Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is the first proper Castlevania game in 12 years, and after roughly the first 3 hours, the thing readers actually care about shows up fast: the Vampire Killer whip. The opening of the hands-on goes exactly where it should, straight into that signature Castlevania longing loop, where hooks and paths tease you while the game withholds your most iconic tool. As Rose Belmont, you spend early time storming Paris whip-less, obsessing over when you’ll get it, where you’ll get it, and whether it will feel as good as it looks. Then, after the first proper boss, The Fallen, you finally earn the whip and the report is unambiguous: it rules.

That matters because this is not just another reboot pitch. Castlevania is effectively the blueprint for an entire category. Symphony of the Night is credited in the source as establishing the Metroidvania format that later titles copied for years, and the genre only got louder with an indie surge after Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 in 2014, the most recent entry before this one. Belmont’s Curse has to navigate a crowded market of imitators and expectations from two directions at once: longtime fans who know the “feel” they want, and newer players who may be entering through the Netflix animated show. The answer, based on the first hours, is to preserve the core pull of tight action, exploration, and arcane tools, while letting the game modernize its movement and identity.

So what does the early gameplay say about the “how” behind the comeback? The Fallen begins with a Holy Cross thrown toward Rose, with ricochets that prompt a clear jump instinct. But the standout moment is when the player slices the Holy Cross on the fifth attempt, triggering a satisfying pivot that drops The Fallen into its second phase. In that phase, the boss uses a whip to grip and swing, and the fight becomes challenging enough to feel like a real series opener rather than a tutorial boss. That tension, and the eventual reward, connects directly to the source’s central claim: the game knows how to make you want things. In a Castlevania-shaped way, the desire itself becomes gameplay.

Then the whip lands, and the hands-on describes exactly why it is more than nostalgia cosplay. The Vampire Killer whip is described as a sheer joy to use the moment it’s equipped. It changes how you move vertically through Paris via aerial routes and hooks, with whipping upward through vertical climbs using fluid motion. It also becomes an interaction tool for combat and navigation, letting you whip onto enemies based on positioning to access areas that would otherwise be unreachable. This is the core executive takeaway hiding inside a delightfully nerdy paragraph: the tool you’ve been denied becomes the mechanic that ties traversal, combat, and experimentation together. A relaunch that gets that right is less likely to feel like a skin and more likely to feel like a system.

The other big question for modern franchise strategy is whether this will look like Castlevania more than it plays like Castlevania. On visuals, Belmont’s Curse is described as striking with a 2.5D art style, but the source pushes a specific critique: it doesn’t really look like a Castlevania game in the gothic detail sense, instead sharing more in common visually with Dead Cells. That is where developer Evil Empire’s “shine” shows through in the hands-on, and the source draws a boundary: the shared ground is predominantly the visuals, not the underlying gameplay. In other words, the company is willing to push the series forward with a fresh-feeling character, and it leans into a visual identity that also fits the Netflix tie-in ecosystem. For executives, that is a meaningful branding decision because it shapes expectations before players ever touch a controller.

Movement and character control add another layer to that tradeoff. Rose is described as the most agile protagonist in the series, with a nimble moveset that includes sliding behind enemies, vaulting through the environment, and wall-jumping across Paris rooftops and streets. Alongside the whip, she uses the Arcana System, powered by enchanted tarot cards gifted by her late mother, Sypha Belnades. Defeating powerful foes allows Rose to seal their essence into cards, transforming them into Arcana that grant new abilities, ranging from devastating, screen-clearing spells to subtle enhancements that reshape how she approaches both combat and exploration. This is not “just a spellbook dressing.” The card economy and power unlocking are presented as a meaningful expansion of the arsenal, giving players new verbs to test as they map the non-linear city.

Wayfinding in Paris is also described as intuitive, with a non-linear map that opens gradually, and exploration framed as vertical traversal rather than repetitive stretching. The setting, 15th-century Paris, is used to justify the design choice to move beyond a single castle, with gothic streets and catacombs, alongside burning, imposing buildings to climb. The verticality is described as complementing the architecture, with rooftop views that unfold while you traverse. There’s a strategic subtext here: a franchise relaunch that swaps the “one castle loop” for a “city of vertical systems” can feel novel without abandoning what made the series compelling.

For context on “why this matters now” beyond fan excitement, Belmont’s Curse comes after a 12-year gap and in a market where Metroidvanias are everywhere. The series has to earn its authority again by delivering the thing that built its reputation: tight combat rhythm, exploration rewards, and a sense of gothic mystery and arcane power. At the same time, the source highlights a tricky tightrope, keeping older Castlevania game fans happy while pleasing a new modern audience derived from Netflix. The strategic stake for investors, publishers, and studio partners is simple: brand heritage is not a business plan, but it can become one if you translate longing into mechanics, and mechanics into satisfaction. If Belmont’s Curse lands with that “classic” whip-first fantasy in the released version, it isn’t just reviving a franchise. It is setting a modern bar for what a Metroidvania revival should feel like.