by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

All right, so Lament of Innocence wasn’t so hot; the next game would be the real clincher. Lament did have a good engine. And Leon controlled just right. There just wasn’t much to do with him, was all.

So what does Igarashi have to show this time? As it turns out, not much — yet. As of E3, Curse of Darkness strongly resembles its predecessor: another 3D Castlevania that feels nice to play, but has the level structure of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That in itself would be fine; Castlevania began as an action game, and it worked then. What is worrisome is that Igarashi wants to make this game nonlinear.

To put this worry into context, understand that the E3 2003 demo of Lament of Innocence was amazing. It was truly fun, because it was structured as a straightforward brawler: room, room, puzzle room, room, room, boss. There were no distractions. All of the player’s attention was on combat — meaning on Leon’s controls. And Leon was marvelous to steer. Then the game was released, and it felt like someone had slammed a door on the soufflé. Where did all of this exploration come from?

Since the levels weren’t supposed to be an issue, there was almost no way to interact with their geometry. Flat, unadorned squares that the player was intended to blaze through once, maybe ever, he now was asked to explore. Since this was conceived as an action game, there was no experience system to reward the player for killing the same enemies over and over as he ran around the castle. Suddenly the game wasn’t much fun anymore.

As of this writing, Curse of Darkness has the same kind of gameworld: flat rooms conjoined through doors and littered with melee opponents. The only real change is in the character system, which borrows liberally from Aria of Sorrow. Where, as Dracula reincarnate, Soma could command the souls of Dracula’s monsters, our new man Hector, as Dracula’s former “Devil Forgemaster”, can summon his own monsters to aid him.

This does work as a nice design patch, as having an enormous computer-controlled golem fighting alongside you is rarely boring. These “Innocent Devils” also have some potential to spice up the level interaction; the demo illustrates one instance where Hector can hang-glide from a demon bird. Hector himself is more suited to long-term play, with an leveling system and interchangeable weapons.

As patches, though, these are temporary solutions; they don’t address the essential problem, that being the gameworld itself. Granted, this time Igarashi is planning an adventure from the beginning – so maybe it will all fit together. Maybe last game’s mistakes were a fluke, brought on by marketing or upper management. If Igarashi does get his level design right, everything should lock into place. If not – well. It depends on how much you like your soufflé.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness from Konami is due for release on PS2 and Xbox this November.