#8: Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
A worthy successor to the original
This review was originally posted on Twitter on August 10, 2018
Initial release: 1988
Platform: Famicom, NES
Developer: Konami
If the old-school Castlevania games have a title that’s a standard-bearer for the rest, it’s probably this one. While there’s no substitute for the original (four remakes notwithstanding) it’s Castlevania III that’s the exemplar.
Set 200 years (100 before retcons) before the first Castlevania, Castlevania III stars Trevor Belmont, who takes up arms against Dracula, who is waging war on Wallachia (today part of romania) with aims on taking europe. Ghouls n’ ghosts have taken over, and Trevor must beat them back.
Along the way he meets three others: Grant Danasty, an acrobatic pirate (his name alludes to the real-life Dănești family, rivals to the real Vlad Dracul’s family line), Sypha Belnades, a sorceress for the church, and “Alucard,” i.e. Adrian Tepes Dracula — son of Dracula.
In the game this translates to you being able to swap between Trevor and another character using the select button. Each has their own abilities and flaws, and thus there are situations where they’re more useful than Trevor in passing certain areas.
While the canonical idea is that all four of them fought Dracula as a group, in practice you can only have one partner character with you at a time, and there’s no way you can meet all three in a single playthrough as Alucard and Sypha are on separate paths.
Where the first Castlevania was a linear affair, and II was more open-world, Castlevania III is linear but offers you multiple choices of path, starting from the end of stage 1. The shorter path allows you to meet Sypha; the longer has Alucard. Grant can be optionally met before either.
The gameplay is the same old Castlevania the first two games did: side-scrolling action, difficult platforming, aggressive enemies that are sometimes tricky to deal with safely. But castlevania III is orders of magnitude harder than the original.
Key to victory is knowing how to use your partners and subweapons. Sypha is relatively weak, but her spells are powerful, and can wreck bosses in seconds. Grant can climb walls and ceilings, allowing you to reach places otherwise inaccessible. Alucard can turn into a bat.
There are significant differences between the NES version and the Famicom version. The big one is the music; the Famicom version uses the famous VRC6 chip, which adds more channels for a more robust sound. The NES version’s music had to be stripped down to work on the hardware.
The NES version was made more difficult, for example Grant’s main attack of throwing knives (identical to the dagger subweapon) was reduced to a pitiful stab. Damage was also made more uniform from start to finish, similar to the first game. In Japan, damage varies depending on what hit you.
Oddly enough, in the Japanese version, Trevor is known as “Ralph c. Belmondo” —God knows what they were thinking, especially since the middle initial apparently stood for “Christopher” — nevermind that there already was a Christopher in Castlevania: the Adventure for Game Boy.
In any case, regardless of version, Castlevania III stands tall as one of the greatest NES/FC games ever made, and a fitting close to the original NES trilogy. It builds on ideas from Castlevania I and to a lesser extent II to create something that has stood the test of time. … mostly.
Sometimes the difficulty can get out of whack. While the first game is notable for its realistic sense of place in level design, there are moments in III where video game logic takes over — for example forced scrolling sequences, always infuriating.
The biggest sin the game commits would have to be level 7 on Alucard’s path. In some places, you have to wait for dripping acid to melt obstacles in your path. Later, you must wait for a steady rain of blocks to stack up, allowing you to climb to the top. This. Takes. FOREVER.
the blocks damage you, there’s no place you can wait safely, and if you climb too high too fast, most of the blocks disappear below the screen, leaving you stuck. At least you can bypass this nonsense by having Alucard fly up — but watch you don’t get hit.
The worst part is that it doesn’t matter which branch on Alucard’s path you take — this level is mandatory either way. Fortunately Sypha’s path has a completely different level 7, and all roads eventually lead to Castle Dracula, which is a glorious callback to Castlevania I.
In spite of these issues, on top of the classic 8-bit era difficulty we’re all familiar with, Castlevania III is still a great game, and well worth your time.
Note: if you’re looking to emulate it, you can’t go wrong with the fan translation of the Famicom version, or the edit of it. This latter version is the one I used.
[My good friend cactushat responded to the Twitter version of this review with a comment mentioning that the Castlevania anime is in fact an adaptation of this game, and quite good. Worth the watch if you’ve not seen it.]
