Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Launches To "Mixed" Steam Reviews

New Castlevania Opens To "Mixed" Steam Reviews Over Crashes And Black Screens Published Oct 15, 2026, 10:06 AM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life 3, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is off to a rocky start on PC, with "Mixed" reviews complaining of frequent freezes, "absurdly bad" performance on Steam Deck, black screens, crashes, a constantly visible mouse cursor, ghost input, and stutters. Some players even report that the game flat out refuses to open unless they cap their graphics card settings to 60fps. "This has been a very rough launch," said abowman3d. "Once I'm into the game, the menus and map just scroll infinitely to the top of the screen." "In its current state, the game is not working," Cinnamonbun put it plainly. "Having to change screen resolution and refresh rate each time you launch the game, and then having to change it again once the game is launched is totally unacceptable." "Big fan of Evil Empire and was looking forward to this," said goatherder. "Pre-purchased. Unfortunately the game doesn't run at all for me (predownloaded, verified files, uninstalled and redownloaded) - just a black screen on boot. Until this is fixed I'm left with no choice but a negative review." "Refunded," Noodles wrote. "Hyped for the game but it's literally broken. The devs really dropped the ball. Runs like sh*t on Steam Deck. Massive frame spikes constantly. Unplayable for this genre. Doesn't run at all on my high end PC (black screen on startup). Why even release the damn game? Very disappointed." Belmont's Curse Currently Has 1.3 Positive Reviews For Every Negative One Despite these issues, Belmont's Curse actually has more positive reviews than negative ones, with a ratio of 445:345. The technical hurdles aren't universal, as some players report smooth performance on Steam Deck and no startup issues whatsoever. Although, a handful of those leaving positive reviews did have to tinker with their settings to get the game running, but ultimately decided it was worth putting up with a headache or two before getting stuck in. With such a wide variety of hardware configurations, not everyone is going to run into the black screens and stuttering, but the wildly varying experiences still make for a messy launch. Not all negative reviews are about the game's performance issues, however. Many also complain that Belmont's Curse feels more Dead Cells than Castlevania, and that its music is uninspired and generic. Positive reviewers have pushed back against that criticism, with one user, sweaters, sparking an argument in the comments: "It's incredibly naive of all the fans of the old games to think this game will play entirely like the old games, especially after 18 years and the genre being reinvented several times over. This is a Metroidvania. This is a Castlevania." It remains to be seen how things will shake out in the coming days, but the technical hoops players are being forced to jump through just to play the game has soured what should have been a momentous return for Castlevania. Hopefully, Evil Empire and Konami won't take too long to roll out hotfixes and address the worst of the problems. We have reached out to Konami for comment. Released October 15, 2026 ESRB Teen / Blood, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence Developer(s) Evil Empire, Motion Twin Publisher(s) Konami Genre(s) Platformer, Action, Adventure, RPG