Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

released on Sep 01, 1990

A port of Akumajou Densetsu

Led by the immortal Count Dracula, the greatest army of evil ever assembled is poised to bury mankind in a Tomb of Terror. Destroying this legion of Swamp Dragons, Slasher Skeletons and Forces of the Undead will be the supreme challenge for the mightiest of warriors. Your place in history is 100 years before Simon Belmont's birth. Dracula is young at heart, and it will take more than a stake to penetrate his evil. Luckily, you command the role of Trevor - Simon's forefather and the origin of the Belmont Warlord Chromosomes. Trevor has a power never before seen by human eyes - the power to transform into three different spirits: Grant DaNasty, the ferocious Ghost Pirate. Sypha, the Mystic Warlord. And Alucard, Dracula's forgotten son. You must perfectly time Trevor's body transformations to match up his different fighting spirits against Ultimate Evils. Trevor also has the strength and wisdom to command the Battle Axe, Invisibility Potion and Mystic Whip. But the most important weapon Trevor has is your cunning to choose the correct Paths of Fate and your bravery to lead him past 17 possible levels of never-ending doom, including the Haunted Ship of Fools, the Sunken City of Poltergeists, the Clock Tower of Untimely Death and Curse Castle. Never before have so many dangers confronted you at one time. And if by some miracle you triumph, you'll no longer be a mere mortal. You'll be a legend who'll live forever!


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I have concluded that I should stop giving too many second chances to a game just because other people say something like "one of the best of "X" thing".
This is somewhat about the same as Castle 1 but it makes that game look safe since this one has more variety than Castle 1, however, they kept their staircase fetish from 2, and the subpar graphics of both games, it can still kill you because the background can get distracting or looks like the foreground, for the third time.
My main problem with this game is that it kind of feels hard for no reason, so many precise jumps and enemy placements, you have enemies from other levels in later ones and they still kick your ass but not in a good way, 85% of the bad enemy placements in this game come from stairs; since they're very janky (since the very first game), you die because the game wants you to turn and kill the enemy but it takes 2 years because you're on a stair, or you try to use a weapon but it's very inconsistent to use it on stairs, or you take damage because an enemy is camping at the top or bottom of the stairs and you have to hope he walks 1+ extra tile back and react to that in a millisecond. Every 5 steps you have 3 enemies that can take unnecessary precision to be killed, you take damage once and then take it a million more times because the enemy is/are too close to the player, resulting in you taking more hits when trying to recompose yourself. Sometimes the precision you need is so ridiculous it almost feels like a Kaizo (and I wonder how tf do I go through a section without an alt character), yes I know that you have to take the game slowly; still, I don't wanna spend 30 minutes killing one enemy for the 546th time because you died to another bad boss (yes they're still terrible), the crows especially, those are the most bullshit enemies I've seen and when they're combined with 3 more enemies (and could be more crows) and there is water that slows you down or... s-s-s-stairs?! just no. It's the 3rd main entry and they still place enemies in checkpoints too, I also have to fast-forward each time there is a door, character swap animation, or an empty staircase because it's that slow.
The first few levels are boring but can be decent at first since you're still learning the mechanics; after that, it can depend, some are bad, some decent with solid enemy placements. There is still some fun to be had here, I don't blame the people who prefer this over 1, it has more levels, new playable characters, and more enemies, but with a more bullshit difficulty, it can be more enjoyable if you have the patience, I don't. I've seen people praising this yet saying you gotta memorize the game to beat it, if it's more about memorizing artificially rather than dying and learning from each death, I don't see how this can be fun. I could try and play this again in years when I have nothing to do. I still prefer this over the easier Japanese version, that one is the very opposite of this version and I usually prefer a game that is hard for no reason than a game that is easy for no reason. But what I prefer the most is a game that knows how to be challenging and not a [Memory Games - Play Online For Free]

Una mejora sustancial ante el primer juego, y controlar a más personajes aparte de al Belmont de turno, le da una muy buena rejugabilidad que espero hacer un dia de estos.

Pra manter sua sanidade mental não jogue a versão americana

First played on the Wii Virtual Console, later on Switch via Castlevania Anniversary Collection, did not finish on either platform. As far as I can tell, Castlevania III is even more difficult than the first entry, so for the sake of my sanity, I think I will refrain from trying to finish this one. I know it's an excellent game, but I know my limits.

