A step forward, but not quite there yet.
Now, we get Curse of Darkness, which addresses many of the faults found in the first game. It's an infinitely deeper game than its predecessor. But it still has flaws of its own, some of which are holdovers from the first game.
You play as Hector, a former agent of Dracula, who is seeking vengeance against another agent of Dracula named Isaac, for the death of your beloved. First of all, this whole revenge for the death of a girl is getting really old. Konami really needs to find more motivations for their protaganists than this. Also, Hector is a bit of an Alucard clone, only without the cape.
First, we'll talk about what the game does right. One of the biggest features this game has is the Innocent Devil system. These are basically souped up familiars who all have special abilities of their own. This is actually a very cool part of the game, as there are tons of different Innocent Devils that you can create. They range to being borderline useless to being almost invaluable in certain stretches of the game. Without Innocent Devils, you'll find playing as Hector to be fairly challenging for a large part of the game.
The next part is Item forging. You actually create your own weapons and armor from items dropped by bad guys. This is pretty innovative and new to the series. You can create lots of different weapons, ranging from swords to axes, to lances to clubs, to a few other pretty nifty weapons. You can also create helms as well. This also means that you will have to do some item farming, but its not nearly as bad in this game as it is in other RPG's.
The locales in this game are also more plentiful and MUCH larger than those found in Lament of Innocence. Some of the stages are absolutely gigantic. This is a nice step in the right direction as well, as one of the huge disappointments of Lament of Innocence was that all of the stages felt far too short. You also get to access more hidden areas in this game than in the previous one.
Boss battles in this game feel like real boss battles this time around. In Lament of Innocence, with the exception of the battles against the Forgotten One and maybe Joachim, the boss battles were pretty forgettable. In this game, they can be pretty epic.
Like in Lament of Innocence, after you beat the game, you can play as a hidden character. In this case, it's Trevor Belmont. And he's quite the bad boy. His quest plays more like a traditional Castlevania game. Since for the most part, he doesn't have a real inventory (apart from different whips). And since he is naturally an offensive juggernaut, you can power through most enemies in a breeze. Like the Joachim game in Lament of Inoocence, Trevor can find power ups, which increase his overall stats. There is some nice replay value here, but overall, you'll find that playing with Trevor is much easier than playing through with Hector, since there is not as much to do.
Now we'll talk about where the game comes up a little short. First, the locales. One of the chief complaints about the stages in the first game was that they felt like just going from corridor to corridor, fighting bad guys, clearing a room, going to a new corridor, rinse and repeat. Even though you go to a different stage, each stage is set up in the same way. In a series of corridors. Curse of Darkness is no different. Each stage follows the "corridor" set up. Even the Clock Tower is set up as a series of corridors. Not as a platforming stage as you would expect. The mountain stages are set up like this. And there is actually less terrain variety in this game, than in Lament of Innocence. Overall, this is hugely disappointing, since you're basically just going from corridor to corridor clearing out bad guys and repeating the pattern for the entire game.
Next...the camera. It was a massive problem in Lament of Innocence. You couldn't control it. But it was also set fairly far away from the action, so that you could see everything going on. Here in Curse of Darkness, you can control it. Very good thing. But it's focused WAY too closely on Hector. When you're fighting flying bad guys, this is a major pain. Or when you're a room surrounded by bad guys. Then you're swiveling the camera left and right trying to see whats around you. What's worse, is if you "lock" onto an opponent, the camera just goes crazy.
Playing as Trevor also feels much clunkier than playing as Leon. Players who have played as both of them will know exactly what I'm talking about.
Overall, it's not a bad game. There is just not enough variety at all. There is absolutely no platforming to be had, and this is just not a good thing. It can be done right, in a 3-D game, and its too bad that Konami hasn't attempted to do it in these games. Even Castlevania 64 at least attempted to have some platforming action, even if it failed miserably. So we're almost there, but definitely have a ways to go.