Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (NES)

(Review archived from November 2, 2014)

Here we come to the absolute pinnacle of the Castlevania trilogy on the NES.  This game is famous for pushing the NES to the absolute limits of its hardware, and it was long considered a benchmark for NES emulator accuracy due to its demanding nature.  This truly is an amazing game in the way that it seamlessly blends the purely action oriented aspects of the first game with the ‘epic quest’ feel of the second game.  The branching level structure is fantastic, and adds a ton of replay value to the game.  That being said, this game always felt slightly more pedestrian to me after experiencing the experimental weirdness and risks that were taken in the second game.  I’m certainly in the minority there though.  If you only play one Castlevania game on the NES, let it be this one.  You won’t be disappointed.