Is Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Worth It? Critics vs Players

Evidence-based review · scores read on 18 October 2026

Yes, for most metroidvania fans: Castlevania: Belmont's Curse earns an 8.1 (Great) on our formula, with an OpenCritic Top Critic Average of 85 and 71.2% positive Steam reviews. Critics are warmer than players, and the gap comes mostly from a rough PC launch, stiff platforming controls and a sharp split between English- and Chinese-language Steam reviews.

Nobody at AFK Journal played the game for this piece. It is a synthesis of the 88 critic reviews aggregated by OpenCritic, the Metacritic page, Steam's public review data and a close read of seven of those reviews, combined with the public formula explained below. Konami and Dead Cells studio Evil Empire released Belmont's Curse on 15 October 2026 (14 October on Steam's US listing) for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and PC, priced at $29.99.

What do critics agree on?

The combat is the star

Almost every review leads with the fighting. IGN praises "exciting combat" and movement tech that tests your reflexes, Shacknews counts eight weapon categories plus magic spells earned by defeating bosses, and TheSixthAxis says the combat "feels very slick" as you swap between paired swords, a whip and a spear. Two abilities come up in nearly every review: the Arcane Whip, which swings Rose between anchor points or pulls her to enemies, and the Holy Light, which parries attacks and lets her pass through certain obstacles.

It looks and sounds the part

IGN singles out the redesigned Axe Knights and a version of Death it ranks among its favourites in the series. Shacknews praises the blood-moon streets of Paris, the bone-filled catacombs beneath them and a soundtrack that remixes classic Castlevania music, Bloody Tears included. Eurogamer, the harshest of the outlets in the table below, still calls a music puzzle in the depths of Notre-Dame "simply wonderful" and describes the way the mirrors connect as sublime.

The map rewards curiosity, with caveats

Shacknews compares the open, secret-rich map to Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night, while IGN describes large self-contained zones, each usually overseen by a boss, that feel closer to Super Metroid, with ferryman doors for fast travel. Nintendo World Report would like a sequel to iron out rough edges in exploration and respawning, and Siliconera says the game takes a while to get going before the fun arrives.

The story is fan service, not the point

Rose is the daughter of Castlevania III's Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades, and the game opens in a Paris overrun by monsters in 1499 (Shacknews, Eurogamer). IGN enjoys the nods for long-time fans but says plot was never the reason it loved these games, and TheSixthAxis notes that the story mostly exists to bring Dracula back once more.

Where do critics split?

The disagreement is about feel and identity. GameSpot gives 10/10 and says every element works "both independently and as part of the whole"; Shacknews and PlayStation Universe also give 10. At the other end, Eurogamer's 3/5 argues that Rose's attacks are tied to the eight directions of a D-pad in a world that moves more fluidly, which leads to cheap hits and repeated runs from the checkpoint, and it flags technical issues. Push Square (7/10) found a few bosses to be "quite painful difficulty spikes" and Rose not always snappy to control.

IGN (8/10) frames the identity question best: Belmont's Curse is a better metroidvania in general than a Castlevania in particular. Siliconera headlines its review "an uneven return", and PC Gamer ran an impressions piece saying the game "just feels a little off". Nintendo World Report, by contrast, found Rose great to control, if a little slow in her basic movement, and credits some unique boss fights with keeping the game above water.

What do Steam players say?

Steam's verdict is Mostly Positive: 3,716 of 5,220 reviews (71.2%) recommend the game across all languages, according to the Steam store page review data we read on 18 October at 09:05 UTC. That number is recovering. On launch day, 15 October at 15:55 UTC, we read 60% positive from 1,197 reviews; the latest 500 reviews, all written on 17 and 18 October, are 77.2% positive. Steam leaves reviews posted during flagged off-topic review bombs out of its score.

Language matters more than usual. English-language reviews are Very Positive at 81.5% (2,338 of 2,868), while Simplified Chinese reviews are Mostly Negative at 32.2% (306 of 951). In our read of the 100 most recent negative Simplified Chinese reviews, about a fifth mention difficulty and 17 mention the map; other recurring themes are long platforming sections, backtracking without enough guidance and the feel of the controls, and several argue that it does not feel like a Castlevania game.

Negative English reviews in the latest batch repeat the critics' caveats: controls, stutter or frame drops, the black screen at launch, and a few players who found it short for the price. Positive ones talk most about the art, the bosses and the simple fact of a new Castlevania. On r/castlevania, the launch-day thread passed 2,800 upvotes and 500 comments, and an 800-upvote post reminds sceptics that Symphony of the Night also drew complaints from parts of the fanbase about its new direction.

How does it run on PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch?

PC had the rockiest start. PC Gamer reported the game booting to a black screen on a monitor set above 120 Hz, fixed by lowering the refresh rate. Konami's notice for update 1.1.3, posted on 16 October, says the patch addresses launch failures and black screens on high refresh rate monitors but that the problem may still occur in certain environments while it works on a full fix. If you play at 144 Hz or more and hit it, the lower refresh rate is the workaround.

On Switch, Konami's official site lists a 30fps target against 60fps on PS5, Xbox and PC (RPG Site). There is no native Switch 2 version, but Nintendo World Report found the Switch version running at a mostly stable 60fps on Switch 2, with a resolution it was less happy with, and harder to recommend on original Switch hardware because of the lower resolution and frame rate. The PS5 reviews we read focused on controls and difficulty rather than performance.

How long is Castlevania: Belmont's Curse?

Reviewers logged roughly 16 to 23 hours without seeing everything, as collected in our Belmont's Curse everything-you-need-to-know guide. Steam gives an early, partial signal: the median author of the latest 500 reviews had played 12.6 hours, three to four days after launch. No completion-time aggregate has enough submissions yet, so treat 20 hours or more for one ending as the working estimate.

How we got to 8.1

Our score blends critics and players with fixed weights: 70% is the OpenCritic Top Critic Average divided by 10, and 30% is the share of positive Steam reviews in all languages divided by 10 (we use the all-time figure for a game's first 60 days, then the last 30 days). An adjustment of up to 0.5 is allowed only for problems documented by at least two independent sources.

We applied no adjustment. The PC black screen is documented by PC Gamer and by Konami itself, but its effect is already inside the Steam percentage, which sat at 60% on launch day; a penalty on top would count it twice. The score sits close to a line: with critics unchanged, a Steam share below about 69.6% would round it to 8.0, and below about 66.2% it would drop to Good. We will re-read both numbers 30 days after launch, or sooner after a major patch.

Should you buy Castlevania: Belmont's Curse?

Buy it if you want a fast, combat-heavy metroidvania with plenty to explore for $29.99. Its 85 average puts it in OpenCritic's Mighty tier, English-language Steam players are in line with the critics, and the adjustable difficulty, including the option IGN recommends to respawn just outside a boss room, softens its hardest stretches.

Wait, or think twice, if you mainly want a classic Symphony of the Night-style Castlevania, if stiff eight-direction controls in platforming would put you off, or if you play on original Switch hardware. PC players with high refresh rate monitors should check that update 1.1.3 covers their setup, or be ready to lower the refresh rate.

If the older games are what you are after, our ranking of every Castlevania game by critics and players shows which classics hold up best. For the $39.99 Midnight Edition and release times, see our editions and price guide, and the Belmont's Curse hub collects everything we have published on the game.