This was another game I've had my eye on for ages and only finally picked up in the recent eShop sale. I had very lukewarm feelings on the larger Bloodstained title, Ritual of the Night, and while that doesn't seem to be a very uncommon opinion, an even more common one is that Curse of the Moon (despite being a different genre) was easily the superior game between the two. Having played through nearly all of the classic Castlevanias last year, I was certainly interested (not to mention that it's also an IntiCreates game), and I'm glad that I finally got to playing through this one. It took me about three hours to play through the game the first time, and then another two hours to play through it again on Nightmare mode.
Curse of the Moon takes place in an alternate world to Ritual of the Night, where the samurai Zangetsu was placed under an evil curse long ago and he wanders the lands searching for the demon that put it on him in order to slay it. Along the way, you bump into other characters from Ritual of the Night, and you can have a quick chat with them to have them join you, or kill them to gain a special new power (or ignore them entirely). Like old Casltevanias, this game is very light on the story, but given that it's very specifically trying to be an old game like that, it hits that mark excellently. The story does exactly what it needs to to set up the action, and it provides a great spooky setting for the adventure taking place~. The gameplay of CotM is in the vein of the classic action Castlevanias rather than being a metroidvania like Ritual of the Night was (though it certainly doesn't help the confusion between the two with Curse of the Moon having a very similar title to Circle of the Moon, an actual metroidvania Castlevania game XP). You make your way through 9 stages to destroy the demon at the end of Zangetsu's quest, utilizing a basic attack as well as sub-weapons in a very Castlevania-y fashion. In another very Castlevnania-like move, you have multiple playable characters much like in Castlevania 3, but unlike in that game, you can swap between any of your four characters whenever if you have them (where in C3 Trevor Belmont can only bring along one friend at most). These other playable characters even have their own unique sub-weapons, special abilities to play very differently, and even their own respective healthbars, which all makes for much more varied experiences as well as allowing you to take a lot more punishment. However, if one character dies, they're *gone* until you either beat the stage or lose all of your playable characters, and your other characters don't heal up if one of them dies, leading to a big risk-reward element if you're using them as portable health bars. Nightmare Mode is a mode unlocked after beating the game once, and it has a different final stage instead of the original one (as well as making the bosses a bit harder). All of the stages are really well designed though, with the classic Castlevania knock-back being present but often not nearly so deadly as it once was. You can even pick between a Veteran or Casual mode at the start of any run, with the latter removing the limited number of extra lives as well as removing knock-back too (just to add one more layer of nice accessibility to the game). In general, the game is nowhere near as hard as the Castlevania of old, though. My only real complaint would be the boss battles, which while fun, often do require a bit too much trial and error for my liking with just how difficult it so often is to react to their attacks if you don't already know what's coming. They're great fun once you get the pattern down, but it's a pain to almost certainly get your head kicked in on your first attempt just because you don't know how to not die yet (unlike how generally forgiving and nice the rest of the enemy design is). At the very least the checkpoint placement for losing both party members and extra lives are very forgiving as well. The presentation is fantastic. Very much like a New Retro game like Shovel Knight, you have beautiful 8-bit-style sprites with modern day enhanced animations and (especially) backgrounds. It does a great job of capturing how you "remember" games looking, very much like a Shovel Knight does. The only thing that look obviously not 8-bit are the bosses, who have a level of detail much more obviously impossible on older machines. The music is also excellent, capturing the spooky-but-with-action Castlevania-y mood they're going for perfectly~. Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is yet another absolutely brilliant game out of IntiCreates, and one that does an amazing job of capturing the feel and style of an older genre while bringing it forward to the modern era in very appreciated ways as well. If you're a fan of action games, especially if you liked old Castlevania but found it just a bit too hard a bit too often to be fun, then this is definitely one you shouldn't miss out on.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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