curse of darkness

I thought this game was really awesome when it first came out, and even through the majority of my first playthrough, but man... after replaying the entire game in about a week so a friend could see all the cutscenes, I wanted to kill myself.

Anyone who thought Lament was crappy and repetitive with a replay value of negative zero BUT thought Curse was an improvement should really compare a little more carefully. Lament's environments, while repetitive, are gorgeous in comparison. No, really, troll around the Pagoda in Lament for a while, check out all the pretty stained glass and Celtic-y flavored carpeting, then take a look at Dracula's boxy ass prison/castle in Curse. Blech.

That said, the English language voice acting in Curse was much better than Lament's, and, y'know... every girl loves Isaac. And Trevor was respectably badass. And hey, the story was decent until it copped out at the end. *shoots Julia in the face*

preorder comic

The preorder version of Curse of Darkness came with a sampler CD (with only four tracks, grr) and a CD booklet sized comic by series illustrator Kojima Ayami.

~~I expect I'll be able to pester Marfisa into translating the comic soon enough... ^_^~~
Success! Go HERE for the translated version.

play :: february 2005

Images scanned from the Curse of Darkness preview. Sorry, no full pages on this one!

hardcore gamer magazine :: july 2005

Click each thumbnail to see the full sized image. Be warned, all of these are HUGE files! (Full pages at 300dpi. Erm, I made that rule AFTER I scanned these...)

play :: november 2005

A nice review and interview with IGA.

phonecards

These are scans of authentic telephone cards from Japan. They're made of thin plastic with the image on the frontside and information on using the card on the back. Almost all of the Castlevania phonecards I've seen are promotional items, usually obtained by preordering a game from a specific store or something like that. You'll notice that most of these have a little box that says NOT FOR SALE; these are the promo cards.