#102

I'm going to say right now that while I'm not going to really try to re-rank my list, this entry deserves to be much higher than it is. It just had the misfortune of me playing it long after I made my list. Last year, Konami released a Castlevania Collection that contained almost every Classicvania entry barring Rondo of Blood, the arcade port of Castlevania 1, and the remake of Castlevania 1 as well. I picked it up cause finding these games is a pain in the ass and I enjoy the older entries as much as the Metroidvania style games as well. It was a nice history lesson to go through the franchise in order and I was pleasantly surprised most of the time. This game especially ended up being the highlight of the whole collection.
Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse is a prequel to the first two Castlevania games, detailing the story of Simon's famous ancestor he was trying to live up to, Trevor Belmont (Ralph in the Japanese version), the first Belmont to ever defeat Dracula. Long ago in Wallachia, the Belmont's rose to fame for their expertise in slaying all the things that go bump in the night. Yet like a lot of times in history when a particular family grows a little too influential and popular with the people, it rubs some people the wrong way, and soon they started spreading rumors that the Belmont's were actually in league with the dark forces they hunt. The people turned on them and had them ex-communicated and exiled from their lands. Sometime later, Dracula came upon the land and began spreading terror. Some forces did try to stop him but were defeated or worse. With no other options, the local governments sent for Trevor Belmont, the last living member of the disgraced Belmont clan, to come back to Wallachia and help rid them of Dracula once and for all. Trevor begins a journey across the lands ruled by Dracula's forces to stop the Count, but over the course of his journey, he picks up some help in the form of a Pirate named Grant DeNasty, a Witch turned Monster Hunter named Sypha, and Dracula's own son Alucard.
Dracula's Curse is an interesting game and bears a lot of similarities to another entry on this list: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Both games are the third entry in their series, both are prequels, both act as a form of "returning to basics" by largely heralding to a design reminiscent of their more successful first installment, and both also cleverly still incorporate a lot of elements from their more RPG and panned second installments. Well to honest, Dracula's Curse wasn't the actual first return to norm for the series. That would be Castlevania Adventure, but considering no one likes to count handheld entries, this one is close enough. The game returns to a level system, as opposed to the awkward open world format from Simon's Quest. Yet the devs really didn't want to lose that idea of exploration so they introduced branching level design. At certain point in the game, you are asked to take a high or low road, which will take you to a different dungeons and will radically change your overall journey depending on which way you go. This design idea would be incorporated into Rondo of Blood years later, which is the first proper sequel to Dracula's Curse if you don't count Bloodlines. With nine stages total for one journey, two possible routes, and two secret stages to recruit Sylpha and Alucard, Dracula's Curse has about twenty stages total, Castlevania 3 is significantly larger than its predecessor. The alternate stages and the framing device of the plot being Trevor's journey and infiltration into Dracula's Castle allows the game to retain the fun player-centric control of the journey that Simon's Quest tried to invoke, but also allow for the tighter designed stages that made the original game such a classic. Maybe you went through the graveyard and picked up Sypha, which allowed you to take the Ghost Ship across the bay and land midway on Dracula's bridge. Perhaps you took the underground cave system and eventually found Alucard who leads you through a hidden underground entrance into the castle? The game has so many options you almost have to play it multiple times to actually see and play everything. Hell you even get a unique ending depending on who your ally for the game is.
