Castlevania: Everything You Need to Know About Lament of Innocence/Curse of Darkness – CBR – Comic Book Resources

Castlevania's criminally overlooked titles were released nearly 20 years ago. Here's the story behind Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness.

Castlevania first ventured into 3D gameplay on the Nintendo 64 in 1999 with a pair of titles, an eponymous installment and Legacy of Darkness. Eleven years later, the franchise was completely rebooted in the Lords of Shadow trilogy, reimagining the eternal conflict between Dracula and the Belmont Clan of vampire hunters. But between those two very different 3D Castlevania games, Konami released two 3D installments in the action-horror franchise on the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox that have often gone overlooked: 2003's Lament of Innocence and 2005's Curse of Darkness. Both are well-worth a revisit.

Lament of Innocence, released exclusively for the PS2, took the franchise's timeline to its earliest point in 1094 at the dawn of the Crusades. Disgraced crusader and baron Leon Belmont returns home to discover his fiancee, Sara, has been kidnapped by the vampire lord Walter Bernhard and imprisoned in his castle.

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Revealing she had already been irrevocably turned into a vampire herself, Sara sacrifices her soul to empower Leon's whip to forge the franchise's signature weapon the Vampire Killer, allowing Leon to avenge her and expose his estranged best friend, Mathias Cronqvist, as the mastermind behind the kidnapping. As Mathias rises as a vampire, he takes on the name Dracula, while Leon vows his descendants will eventually destroy this undead enemy.

Producer and longtime series developer Koji Igarashi was interestedin maintaining the home console installments of the franchise in 3D while keeping handheld games in its classic 2D. Despite this, Igarashi found developing the game in 3D more complex than he had anticipated. Initial plans for Walter's castle to be more open -- similar to Dracula's castle in Symphony of the Night--were repurposed to be divided in separate wingsof the castle linked by a central hub, with five of the six wings accessible from the beginning. Gameplay-wise, players can use primary and secondary weapons with special attacks and techniques not unlike Capcom's Devil May Cry franchise.

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Castlevania: Everything You Need to Know About Lament of Innocence/Curse of Darkness - CBR - Comic Book Resources