Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

THE BAD:
Like Lament of Innocence the environments still all look the same.

SUMMARY:
When I got this game for christmas I never expected this game to to remind of my favorite Castlevania game so much. The protagonist in this game is not a Belmont, its Hector the Devilforge master. He once was a servant of Dracula but when he saw how Dracula was killing humans he left him. Now in when Trevor Belmont(yes the same Trevor from Castlevania 3) kills him the other forgemaster Isaac blames it all on Hector for Draculas death. So what does he do? He finds Hectors wife and convinces the towns people shes a witch and they all burn her to death. Now Hector all pissed off(hell I would be too!) goes to find Isaac......problem is he cast away all his power.(genius isn't he?) In the end though I didnt find the story to be very good, just meh, kinda like the rest of the Castlevania games, the story usually fails to impress me.

The gameplay for the game is similiar to that of Dynasty Warriors, but much funner. In the game you press square for regular attacks and then circle for finishing attacks(I didnt like this so I switched it to triangle)Also Hector can level up just like Alucard from SOTN, meaning his stats and health will get better the more he fights enemies, something Lament of Innocence lacked(Lamment of Innocence being the previous 3d Castlevania game, if you want you can see the review I wrote for it). During the course of the game you will find materials that will allow you to create more weapons, such as swords, axes, lances, knuckles and "special" weapons. Each weapon has its own number of combo its, meaning if your sword could only do 4 hits before, your new one may be able to do 5 which opens up another finishing move to try out. Each weapon is good in their own way, swords are usually the most balanced, axes are most powerful, lances have the more range and are great with crowds and the knucles are lightning quick.

Now heres something that really got me feeling like it was SOTN again, Innocent Devils. In the game you come across the ID's which are alot like Alucards Familiars except they play a much larger role. During the course of the game you will them to open chests, get tp the other side of a crevase, open heavy doors, and get under cracks in the wall! Now the ID's can level up just like Hector can but they can also evolve, kinda like pokemon but not as gay. When you defeat monsters they may leave some evolution stones, now depending on what weapon your using will determine what stone it will leave(sword-sword stones, axe-axe stones etc) This will determine just what the ID will transform into. In the game you will get many diffrent kinds of ID's one is the Fairy type which can heal you and another is the Battle type which will obviously fight with you. When they fight with you they may leave a devil seed which you can use to make anoterh ID of that kind so you can level it up to something else. Also the ID's can learn abilities such as Heal lvl 1,2 and 3 for the Fairy type, depending on what they will evolve into will determine what they learn.

Well one little complaint I had with this game was that like Lament of Innocence the backgrounds all looked the same, it wasnt enough to take way any of the fun, which is why its a 5 but just thought id let you know. In the end this game truly amazed me with its Symphony of the Night feel and thus I say this, even if you never played SOTN play this gmae its awesome, and for those who never played SOTN, well wtf are you waiting for? Its a 2d masterpeice! Play both of these games right now!