KONAMI recently released a free demo for their upcoming game, Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, coming October 15th. I played through the demo twice, just to make sure my impressions were accurate, and I’m sorry to say that I wish they hadn’t released the demo.
🎮 AT A GLANCE:
Game Title: Castlevania Belmont’s Curse
Demo Played On: PlayStation 5
Developer / Publisher: Evil Empire / KONAMI
Price: Demo - Free; Full Release - $29.99
Genre: 2.5D Metroidvania
Overall: Good-looking, generally smooth-playing take on the classic Castlevania series, but “meh” music and cheesy dialog left me questioning if it’s still a day-one must buy - (full impressions below)
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is the first new official 2.5D (like Metroid Dread) game in the Castlevania series since Order of Ecclesia on the Nintendo DS in October 2008, making it almost exactly 18 years since the last one. In Belmont’s Curse, Trevor and Rose Belmont have been summoned to Paris, France on behalf of the King to investigate a monstrous entity terrorizing the city. It’s been 23 years since their last encounter with Dracula (in the NES game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse).
The game was developed by Evil Empire, with “advisory” from Motion Twin, and published by KONAMI. You may know Evil Empire from the Dead Cells DLCs (all of them) and The Rogue: Prince of Persia. Motion Twin is the original developer of Dead Cells.
DEMO IMPRESSIONS
I’ll get into the details of my impressions from the demo in a sec, but first a bit of context. I’ve been a Castlevania fan since the very beginning on the NES, but I REALLY became a big fan with the release of Super Castlevania IV on the SNES (1991). The graphics were beautiful, the music was incredible, and the gameplay / level design was outstanding. I played that game so much I could practically go through it completely hitless, or at least deathless, until the last few stages.
When Castlevania: Symphony of the Night released on the original PlayStation in 1997, it was the first game that came close to giving me the same feeling of excitement that IV did.
Now, in the year of our Lord 2026, we have Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, a new game in the series, from the developers of a game heavily inspired by Castlevania.
When I first heard about it, and who was developing it, I was super hyped. The Castlevania series had been dormant at KONAMI for quite some time, but after successful revivals of series like Silent Hill and the remake of Metal Gear Solid III I was hopeful, plus Dead Cells and its Castlevania DLC, are some of my favorite games, and I really liked The Rogue: Prince of Persia as well. When I saw the first trailers it became clear that the visual style was more like the developers’ own games than a totally new take on Castlevania, but that’s probably to be expected, and while my hype was tempered just a little, I was still very excited.
The more and more I found out about the game, and saw trailer videos of it, I continued to be hyped for the full release, and planning to buy the game on day one. So when I saw they had released a demo for it, of course I downloaded and played it immediately; in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t.
The demo opens with a cinema-scene style intro telling the story of monsters invading Paris, and the King of France summoning Trevor Belmont to help free the city from the monstrous invasion. The voice acting is well done but kind of slow pacing and doesn’t sound French at all, despite it being based in Paris.
Then the game begins and shows Trevor and Rose approaching a dock in Paris, rowing a boat and discussing the situation. Trevor’s art design looks very cool, as he is portrayed as a mature older-looking version of the character, and Rose is his daughter. The entire scene looks very good, but this is where the voice acting and dialogue starts to go off the rails. The writing and voice acting came off very cheesy to me, granted the Castlevania series isn’t exactly known for its stellar, dramatic writing or voice acting (“What is a man? A miserable pile of secrets!”), but it was still very off-putting to me.
After they finally stop all their yapping, I was able to start controlling Rose to get a feel for the action. The action felt…fine. Rose controls well enough and the animation looks good (her running isn’t goofy or anything, but again, I think we saw this in the trailers). The thing that hit me right away, though, was the music… or the lack of. The music that plays right when the dialogue ends and you start controlling Rose starts with a strong organ chord, so I was hoping that would transition into a more traditional rocking Castlevania track (even if just in style only) but no, it just drops into this fairly subdued drum beat, and competent, if underwhelming, music track that is clearly designed to be “background music”; nothing epic like a traditional Castlevania would have.
She is armed with a sword, and as a result the combat feels like something between Symphony of the Night and Dead Cells, with a slide dash that lets you reposition behind enemies, avoid their attack and then counterattack. In theory this all sounds good, but in practice it all feels a bit “off” from what I was expecting; not bad, mind you, but just not what I expected (and yes, it also feels “off” compared to Dead Cells.)
The enemies can be fast, and they hit hard, so at least the game isn’t a complete cakewalk, but some of the hits did feel a bit cheap, like I should have been able to see them coming (like I was used to from Dead Cells); this just feels… different.
Overall the combat is fine, and I’m sure after playing a while and getting used to it, it could actually be fun. The demo is quite short, so you don’t really get a great feeling for how the combat will evolve over the course of the broader game, and I think that’s my biggest issue with the demo.
The demo is very short and clearly this approach to Castlevania is different than the old school games, and I likely just needed more time to get used to the differences it has. Unfortunately the demo doesn’t afford the time to do so, and I think it could hurt the game’s chances for success more than it helps it.
This probably brings up an interesting question of the strategy behind game demos, how they are best utilized, and when they help more than hurt, and vice-versa. Perhaps a topic for a future article. For example, the recent demo of Final Fantasy Resonance took me from “wait and see” to “I have to buy this!” while the demo for Belmont’s Curse had the exact opposite effect. Is that the demo’s fault (Resonance was abnormally long for a demo, but gave the player time to really get into the story) or is it just the case that some things appeal more to some people more than others? Maybe some people really didn’t like the Final Fantasy Resonance demo, and it made them question buying it, or changed their mind altogether, like the demo for Belmont’s Curse did to me. It’s an interesting question.
VERDICT: HYPE LEVEL 3/5
Unfortunately, the demo for Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse left me uncertain whether I would purchase the game. What started as a “must buy on day one”, ended as a “maybe I should see the reviews and other player feedback first.”
On the one hand, I’m very happy to see KONAMI releasing a new 2D-ish Castlevania in 2026, and I think the game looks good and generally plays well, and I wish I had never played the demo and simply purchased the game.
On the other hand, there are a TON of other games to play right now, and the competition for my gaming time is fierce. Can I look past the uninspiring music and annoyingly cheesy voice acting / writing? Sure, but I’m not sure I’m going to.
Sadly, I feel like the developers could have used a bit more time to cook, and KONAMI may have pushed development to align with Castlevania’s 40th Anniversary (I have no evidence of that - it just feels that way).
In the end, if it weren’t for the demo, it would have been a no-brainer day-one purchase for me. Now? I’m not so sure.
WATCH GAMEPLAY
You can see my gameplay from the demo in the video below: