2026 has been a strange year for gaming for me. It has by no means been a bad year, it's actually been pretty stuffed to the brim with great stuff. Games like Denshattack, Pokemon Pokopia, and Rhythm Heaven Groove were standouts for me, and I also found a lot of cool little indie gems throughout the year like Escape From Ever After, Turnip Mountain, and Well Dweller. There's also plenty of sick-looking games I haven't gotten around to like Mio: Memories In Orbit, Pragmata, 007 First Light, Demon Tides, and the new Lego Batman, and even more games that I just do not have the means to play like Ace Combat 8, Control Resonant, and Star Wars Galactic Racer. I'll talk about it all more when I have my finished 2026 GotY list, but needless to say, there is a lot to like from this year.
However, 2026 has also brought on a lot of disappointments. Mina The Hollower was a pretty good game, but it didn't reach my lofty expectations in the slightest and took way too long for me to actually click with it. Splatoon Raiders is also a solid effort but it lacks a lot of what I like about Splatoon especially in terms of level design and music. There were also a few indie 3D platformers that I was really looking forward to like Big Hops and Mr Sleepy Man that ended up releasing in a pretty buggy state. But I don't think any of those let-downs hit me as hard as Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, a game I was unreasonably hyped for. I love Castlevania, and this felt like such an easy home-run. A new metroidvania entry in the series that looked great in the trailers, and it was developed by the accomplished devs behind Dead Cells? Hell yeah, I'm on-board! But then Konami released a demo and I... didn't enjoy it.. at all.
So a while back, I reviewed Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown, a technically competent metroidvania that just didn't click with me, and I struggled to articulate why it felt so off. I did have some genuine criticisms such as the room design occasionally being overly large and empty, the overabundance of useless lore collectibles at the end of challenge rooms, the unengaging narrative, and the bland soundtrack, but I didn't have the proper lexicon to explain why the gamefeel didn't work for me. Out of every metroidvania I've played, Belmont's Curse reminds me the most of The Lost Crown in terms of gameplay, and now I can much more confidently say why I don't care for either. The Lost Crown felt kind of stiff and sticky to play. Movement was precise especially for the parkour segments but there wasn't much in the way of momentum so moving around didn't feel particularly fun, and combat wasn't responsive enough to feel fast-paced nor slow enough to feel deliberate, it just felt like everything had a delay to it.
Belmont's Curse has a lot of very similar issues, though I must clarify that I don't mind a Castlevania game being stiff to play. The Classicvania formula is defined by its stiffness. My problem is more that there's an input delay to a lot of your actions in this game, which is a problem because even the Classic games still felt responsive and had a consistent rhythm to them. Jumping feels fine enough, attacking felt about how it does in TLC, but the dodge had such an awkward delay to it that I found myself constantly mistiming it and not really understanding what I did wrong. But even worse is the whip grapple you eventually unlock which has a delay every single time you grapple onto something. This mechanic was what excited me the most in the trailers, I love a good grapple hook, but the slow windup absolutely kills any sense of flow these sequences could've had. I've seen a lot of people bring up that Belmont's Curse has notable input lag on consoles even in the full release and that could definitely exacerbate things, but regardless the game just didn't feel good to play. Once again, it felt sticky, in an awkward middle ground between the fluidity of the Igavanias and the deliberacy of the Classicvanias. And it's a shame because, unlike TLC, I actually thought the level design was pretty solid from what I played. Rooms felt compact and tightly-designed with deliberate enemy placement, and I even found an HP Up collectible which was definitely a relief, I just wish it felt better to play.
Now to play devil's advocate, I've seen a lot of people criticize Belmont's Curse for not feeling like a Castlevania game but some of the reasons I've seen feel a bit superficial. No, I don't think this game needed hearts, the Igavanias already had an MP system so removing them didn't bother me much. Subweapons being a collectible that you can build up and swap at any time, also a cool addition, I don't mind that. And the addition of soulslike elements like potions and boss runbacks? Come on, Castlevania was like the proto-Soulslike, it makes total sense that it would take cues from it. I actually really like the artstyle, that's my favorite part of the game for sure. I genuinely think it looks really nice. And the story is... mostly inoffensive? Maybe a bit blabbier than I'd want and what they did to Sypha is a crime, but Rose Belmont is a fitting Castlevania protagonist and the tone seems pretty on-point. And yet despite all this praise, I also felt like the Belmont's Curse demo didn't quite feel like a Castlevania game, we just have to dig a bit deeper than the surface level.
