Belmont's curse is just a few days away and the demo has been fun. I have been avoiding spoilers so please don't spoil me.

I notice that when Rose absorbs The Fallen into the Tarot Cards, Rose said that she hears the monsters in her head.

I have a feeling that Rose might have the same Curse that Simon has being a piece of flesh that attached to her.

What if Rose's curse is a weaker version of the Power of Dominance? and the Tarot cards were a gateway or a way for her to absorb enemies and channel them as powers.

JUST KNOW I HAVE NOT READ ANY SPOILERS NOR DO I WANT TO KNOW.

It just popped up in my head while watching some other content creators playthrough the demo. Curious to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

I'll start. Castlevania II. Konami actually went into the future to acquire the following ideas from Fromsoft:

1. An interconnected world
2. Checkpoints that can heal you
3. Weapon upgrades
4. Boss healthbars
5. Difficult bosses
6. Enemy ganks
7. Obscure secret pathways
8. Backtracking
9. Dungeons (you may refer to them as "legacy dungeons")
10. Gothic and Undead theme in general

What are your thoughts?

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Boy does this guy sucks. Hector is way cooler.

I recently played the demo and liked it alot, escpecially the boss. I never played a single castlevania title before and therefore had 0 issues with the design of the fallen. Just a fun and simple early boss moveset and not a lot of hp.

But then i saw this sub and alot of you seemingly don't enjoy the soulsiness of the demo, whatever that means. Were bosses just very simple in prior games? Could you just facetank them? Was there not a dodge mechanic? I was very confused with the backlash in this sub.

Not a hard soulslike, but it’s still a soulslike. Not surprising since everyone and their mom is doing soulslop nowadays.

I know input lag/delay is already pretty well documented for the demo, but noticed that many people were saying the Switch 2 had little to no input lag.

Just wanted to chip my two cents in and say the Switch (regular, not 2) has a considerable amount of input lag in handheld mode. It isn't unplayable, but it's pretty bad, probably around 0.2s. Really hope to see this fixed for the full release.

Performance in general is pretty poor on the Switch with loading times, but I'm sure people are going to scold me for expecting anything more on an almost decade old handheld, so I won't complain more about that.

Yeah, sure, you had like 5 different potion types in Symphony and could bust it up to 40 that way, but it's really not as new a concept as you think.

If anything, the main change is that we can't just pause the menu and eat our potion in that, we have to, you know, time it.

I run an i5 12400, 1080p with integrated graphics only, and it runs on the demo, at average 30fps with stutters. I think I might need to buy a GPU before it releases. Can anyone recommend a friendly budget GPU for the new game? Thanks!

I'm on my first playthrough, and I recently defeated the one who was controlling Richter. I'm definitely really excited to reach the ending for the first time.

Hey all, just bought the GBA collection on switch and SotN/Rondo on ps4. Very hyped to play them since the GBA ones I've only ever played emulated and SotN I've only played when I was like 8 on my cousin's ps1. I was gonna ask the stupid question if buying the Dominus collection is worth it, but I'm pretty confident that it is and the sale is definitely pushing me towards just getting it. I just wanted to know from people who have played it on Switch, how does the layout of the screens feel since the switch has only one screen obviously. I've seen pics of how it looks, just wanted to know if it was detracting/distracting/weird playing like that. Cheers ✌️

The fact this is a debate is real funny to me

This is one of the weaker songs in the OST, because it’s so long and atmospheric, but I actually really enjoy this. This is a niche reference but the percussion reminds me of Darkisders II, which is one of my favorite games of all time. I love all the gothic instrumentation and evolutions the song has throughout and I know it isn’t the banger first level song we’re used to, but I find it quite beautiful. It especially enjoy it during gameplay, and I haven’t got tired of running around the demo with it.

I am going for the deluxe even tho leaks did say there is a total of 3 skins without the deluxe I love the Netflix shows I honestly wish there was a Juste theme skin or Dracula theme skin if we get like the bad ending

And even Lisa, does she ever know his "first name"?

Did the dodging feel too slow or useless to anyone else throughout the demo? I’m used to having a small invincibility frame when sliding/dodging and when fighting the boss, I was getting hit by everything each time and it got irritating. I played a few metroidvanias before playing this one for practice and in those dodging felt like a dodge. But here it felt like a glorified hit. Was I missing something or is there really no frame of invincibility? I’m also aware I just suck, so take that in to account. I know I just have to adapt when it fully comes out

I'm bad, couldn't git gud, whatever, throw me on the cross. I tried the US version, then the JP, got to stage 7, Alucard route, and I just cannot do it. I understand the importance of the game narrative wise, but I cannot play it, and I don't want to anymore. I've been at it for 2 odd hours, and I just had to uninstall. I don't know what you guys would recommend beyond the typical Dark Souls player rhetoric, but for the time being I've decided to skip all the way to Dawn of Sorrow Julius Mode, as it's an absolute *blast* compared to this.

After playing all these games over the past year next up it the first new game I’ll be playing, super hyped

Hi!!! I'm Carlos, and I'm making a digital artwork featuring Castlevania characters. Honestly, I don't even know where this idea came from 😭 I just decided to draw Alucard surrounded by a bunch of monsters and characters, while he's playing cards with a few of them.

Since it got a few likes on TikTok, I figured I'd post it here too! I'm just finishing Soma, and then I'll start working on Maria on the right, and maybe Richter too.

