Reviews// Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2)

An extension of the battling system are new creatures called Innocent Devils, or 'ID's. As a Devil Forgemaster, Hector can nurture these strange creatures that follow you around the level and help you out during battle. At the start, you will get a little fairy-style ID that will be able to grant healing powers, while later in the game you'll encounter ones that can perform spells, and IDs with brute strength to help you floor some troublesome evil-doers. Your Innocent Devils also have a health bar, that decreases every time it's either attacked by an enemy or uses a special power assigned to your Summon button. It's an interesting addition, but doesn't leave much room for tactical play - you'll usually unlock a new Innocent Devil just when you need it, so every time you get a new one you'll end up sticking with it to help you complete the next level. You can change which ID to summon using the pause menu, so if you're in a fix, you can pull out a different creature to help get an edge. The fairy devils can be quite helpful, when you consider that in classic 'hardcore' gaming fashion, you will be very short on healing supplies and cash to purchase such items.

Following on from the same kind of gameplay in Symphony of the Night, Hector can level up and gain experience points for destroying monsters, and the Innocent Devil you have summoned gains experience with you, and can even evolve. This is a nice feature as you nurture your devils, Tamagotchi-style (except for the cleaning of the poop and the left/right guessing game. Good times...) although their evolution patterns aren't as extensive as we were hoping for. Depending on the type of weapon you use - sword, axe, spear, whatever - enemies drop different coloured crystals that power up your ID. If they get enough, they evolve into something quite random. And we mean random - there's no chart or anything letting us know what kind of powers an ID will inherit if they absorb too many blue crystals instead of red, and you don't really know how effective they're going to be unless you let them fight a few more battles.


What really impressed us was the level of customisation we could make to our weapons and items. Hector starts off with some poor weaponry to begin with, but enemies drop materials and other items that can be used to turn your current weapons into new brands when combined together. The problem comes when you don't know whether you're going to be wasting materials on creating a crappy new weapon, but that's half the fun as well. You can even upgrade armour and helmets to increase your defences. It adds a bit of interactivity and life into a combat system that really works for the Castlevania series.

The unfortunate thing is, Curse of Darkness can get tedious. Insanely so. The very first level will have you running one way to collect a special item, only to have to trudge all the way back to where you started, to the other side of the map and use that item to unlock a door. There is also a 50-room bore-fest called the Tower of Eternia, which has you fighting through 50 rooms fighting and fighting and fighting until you die or fall asleep. Or fall asleep and never wake up. All for a trivial item that you could have done without in the first place. The game is rife with bits like this, although not quite to the extent of the Tower. You'll get areas of the map that you reckon might lead somewhere, but after traipsing for an age, you realise it contains a screw or something to add to your helmet. Other times you'll end up checking your map every ten seconds for vague ideas on where the exit might be. Irritating isn't the word.

We're certainly not saying that the level design should be restricted further. Lord knows a straight-line level map would just be absurd. But it seemed like we were playing through a big long corridor. The gameplay pretty much amounts to 'run a bit, find some enemies, kill them, run a bit more', where the running is always forward and the enemies always regenerate when you leave the room. We like to move around a bit, but despite the map design we really did feel like we were just going forwards. Maybe some alternative gameplay ideas would have worked to break up the action, like a few jumping sections or something.


Fortunately there are save points usually stuck in between such sections - using a Memorial Ticket will save you the hassle of fighting 'filler enemies' and cut your boring journey in half. The problem with this is that Memorial Tickets are few and far between, so usually you don't use them often for fear of running out. You also need to register a Save Point in order to get there using a Memorial Ticket, which is simple enough, but the tickets will only take you to the last Save Point you registered. If you happened to have skipped half the level because you couldn't be bothered to explore the tedious corridors, you're likely to miss a vital Save Point and using a ticket will only make your life worse. It should, technically, serve you right for not exploring in the first place, but when the corridors are so long and the rewards are so little, you really can't be blamed for it.

SPOnG Score: C

It's a welcome sub-story to the much-loved Castlevania series, but falls flat on its face when you realise the game, for the most part, isn't that interesting at all. It's an enjoyable, if average, platforming hack-and-slash, and while it pulls off an impressive combat and customisation system, the level design and tedious nature of the battles can sometimes make you wonder why you're bothering. Good for a quick play, but only if you rush it and ignore all invitations to explore the stages.