemy attacks I missed a parry window because it was hard to read all the visual information at once, but it was rare enough not to detract from the overall experience. Similarly, navigating extended gauntlets of traps can be trying, but they always feel satisfying to complete, and you're rewarded with items like ability-augmenting Relics or further clues for your tarot deck.
If combat or traps give you trouble, Belmont's Curse adds a few quality-of-life features and options to ease your growth. For one, you keep all the XP earned during your runbacks to bosses, so even if you have to try a boss multiple times, you're still leveling up and gaining power on the way. You can also turn on the Custom Mode to tweak options like setting a checkpoint right in front of boss doors, boosting your damage output, reducing the damage from traps, and more. There doesn't seem to be any cost to using this system, and you can turn it on or off as you'd like. The one element missing, for good reason, are any extra navigational tools to find your way. It's clear that Evil Empire doesn't mind giving you a leg up on reflex-based challenges, but it still wants you to think through puzzles and explore to uncover secrets.
Belmont's Curse also has some of the most inventive bosses I've seen in the series history. One notable boss twice escaped to a different section, introducing a difficult platforming challenge in the middle of the fight to continue it. Another hexes you with a sigil indicating the number of hits you can take before you simply die, forcing you to minimize strikes on you even if you have plenty of healing items to prevent dying outright. Even after 20 hours there are many other bosses in my deck I have yet to find, and I'm eager to see what else Castlevania has to offer.
Exploring the castle is a visual delight, because Belmont's Curse is gorgeous. Far from a gray-soaked castle, Evil Empire has leaned into its house art style of vivid, saturated hues and unexpected color palettes. The approach to Dracula's castle, in which Rose and all of the enemies are silhouetted against the pink-red color tone of a burning Paris behind them, is one of the most visually arresting moments I've seen in a game lately. The character designs themselves are distinct and creative, like Carmilla, a hemomancer whose slinky red gown is made of dripping blood. I could go on and on, but I'll let you discover them for yourself. Plus as you explore you get treated to new renditions of classic Castlevania music alongside new tunes that fit right into its milieu.
Every element in Castlevania: Belmont's Curse works so well both independently and as part of the whole: flexible combat, beautifully acrobatic traversal, fine-tuned environmental puzzles, wide cast of interesting characters, and eye-catching visual panache--all wrapped within a smart tarot system that lets these ideas complement each other. Belmont's Curse feels destined to be regarded alongside Symphony of the Night as one of the best Castlevania games, and one of the best metroidvania games, of all time.