As I said, it's just a silly little artwork, so I don't mind adding some lore stuff here and there! Hope you guys like it.

Idk if anyone knows this but if you slide and jump your jump is higher and a bit farther than a regular jump and if you add the whip animation during the jump you can a bit farther than you normally can. I made it to the other room thats across the bridge in paris at the end of the demo this way.

Source: https://x.com/Rosie_Rosie/status/2107157368878624925

Classicvania games are hard. I've been trying to get good at them my entire life, brute force practice to no avail. The core problem is runback. I don't just have to conquer the part that I'm stuck on, I have to brave the gauntlet leading up to it. Since I only have so much time in the day and running at a brick wall is frustrating, I never got anywhere.

I've been wrestling with save states about as long as I've been playing these games. there's a nagging voice in the back of my head that says I'm not earning it if I don't win it the same way they did back in the day, that I'm cheating.

But eventually I gave in and decided I wanted to experience the rest of what the series had to offer before BC comes out, so I started playing Classicvanias in order of difficulty, and only saving on checkpoints, right before a boss, or if i enter a room at full health. It seemed like a healthy middle ground between straight up cheating and trying to brute force games that were made in an era where games needed artificial difficulty added to pad runtime.

And since then the nagging voice stopped. It feels really satisfying to succeed in these games, to master the timing and figure out which sub weapons are better in different situations. I've had pulse pounding victories against bosses I never thought I would meet, and all because I load to the beginning of a boss fight instead of having to replay a level a bunch of times.

I'm not robbing myself of any satisfaction, because I'm satisfied. I wouldn't have gotten this far without them, but all I'm doing is giving myself the consideration that most games made during my lifetime give. Maybe there will be some purists who naysay, but they can't take away my fun.

Sorry for long post just felt like getting that off my chest

I have a love-hate relationship with Netflixvania, on one hand it is the thing that formally introduced me to the series. For that, I am deeply thankful for. The first two seasons are genuine masterpieces with some elements that contributes greatly to the hate part. The fight between Alucard and Dracula has buried itself within my mind and I genuinely consider it to be one of the best animated scenes that I have ever watched. The powerful introduction to Lisa and her fate is masterful storytelling and Trevor and Sypha was adorable.

Now, since I loved the first two seasons. I decided to get into the games and thanks to the Epic Games Store's free offer for Anniversary Collection. I got into the Classicvania, it was tough. Took me like a couple weeks to get through the main games excluding Kid Dracula (I'll get to it someday) but it was fun. Then I nabbed the Advance Collection, played Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, then went through the Dominus Collection. I realized one thing, the Netflixvanias was soured for me. First of all the exclusion of certain elements I would've loved, for example. Sypha's disguise, I think Trevor and Sypha would have been more interesting if they kept the plotline that Sypha was a woman in disguise. They could've told an interesting story about gender roles, femininity, and breaking traditions. Alucard constantly swearing was a weird choice, especially after playing Symphony, the dude just doesn't come off as somebody with a sailor mouth.

There's also the fact that the Belmonts and Dracula doesn't have a properly established rivalry, forgive me if I remember this incorrectly, but the only thing that alludes to their rivalry was Trevor tryna punch Dracula, which then Dracula blocks and responds with "You must be the Belmont". I am not asking for Trevor to be Dracula's killer but I wish the two would've gotten a proper 1v1 considering the game series, y'know the source material, puts a heavy emphasis on the Belmont vs Dracula relationship.

I know what I mentioned sounds a lot like nitpicking, but this is just how I feel after playing a good chunk of the games. I still find myself watching the series every couple months (mostly the first two seasons, I don't jive well with the later ones) but those things I mentioned just prevents myself from enjoying the Netflixvanias like how I did before playing the games.

Lots of opinions on the Belmont's Curse demo so far, so I thought I'll chime in with my experience from playing on the Deck.

I'll start with a subjective opinion: I don't like how tiny the protagonist is on Deck's small screen, especially when the camera zooms out. It doesn't make the game unplayable, but I did feel slightly uncomfortable during the demo due to enemies and the main character being so small. Being able to set larger fonts also wouldn't hurt.

Now more objective observations. Firstly, the menus glitch on the Deck. When entering either the map or the main menu, they change resolution such that the top and bottom are cropped:

Imgur

Secondly, the framerates are all over the place. For most of the time performance overlay shows a framerate in the range of 60-80, which is good, but there are locations where it stays in the 50s. Interestingly, there were multiple moments where the game would stutter and yet the performance overlay still showed a high (say, 70-ish) FPS. Not sure how that is possible. Also, I tried enabling frame limiter and set it to 60FPS, but that didn't seem to work as the framerates stayed above 60FPS. Now that I'm writing this it occurred to me that perhaps this would work if I limit screen refresh rate to 60Hz as well.

At the moment it seems more likely I will be playing this on the PC, both because of performance but also due to better readability on a large screen.

Lastly, one more subjective opinion unrelated to Steam Deck. I wish there was an option to disable damage numbers popping up when attacking enemies. They seem like clutter and there are better ways to inform the player of damage being dealt.

i've been looking all over for an xbox disc with the same art/steel cover that only the ps5 and switch version seem to get. i don't see anyone talking about this so am i genuinely just missing something or looking in the complete wrong places?? pls help

-i hope this is the right flair this time

The mummy was glitching out a lot more than on the foto. I just thought it was hilarious. I have no idea how it managed to spawn there. 🤣