Are you overwhelmed by the sheer size of Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse? Do you wish, as you travel the streets of Paris and Dracula’s Manor, that it was easier to return to specific, pinpoint areas? Do you wish you didn’t have to use The Ferryman’s fast-travel boat which will only teleport you to a general zone?
Have I got some good, possibly too-fucking-late news for you! You can fast travel between Belmont’s Curse save-point mirrors. All you have to do is roll up to a mirror, crouch down, and wait for Rose to teleport to the mirror world (but only after you’ve summoned Dracula’s castle!). There, you have access to almost every mirror you’ve unlocked within a specific zone and once you get to a certain story point, you can use it to travel from mirror to mirror throughout the entire game, cutting out The Ferry-middle-man.
And the game never adequately explains this to you.
One thing I appreciate about Belmont’s Curse is that there’s a robust diegetic hint system that tells you how to figure out your next objective. There are a handful of bonus bosses and other goodies not on the game’s critical path but getting to them isn’t straightforward, though the game is pretty good about dropping hints to help you find them. For example, the Mammon boss is hidden behind a door that’s only unlocked when you’ve collected three special items. Explore enough in the game, and you’ll find clues telling you where to look for those items. Another really cool use of diegetic clues that’ll help if you’re looking to 100-percent complete the game and don’t yet have the item that lets you know a secret is nearby: the map will tell you! A complete section of the map will have a brown background; any area where there’s still a secret waiting to be found will be purple.
BUT!
Sometimes I don’t want an in-game hint, I need to be told directly. Belmont’s Curse is so big and so much of it is optional that it’s easy to miss important things. I mean, I’m the one who blindly stumbled into the extra-bad ending because I got lost on my way to an early boss fight. (Ironically, I didn’t find the clue that tells you how to unlock the boss arena. Yes, this game is good with its hint system…sometimes.) I’m pretty sure the game leaves some kind of note cluing you in that you need to kneel in front of a mirror to unlock mirror-to-mirror teleportation fast travel, but I don’t think it should be too cute about something as critical as getting around a map that makes the Minotaur’s labyrinth look like a 30-square-foot Manhattan efficiency apartment. The only reason I found out about it at all was because my husband, who is also playing the game, stumbled upon it himself and let me know.