Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse

NES

Konami 1990

Konami went old-school on Castlevania 3, bringing the Belmonts (well, one of 'em) back for another adventure pursuing Dracula. This game looks and plays a WHOLE lot more like the first than the second, so if you're expecting a lengthy quest, you'll be thoroughly disappointed. While the game is by no means short, it does have only a handful of levels you must complete. This game did allow you to choose your own path, letting you pick between one painful level and another painful level. This game also allowed you to transform into a sidekick once you defeated them (they're all former enemies) in battle. You could be a monkey-ish little pirate guy, a sorceress with spells if you were really lucky, or Dracula's son (Alucard). Alucard's story is certainly one that deserves its own episode of E! True Hollywood Story. Shortly after Castlevania 3, he changed his appearance drastically, turning into a light-loafered well-dressed vampire, and finally admitting his raging homosexuality just after Symphony of the Night.

What I liked:

Old School. Yay.

Partners. Cool.

OOHH. Different paths. Wait, how'd I get there again?

What I didn't:

Steps. Ugh.

Some enemies/sections are horribly frustrating.

Hard to recover skills/weapons after you die.

Lacks the overall variety of the 2nd game.

Controls: 8. Fine other than stairs and brushbacks after being hit.

Graphics: 7. Solid, but hardly special.

Sound: 7. Same old music, same old FX.

Style: 6. Well, it's basically the first game. At the same time, they added some innovations and some other minor upgrades. With that in mind, I'll use this as an opportunity to voice my thoughts on this category in general. I caught an enormous amount of crap because I did actually give some later Megaman games style points. In my defense, I was basically given a 2-minute crash course on what to do, and NEVER explained the intricacies of formatting reviews or accurately reviewing games. On Megaman specifically, (I swear this is going somewhere) my thinking was this: yeah, it's unoriginal (which is why I basically wrote the same review over and over--irony!) but it's still a solid game and a great concept. So it seems that on this site "Style" means "originality" even though no one told me or ever says "originality" in their reviews. This game nets about a 3 on originality if you want to go by everyone else's oddly defined review categories, but this game still has plenty of style (like Undercover Brother) in my mind so it's pulling in a few points.

1st hour: 9. WOW. They went back to #1. Awesome!

2nd hour: 7. Hey, is that a monkey helping me? Can he do tricks?

1st week: 7. Every enemy kicks your ass late in the game. Ugh.

2nd week: 6. Getting old. Sick of dying, repeating chunks of levels.

1st month: 7. Beat it, respecting the game, despising the difficulty, going back to pick up #2 for some quality Questing.

The number one reason I HATE THIS GAME is that IT'S SOOOOOOOO HARD.

by Evil X