another solid Suda51 game, pretty stylized with an great art-style and soundtrack, decent hack'n slash centric combat, extremely fun boss encounters with the sole exception being the final boss, fun humor and storyline.

the game does get a bit repetitive later on but thankfully the experience is not very long to make things tiring, I finished it in 5 hours.

overall an great time, it's nice that this is getting ported to more platforms very soon, more people should definitely play it.

pretty solid little Metroidvania, the gameplay that takes cues from Order of Eclessia works well, gorgeous pixel-art graphics and good enough soundtrack, great exploration that feels rewarding and fun boss encounters, everything that an good Metroidvania needs is right here and fans of the genre will feel right at home.

it's a bit too short though, having played other Metroidvania games I finished this in 4 hours with most of the endings done without breaking much of an sweat, the story was decent enough but difficult to follow, lots of time travelling nothingburgers.

nonetheless an solid game, I am excited for the sequel now, hopefully it comes out this year.

definitely an PS2 classic but damn is this game tiring, the gameplay is well realized, the combat is really fun with a lot of variety considering the different weapon classes. the "Innocent Devil" system is incredibly cool, it's engaging to try out each helper and see their evolutions and abilities.

the soundtrack slaps as usual for the series, the story is surprisingly good for an Castlevania game, I liked the characters and even the dialogue, PS2 era games have that cheesy and exaggerated acting that I really enjoy and this game does it perfectly, the cutscene direction and mocap are really good too.

unfortunely the rest is marred down by a lot of slogness and repetition, there are some Castlevania games that are known for their piss poor map designs, the GBA titles such as Circle of the Moon or Harmony of Dissonance are the top contenders but Curse of Darkness might be the worst when it comes to this, each area is designed the same way, roads leading to doors with more roads that are filled with the same copy pasted enemies, different pathways that are there just to slow down the player, lots of time there is nothing in the end to properly reward the player for exploring these massive and repetitive areas, the incredibly slow movement speed that Hector has doesn't help either.

play Curse of Darkness in short bursts otherwise most players will probably bounce off on this in an hour or two, Igarashi and his team probably felt that the variety of helpers and weapons would compensate for the overall simplistic and boring exploration elements but this is not how I felt during my nearly 10 hour playtime, going for an more linear approach would have been better choice in terms of structure.