Castlevania: Belmont's Curse On Switch - Demo Play Thursday

This week's DEMO is the Switch version of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, from developers Evil Empire.

I'm aware of Castlevania but i've never finished one of the games. so i come into this one knowing of the name Belmont but not really the significance of it. There's a little bit of back story given in this demo but that past doesn't really get in the way of the game's present.

Visually, i enjoyed the back grounds, the art style, and the interpretation of Paris. i was a bit surprised by how well and bold it all was. but the characters and the enemies look a little blurry and a little plain in comparison. in a way, it feels like the world has a slightly different art style to the characters. But as a whole i did enjoy it. the music is something i'm not quite sure off. it didn't feel like it fitted as well with this setting as i hoped. it could be that there's more of a link to past games that i'm not aware of.

Moving around the level was fine but once we got the grapple ability things really improved. the grapple hooks are easy to spot so i knew that this ability was coming, it's just a matter of when and how. In this demo, we get to face off against 1 of the 3 gate guards. this was a tough battle and took quite a bit of time. i eventually won it after changing some of the game's settings. instead of Easy, Medium, Difficult, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse seems to come with one default difficulty that you're able to modify yourself. i gave my character more attacking power and i changed the respawn point to outside the boss room, instead of the game's chosen respawn point.  There are other options available to help players customise the experience.

I did experience a bug right at the start of the game where the audio wasn't correct during the opening intro movie. i had to exit the game and re-load it. but after than the game seemed to run smoothly on Switch. i also felt that the controls were responsive. But there were moments where i had to wait for my character to finish an animation before they'd do what i wanted them to do. it was only frustrating during the boss fight i got a little stuck on.

Overall, i had a nice time with the demo once i changed a few settings and got the extra mobility option with the grappling. before that, things were fine but it was more the graphics and world that caught my attention rather than the gameplay. once i got those things, it did feel like a better experience. But i do worry about the difficulty spiking more. So i'm glad i tried it out, but i don't think i'll be getting Castlevania: Belmont's Curse right now.