Key takeaways
- Belmont's Curse uses 1990s difficulty design to gate early progress, echoing The Lion King's strategy of making games last beyond rental periods.
- The backwards platforming section of the Builder boss cannot be adjusted via difficulty settings, creating a wall that feels punitive rather than fair.
- A clue system allows players to accidentally trigger the bad ending by encountering Dracula unprepared, requiring a complete restart to find the real path forward.
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse creates its cruelest moment early on—a design trap that immediately echoes Westwood Studios’ The Lion King on SNES, a title infamous for its deceptive opening. Both are gorgeous adaptations of beloved franchises. Both start gently before slamming players into a wall so difficult that progress stops entirely.
The Lion King’s Rental Problem
The Lion King on SNES opens by teaching baby Simba to jump on enemies and navigate platforming challenges that feel manageable. Pride Rock is inviting and educational. Players finish the opening level confident they understand the game’s systems. What follows obliterates that confidence. Later stages escalate dramatically in difficulty, becoming some of the most notoriously punishing levels on the cartridge.
The cause was economic. Developers intentionally built the game to outlast a Blockbuster rental window. Someone renting for a weekend couldn’t possibly complete it, ensuring they’d have to return and rent again during the following week. That particular incentive disappeared with game rental culture decades ago. Yet the philosophy persists in modern releases: extreme difficulty as a gate-keeping mechanism. Belmont’s Curse has inherited this approach wholesale.
Beginning in Paris
Rose Belmont’s Arsenal
Belmont’s Curse follows this exact pattern. The opening hours take place in Paris’s burning streets and sewers, demanding attention and skill but remaining conquerable through patience and practice. For a while, the game delivers satisfaction without excessive punishment.
You play Rose Belmont, daughter of Sypha and Trevor, summoned to Paris alongside her father to help a priest combat supernatural forces ravaging the city. Starting as Rose instead of the famous Belmont patriarch means beginning at zero. No holy water. No cross. No family chain whip. Only a basic sword. You build your arsenal gradually throughout exploration, uncovering weapons and powers as you investigate the city’s mysteries.
The Clue System’s Trap
The game frames its progression around solving a mystery. Ghosts and stone-like watchers distribute clues throughout each area—supposedly essential information about each boss’s whereabouts and how to reach them. According to Kotaku’s hands-on experience with an early build, this system created an unexpected snare.
After receiving a clue that a boss called the Builder had abandoned a clocktower, the reviewer arrived at what appeared to be the correct location. A massive clock stood directly behind them. Instead of encountering the Builder, they ran into Dracula himself. Without sufficient power to survive the encounter, this accidental meeting triggered the bad ending immediately, forcing the game to conclude. Evil Empire designed multiple endings into the game, meaning a true ending exists somewhere—one that requires proper progression rather than stumbling into the final boss unprepared.
The Builder and the Backwards Chase
The First Phase
After restarting, Kotaku’s reviewer sought help from a colleague playing the game for review and finally found the actual Builder. The opening phase of the boss fight presented minimal difficulty. Following three earlier bosses that each brought their own challenges, the Builder seemed almost manageable. At the first health threshold, the boss flees the room.
The chase that follows takes you through corridors lined with pistons—some falling from the ceiling, others shooting from the sides. These pistons hang above spike pits with platforms that collapse underfoot. Navigating requires precise timing and quick reactions. The reviewer made it through the first chase, reaching a second phase that proceeded as simply as the opening encounter.
The Backwards Section
Then another health threshold triggered a second chase, this time moving backward through the identical platforming corridor. This is where the difficulty became insurmountable. Pistons launch from the sides at speeds that resist any readable pattern. The timing cannot be deciphered. Kotaku’s reviewer found this section effectively impossible after multiple attempts.
The game includes difficulty settings that disable death or reduce enemy damage, but these apply only to combat encounters. Platforming sections remain locked at their intended difficulty with no adjustment possible. Kotaku attempted practicing the backwards section with death disabled, trying to build muscle memory before the actual fight. It failed regardless. A strict timer adds pressure—fail to clear before it expires and the entire space detonates, killing you regardless of safety features enabled. Whether the timer would auto-complete the section with death disabled remains unknown.
When Difficulty Becomes Punishment
This difficulty structure lacks any modern justification. The Lion King’s brutal design served an economic purpose: consuming rental periods to ensure players couldn’t finish during a weekend lease. No such logic applies to a modern release owned permanently by consumers. Soullike games embrace difficulty as a design philosophy, allowing players to retreat and grow stronger elsewhere before returning to challenging encounters. Belmont’s Curse offers no such escape. Leaving the Builder to power up isn’t an option. The wall simply exists.
Whether Evil Empire plans to patch the section after launch, whether a skilled content creator eventually discovers the solution, or whether the answer has simply eluded this reviewer remains unknown. The experience of being unable to progress—combined with difficulty settings that don’t apply—creates something that feels punitive rather than challenging. Maybe the designers intended this as proof of mastery for certain players. Or maybe it’s an oversight that post-launch feedback will address.
Castlevania’s Resurgence
Belmont’s Curse exists within a broader Castlevania resurgence sparked by the Netflix series’ popularity. The show cultivated an audience hungry for new Castlevania games. This particular project combines influences from Dead Cells and Hollow Knight into a 2D Metroidvania structure that transcends mere homage.
Evil Empire brings extensive experience with challenging 2D platformers and roguelikes to the franchise, resulting in a game that absorbs contemporary trends while pursuing its own direction. Whether the game’s difficulty design represents intentional challenges or unintended obstacles will become clearer once the full release reaches players and feedback arrives. Hopefully, post-launch support provides enough insight for adjustments where needed, particularly in sections that currently block forward progress entirely.
Source: Kotaku
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if you encounter Dracula too early in Castlevania: Belmont's Curse?
According to Kotaku's experience, accidentally finding Dracula without sufficient power triggers the bad ending immediately and forces the game to conclude, requiring a complete restart to continue.
Can you adjust the difficulty of platforming sections in Belmont's Curse?
No. The game's difficulty settings only apply to combat encounters. Platforming sections, including the backwards chase during the Builder boss fight, remain locked at their original difficulty and cannot be modified.
Who is the protagonist of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse?
You play as Rose Belmont, the daughter of Sypha and Trevor, who is summoned to Paris to help a priest combat supernatural forces plaguing the city.
