Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
System: NES
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1990
Country: USA

Not much needs to be said to familiarize you with this game. This is one of those titles that you can use to prove whether someone is a douche or not. Castlevania III is without a doubt one of the greatest games ever made. You don’t even need to read the rest of this review, that is exactly what I’m going to tell you throughout it.

I felt like this game was the perfect game to use as a send off to my old “random rambling” review system. It served its point, but after a while it was actually more boring to write than the structured system I’ll be using now.

Plus I get to use these neat graphics.

Anyway, Castlevania III is the last game of the series for the legendary NES, and the last part of this piece. It is interesting to point out that Castlevania followed the same formula that other legendary series had been following at the time; a huge hit first game followed up by a lackadaisical, generally different follow up and finally improved upon greatly in the third chapter. Mario did it, Mega Man did it, Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda both did it, and so too did Castlevania.

Springboarding from the annoying, slow paced, dull, experimental mess that Simon’s Quest ended up becoming, Dracula’s Curse essentially threw out every new addition from that game and went back to its fairly young roots. Although much of the role-playing elements that made Simon’s Quest so bad would eventually come back and make the later games so good, they simply did not work on this system. Castlevania III remedied that by going back to what worked; fast paced, exciting, vampire-whippin action.

Except this time, you had some buddies.

Castlevania III is actually a prequel to the previous two games in the series, and in it you take the reigns of Trevor Belmont, one of Simon’s ancestors who helped to establish the family name as the PREMIER name in vampire removal services operating out of the Transylvania rural area. Trevor is tasked with, what else, destroying Dracula and casting him away from the Belmont’s hometown.

For the first time in the series, your storyline will combine with others who can join and help you on your journey. There are three other characters that you can acquire, all who have their own reasons, although seemingly very minor, to join you in your quest of destroying Ole’ Drac. They aren’t the most useful bunch, and you can only actually have one of them with you at a time, but they do help you get through the games various stages as you attempt to gain access to the castle.

The gameplay is obviously terrific. It takes the original Castlevania’s simple but effective “jump n whip” method and improves it. Most of the control issues from the previous games are absent, and now with the added characters, each one controls different. Trevor is, of course, the best all around, but each of the three added characters have their own quirks and abilities that set them apart. In the end, none of them are actually all that useful outside of acquiring one of the games four endings and a few scattered 1-Ups, but the addition is a nice thought and doesn’t actually detract from the game… except for Alucard, who pretty much sucks in this.

Get it? I’ve been waiting to use that one.

The only holdover from the second Castlevania game is the non-linear gameplay, although this is done a little bit better. Instead of tons of arbitrary lucky guesses and backgracking, at the end of certain boards you are presented with a simple choice of two directions. Your choice will change your path through the castle. Will you go through the front door or through the water works? Through the swamp or over the ghost ship?

All of this helps to add to the games replay value which, unlike most of its contemporaries at the time, is actually very high. The different paths you can take along with the four different characters and endings (although, once again, the endings are nearly identical and the characters are actually rather useless outside of Trevor) help keep the game fresh for long past the sell by date.

The graphics aren’t really too much of an improvement, but they really didn’t have very far they could go at the time. They do certainly look better than the last two games, and the pallet is certainly improved, but there are still some strange color quirks that always kind of bugged me. Some of the enemy sprites are also puzzlingly regressed and dated looking. The backgrounds of each board are quite nice, and they are also incredibly varied. Each stage looks different than the stage before it and each stage also contributes to the overall Castlevanianess of Castlevania III. The game certainly feels and looks dark. Transylvania is clearly not a place with many ice cream places or bunny rabbits.

The sound is, once again, flawless. In it is contained some of the best, most recognizable musical arrangements in the entirety of the gaming world.

In the end, Castlevania III stands out as one of the greatest games on the NES, and also as one of the true classics of gaming. Great, fast paced, non-linear gameplay, moody visuals and spectacular music all combine to create a truly memorable gaming experience.

Score: 97