In a fairly hard pivot for the main Castlevania team back from Castlevania II, Castlevania III not only changes the era and the protagonist but also the genre back to being an action platformer. Being an action platformer is also where the series would stay for quite some time, as the same goes for the rest of the games in this post as well. Castlevania III also is a quite famously different game between its NES and Famicom versions, so for this game, probably more than any other on this list, it's important to keep in mind that I'm talking about the easier Famicom game rather than the much harder NES game. It took me about 3 or 4 hours to get through the game with marginal save state usage (mostly just before very hard bosses, especially before the second to last level's boss).

This game follows Simon Belmont's ancestor Trevor (or as he's known in the Japanese version, Ralph) Belmont in his quest to travel through Transylvania to Dracula's castle to defeat him. Similar to Castlevania II, this is another game where the adventure doesn't start at Dracula's doorstep, but instead follows our hero from the Transylvanian hinterlands all the way to and through Dracula's domain. Trevor himself plays a lot like Simon does in Castlevania II. He has no inventory like that game (back to good old temporary whip upgrades and classic heart-ammo subweapons), but he still moves and whips a bit faster than Castlevania 1 Simon did. While this game may not be an adventure game like its predecessor, what it does have is a series of branching paths. The most important feature of these branching paths is not just to give you more ways than one to play the game, but also to lead you down optional roads to this game's other most important innovation on the previous games: extra playable characters.

Along his journey through Transylvania, Trevor can meet three people turned into monsters by Dracula as stage bosses. Upon beating them, they will offer to join Trevor, but he can only have one companion at a time. These companions can be switched to at any time with the select button, and they each have their own unique attacks as well as often having their own unique subweapon set as well. First you have Grant the acrobat, then there's Sypha the witch, and finally you have Dracula's own son Alucard who is half-vampire and half-human. Alucard has a projectile attack and can turn into a bat, but he's generally considered the worst of the companions since his transformation is limited by your number of hearts, and flying isn't actually that useful. Sypha's normal attack isn't that great, but she has a slew of subweapons that turn most bosses to tissue paper if used properly. Finally you have Grant, who can not only jump higher and even change direction mid-jump (something no other character in the game can do and is a rare ability in the series as a whole), but he can also throw infinite knives.

A very big change from the Japanese to the English releases of the games is that Grant was given a very short-range, weak melee knife in the English versions. This is in contrast to his normal weapon in the Japanese version which is an infinite supply of the knife subweapon which he can even throw if he's climbing walls or ceilings. This makes him an even more useful ally than he is in the English version, as he's not just nimble but dangerous too, and that's just one aspect of how the Japanese version is easier. Damage calculation itself differs between the two games, but on the whole you take less damage in this game. Many bosses and even normal enemies have significantly less health and more simple/abusable attack patterns. Heck, Grant is so good and Dracula is so much easier, I got to him with Grant without even full health and I managed to (albeit narrowly) beat him on my first try (which I was very proud of regardless :b). That's still not to say this game is easy, not by a long shot, but having played a fair bit of the American version as a kid, I can say that this version's lowered difficulty allows it to be a lot more fun than its English counterpart for me.

The presentation is once again absolutely excellent. The Famicom and NES's technical differences allowed Konami to use their own hardware in the cartridge for this game, meaning that the Japanese version of the game not just has gameplay differences but it also has several extra audio channels, meaning the music is on the whole often better (although some of the English tracks can certainly be argued to be superior). The environments are very pretty, the animations are nice for enemies and player characters alike, and the game on the whole really flexes what devs were able to do with the Famicom by 1989.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. While not my favorite game of the classic action platforming Castlevanias, this is still easily my favorite of the 8-bit games (followed by Belmont's Revenge on the GB). It's got stellar music and a fairer difficulty curve that makes it a compelling challenge even without save states, and the oodles of content provided by the branching paths and extra characters give it plenty of replay value as well. If you're a fan of action games and don't mind a bit of a challenge, this is definitely one you can't afford to pass up.

Graças aos céus que abandonaram aquelas ideias mal pensadas do segundo jogo e voltaram com o charmezinho do primeiro. Da trilogia do NES esse é de longe o mais legal 👍🏻