Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

THE GOOD:
Stronger/more interesting story than previous Castlevania's, decent combat, great boss battles, should keep fans of Castlevania happy

THE BAD:
Bland/samey level design, repetitive/flawed gameplay, easier than previous outings, quite short, no where near as good many of the Castlevania games that came before it

SUMMARY:
I've been recently getting into the Castlevania series, trying out whatever games I could get my hands on, so I didn't hesitate in buying this one when I saw it on the shelves. Unfortunately, I was left a little disappointed upon playing the game. Firstly, lets talk about the worst part of the game, the game play. The first major diversion is the fact the game is in 3D, giving the game play it a very different feel to its 2D counterparts, both for better and worse. The most noticeable thing upon the games arrival to 3D is the fact that any and all platforming sections have been removed,...

THE GOOD:
Lovers of Symphony of the Night will feel right at home here.

THE BAD:
Like Lament of Innocence the environments still all look the same.

SUMMARY:
When I got this game for christmas I never expected this game to to remind of my favorite Castlevania game so much. The protagonist in this game is not a Belmont, its Hector the Devilforge master. He once was a servant of Dracula but when he saw how Dracula was killing humans he left him. Now in when Trevor Belmont(yes the same Trevor from Castlevania 3) kills him the other forgemaster Isaac blames it all on Hector for Draculas death. So what does he do? He finds Hectors wife and convinces the towns people shes a witch and they all burn her to death. Now Hector all pissed off(hell I would be too!) goes to find Isaac......problem is he cast away all his power.(genius isn't he?) In the end though I didnt find the story to be very good, just meh, kinda like...

When I heard {ok, READ, not heard) that Konami will release 2 Castlevania games, first, I think the 2D one for the DS is better (just based from the screenshots) than the 3D one for the PS2. Being a fan of the Castlevania series, I thought that Dawn of Sorrow might quench my thirst and hunger for another castlevania game as good as Symphony of the Night. However, when I played it, I was [somehow] satisfied. It was a good game. It has good graphics but I didn't totaly like the music and it doesn't feel like Symphony of the Night anymore (despite Alucard's presence here).
And then, I played the Curse of Darkness. My first impression when I saw it is that it couldn't be like SotN because it is 3D. First impressions are indeed wrong. When I heard the music even in the new game menu, Its just as if I'm playing SotN because of its very good soundtract. This also has Innocent Devils that's simmilar to Aluard's familiar. So it DOES feel like your playing a 3D Version of SotN (also,...