I want to love the new Castlevania, but it just feels a little off

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I got off to a bit of an awkward start with Castlevania: Belmont's Curse when it first booted to a black screen. A few minutes of troubleshooting later, I deduced that the game wouldn't display on a monitor with its refresh rate set higher than 120 Hz. Easily solved, but I kept thinking of that quirk when I selected the in-game 120 fps cap and then watched the game jarringly lurch down to a lower framerate every time I hit a cutscene.

Maybe these technical quirks were treats for reviewers that have been smoothed over in time for launch. They haven't stopped me from having a lot of fun with the eight or so hours I've played Belmont's Curse—I think I'm closing in on the halfway point, and it keeps getting better as it goes. But it's not quite the slam dunk I expected from the first new Castlevania in decades, with such a talented studio behind it.

Belmont's Curse has a bit of a juice problem. You've probably heard (or said) "it's got the juice" so many times in recent years that the expression has more or less just become shorthand for I think this is really good . As originally coined by some very smart game designers , though, it means something a bit more specific: the sort of polish that "feels alive and responds to everything you do—tons of cascading action and response for minimal user input." There are some quintessential ways to add juiciness to an action game: screen shake, hitstop (the brief pause for impact when your attacks land), enemy reactions, flashy particles and other effects. Most important are how your character feels when they move or jump or dodge.

Juicy doesn't have to mean fast , necessarily. But Dead Cells, which Belmont's Curse developer Evil Empire spent much of the last decade working on, is one of the fastest and juiciest action games ever made. Hollow Knight's fast nail swipes and precise dodges are also extremely juicy, which is one reason it has so resoundingly become the metroidvania others are now measured against .

Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania DLC - Gameplay Trailer | PS4 Games - YouTube

Belmont's Curse is somehow intermittently, confusingly juiced and… dry? Soured? There are ways in which it just feels off that are still bugging me hours into the game.

There's a lengthy wind-up on Rose Belmont's whip, which you use to swing all around France and Dracula's castle, that becomes a frustration during spike-filled platforming challenges that require perfect timing on a swing. Even when I get the timing right, I often miss a grapple point because I'm holding the analog stick in the direction I want to move rather than pointing it at the spot I need to hook onto.

The first dodge Belmont's Curse teaches you is a forward slide, but it has so few invincibility frames on it—if any at all—that it's gotten me killed in more boss fights than it has saved me. Maybe I should've learned by now not to use it, but it's just one of a dozen small things that I find fiddly or confusing in this game that I thought Evil Empire would absolutely have on lock.

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