Instead, my issue with Belmont's Curse is that it fully strips away the RPG elements that made Igavanias so unique. Games like Symphony Of The Night and Aria Of Sorrow are beloved for their bevy of weapons, robust equipment systems, diverse bestiary of enemies, and impressive build potential. They were action RPGs as much as they were metroidvanias, that was what made them special. Belmont's Curse has a level up system, and not much else. There's only 28 weapons, four per type, and they all seem to function as a basic upgrade over the last. There's no equipment whatsoever, and outside of a tried-and-true Hollow Knight Crest system, not much customization either. There's no weirdo equippables like SotN's iconic secret boots, enemy variety is pretty lacking even in the early-game, and you can't dual-wield so no cool synergies between weapons. At that point, what really differentiates Belmont's Curse from any other metroidvania? Not much honestly. It says a lot when Hollow Knight Silksong was able to scratch the Castelvania itch for me better than the actual Castlevania game, with its fluid movement that almost perfectly captures the feel of characters like Alucard and Soma, crests and tool system offering an insane level of build variety, hefty roster full of unique foes all the way to the end, and interconnected world that nailed the vibe of making your way to an imposing Draconian castle in the distance.
But I think more than anything else, the thing that really killed my hype for Belmont's Curse was the music. Castlevania is a series defined by its music, and especially defined by its opening level themes. Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, Beginning, Simon's Theme, Reincarnated Soul, Divine Bloodlines, Battle Of The Holy, New Messiah, Awake, Ruined Castle Corridor, An Invitation To A Crazed Moon, nearly every Castlevania game has an opening stage theme that's gone down in video game music history. Even Harmony Of Dissonance, the Castlevania game with the bad soundtrack, has a pretty great one in Successor Of Fate. So imagine my shock when I booted up Belmont's Curse and was greeted with a very... boring first area track. It didn't have much of a melody to it, nor was it even super ambient, it was just this basic compressed beat that got very repetitive very fast. I've realized that music is extremely important when it comes to my enjoyment of a game. Good music can heighten an already stellar experience and smoothen over a rough one, but bad music can very easily have the opposite effect. The music in the Belmont's Curse demo was one such case, it only made it easier for me to notice how off the game felt.
I did try listening to the rest of the soundtrack once the game released to see if maybe the music gets better, but no, not really? The whole soundtrack is composed of these languid synth beats that lack any interesting melody, and they don't even have the courtesy to be techno bangers in their own right outside of maybe the Clock Tower theme. There is one remix, but it's of the extremely overused Bloody Tears, and it's not even a good remix. It's not rocking at all, it has this epic movie trailer sound to it that sounds really bad. Honestly, I think I prefer Harmony's soundtrack to this, at least it had melodies and a distinct jazz fusion style. This just sucks, like straight up, I found a lot of the music genuinely unpleasant to listen to, I can't imagine listening to that for the game's entire 15-20 hour runtime. It's cheap-sounding, it's repetitive, and it lacks any of the funk or gothic flair that makes Castlevania music so consistently stellar. I always feel bad insulting game composers, and I don't intend to here. This game was composed by Asadi and for good measure, I did give his score for Rogue Prince Of Persia a listen and it was actually really good, so he's clearly talented. I just don't think he was a good fit for Castlevania, no matter how you slice it.
So as you can probably tell, the demo for Belmont's Curse has been a big disappointment as someone who really wanted to love this game. Sure, it was just the demo and maybe the game does get better, but it is still the demo's job to convince me on the game and on that end, it failed miserably. I just don't get the sense that it's actually doing anything to modernize Castlevania, it just feels like reheated nachos of other metroidvanias with a Castlevania skin, not innovating like its peers in the genre nor is it using what makes Castlevania special to help itself stand out like what Metroid did with Dread. Even with the generally positive reviews, none of them have convinced me that my issues with the stiff and sticky movement, lack of RPG elements, and poor soundtrack will get better in the full release. It also doesn't help that consoles and PC are also experiencing a variety of performance issues, along with there not being a proper Switch 2 edition of the game so I'd have to play the Switch 1 version with its very fuzzy resolution. Maybe I'll get it on sale further down the line once everything gets patched up, but for now, I'm not in any rush to get the full game.
Now I'm not going be melodramatic and wangst about how Castlevania is dead to me or anything, because it's not. The metroidvania scene is still thriving and plenty of stellar indie darlings have taken and will continue to take cues from Castlevania. As I mentioned, the Hollow Knight games really get it, especially Silksong. I'd also be remiss not to mention Team Ladybug's work, Touhou Luna Nights in particular. From this year, Well Dweller was fantastic. It definitely has some Castlevania DNA with its fluid movement, macabre artstyle, and open progression, but it also has some cool twists on the formula like active reload healing, bullet hell bosses, and your main weapon being a basic torch. And on the horizon, there's plenty of awesome looking metroidvanias like Mariachi Legends and Rune Fencer Illyia, both of which have clear Castlevania influences while also doing their own unique things. Not to mention Koji Igarashi is still around releasing Bloodstained games, one of which should be coming out next year. There is no shortage of games that will scratch that Castlevania itch for me, it's just a shame the actual series probably isn't going to be able to.
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