This nicely segues into the game biggest change from the rest of the series. You can actually recruit allies who all have different strengths and weaknesses. You're only allowed to have one extra party member at a time so recruiting new characters usually makes the previous member leave. Sypha and Alucard are also route exclusive, which makes the TV series the more amusing when you think that those two never met in the game. Trevor plays like a carbon copy of Simon Belmont, but he's also the most well rounded of the four characters and gets the most options with sub-weapons. Grant is the first character you'll likely recruit and comes with the most mobility of the party. He's faster than Trevor, can jump twice as high as anyone else. He can climb walls and ceilings as well. His issue is that his attack range is incredibly short since he uses a knife (he throws them in the Japanese version) and he takes more damage than Trevor does. He does get to use the awesome Axe weapon though. He's great for traversing levels and there are tons of extra lives and Shot Upgrades only he can access. Hell entire stages have alternate routes that only he can get through painlessly. He might not be much of a help in boss fights but he makes clearing the masochistic level design easier. Sypha is a bit of an opposite from other characters. She gains original sub-weapons that serve as her magic. She has a Fire ball spell that works like a short range flamethrower. Its fast, but not as powerful as I would like but is very effective in certain situations like the Mummy Boss. Her second spell is an ice spell that will actually freeze enemies in place and let her use them as platforms, even cooler is that the spell will actually freeze running water in some stages, super neat. Her final, and most rare spell is a lightning spell where she fires off three homing balls of lighting that are one of the strongest attacks in the game. Great for dealing with annoying enemies that like to swoop in from awkward directions and for putting the hurt on bosses. In fact Sypha makes short work of most of the bosses in the game, even Death goes from being an annoying pain in the ass into a blip. Dracula himself is a cakewalk if you go in with the Bolt Spell. To balance this, Sypha takes more damage than most characters from attacks and her movement range is pretty poor. She is also the most dependent on sub-weapons and her normal attack is a short range staff that is weak but can actually hit things at an angle. Finally we have Alucard, most players may be imagining the badass from SotN, but in his debut entry, he's pretty terrible. His main attack is a single fireball he trows that has pitiful range and when powered up, it fires three from different angles. Again, great for awkward enemies but his attack is fairly weak unless all three fireballs connect which places him in the danger zone. His only sub-weapon he can use is the Stopwatch, which is a notoriously bad item in the early installments. He's also slightly taller than the rest of the cast making it much easier for enemies to land hits on him. Thankfully he has the next highest defense with Trevor. His real strength is his unique power to turn into a bat which allows him to fly through the stage as long as you have the hearts. Considering how obnoxious levels get, this is actually a pretty good bonus, but like Grant, he's not terribly useful in a fight. Regardless of their strengths or lack of, playing through the game with multiple characters is pretty cool and adds some extra layers to the level design.
The level design of the game is pretty strong and incredibly masochistic. I am not sure how well I would have done playing through this game on the original NES as the collection has a save state like feature I used extensively just to save time. Even then, I really enjoyed checking out new levels even if a few had me crying when I didn't have Grant or Alucard to cheese my way through them like the bridge leading to the Doppleganger fight. The one area I will say C3 fails is with stairs. Stairs are your enemy in this game and will likely account for 73% of all your deaths. Just like how falling accounts for the same number of deaths in Dark Souls. Seriously, stairs kill in this game and a lot of the most obnoxious choke points in levels usually revolve around them. Also don't jump onto them cause like the first game, you can't register landing on a stair unless you walk down it. Say hi to the bottomeless pit for me. With that said, C3 gives me a vibe I've only felt from games like Dark Souls as I tried to conquer their sadistic levels and annoying enemies. The boss fights are also a bit more memorable in this entry with the spirit fight that summons previous bosses, cool rematch with Frankenstein's Monster, a serious upgraded fight against Medusa, the Doppleganger fight, and the first of the water serpent fights.
The game also has a pretty stellar soundtrack and gives us a track on par with Bloody Tears in the form of Beginning, but honestly the whole score is pretty good and holds up to the series long standing track record of good music. The graphics go back to a style similar to the first game with more orange and blues, but they added some cool effects and made places like the Clock Tower have some really good wow factor to them as well.
I wasn't really sure what to expect going into this game, but I didn't expect I was going to love it as much as I did. You can even go back to the thread I talked about playing it. I went through the game three times and kept playing it on the side while I was still playing the others. I really don't replay games that quickly after finishing it. I mean I thoroughly enjoyed FF Type-0 but I just couldn't bring myself to play through it second time so close after finishing it. Yet here I am replaying some old NES relic like I was addicted to it. That's why I knew it had to make it onto this list. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. Fact is, this may be the most influential and important entry in the series. I know some of you may pipe in about Symphony of the Night, but even SotN is inspired by this game since it serves simultaneously as sequel to both Rondo of Blood and this game. I feel that was part of the issue with the entries I played afterwards, Super Castlevania IV has its moments, but its obvious the game was just them re-imagining the first Castlevania and showing off all the tech for the Super Nintendo. Bloodlines was weird, but in a good way and at least got the high difficulty curve back, but neither game feel like a true successor to this entry, not until you get to Rondo of Blood which brought back multi-path stages and interchangeable party members. I was also not surprised this entry was chosen for the Castlevania TV series on Netflix, in addition to actually just having a cast, it has one of the better backstories of the original entries until you hit SotN. It has been very interesting to see this games profile rise in the last few years among fans. If you haven't had the chance to, I recommend checking out this gem of an entry.