“Eureka! We’ll make a Castlevania game about a dude that’s a lot like Alucard but isn’t!” Thus, Curse of Darkness was born. So Konami went back to the drawing board, and looked at what made the aforementioned classics so popular. It was a paint-by-numbers action adventure game, in the vein of Devil May Cry, but it was nothing more than a step in the right direction. It didn’t have that “omph” that the side scrolling versions do. Lament of Innocence was a good game overall, and it had a feeling of a Castlevania game, but it also felt like something was missing. Those two titles were such utter failures that Konami focused entirely on handheld Castlevania titles in 2D, not wanting to risk that people would remember the N64 games. While the game wasn’t even close to the quality found in some of the side scrolling classics of the series (Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow), it certainly wasn’t as awful as the two games on the N64, which was the first attempt at a 3D Castlevania game.

The goal was simple: make it feel like Castlevania and make it a game worthy of inclusion in the series. At the time, it was Konami’s latest attempt to bring the beloved Castlevania franchise into the third dimension. A little over two years ago, Konami released Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (you can read my review here.