For the first time in years, both halves of the word “Metroidvania” are back at once. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse came out this week, and Metroid Ravenous lands on Nintendo Switch 2 on January 28th. The two series that gave a whole genre its name return within about three months of each other, and they’re heading in the same direction: faster, harder, and built around combat.

Today I’m looking at Belmont’s Curse, what you need to know before you buy it on Switch, everything Nintendo has shown of Metroid Ravenous, and three more Metroidvanias to play while you wait. Let’s start with the vampire hunter.

Castlevania is back, and Paris is on fire.

Belmont’s Curse is the first all-new Castlevania in more than a decade, and Konami made an interesting choice: it brought in Evil Empire, working with Motion Twin, the team behind Dead Cells. Dead Cells wore its Castlevania influence openly, and Evil Empire went on to make the official Return to Castlevania expansion for it in 2023.

The game is set in Paris in 1499, 23 years after Castlevania III. You play Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades. If you watched the first seasons of the Castlevania animated series, you’ll know those two, and the game leans into that look with anime-inspired character designs; some of the show’s voice cast are reported to return, too. Rose carries a cursed arm, passed down from her late mother, and her job is to free Paris from Dracula’s forces.

Her signature tool is a deck of tarot cards, a gift from Sypha. You track down Paris’s most powerful figures, friend or foe, and seal their souls into the cards. Each card unlocks a spell, from fireballs to a magic cross to a blast that turns enemies to stone, and the souls inside them talk to Rose as you play. Each card also comes with a list of challenges called Works of Mercy, which upgrade the spell when you complete them; it’s a smart way to push you into using abilities you’d otherwise ignore.

The combat is the best part.

The fighting is what sets Belmont’s Curse apart from older Castlevania games. Combat is fast and demanding, and even basic enemies hit hard enough that you have to learn their patterns rather than mash through them. With weapons, relics, and spells to choose from, you swap your loadout mid-fight to deal with whatever appears, and by the end of the game Rose is less a whip-wielding hunter and more a whirlwind. The boss fights are a highlight, although a few try to cram in too many ideas.

That focus comes at the expense of the old role-playing side. Levelling up is pared right back in favour of twitch-based action, and long-time fans who loved grinding stats in Symphony of the Night may not like that. Even so, the battles are hard to call dull.

The checkpoints are harder to judge. Some players find them forgiving, while others find a few of them unduly punishing, and that depends a lot on your skill and patience. It’s worth trying the free demo before you decide.

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The exploration is less even.

Classic Castlevania exploration is about secrets: breakable walls, hidden rooms and doubling back with a new ability to reach somewhere you couldn’t before. Belmont’s Curse has that, but it puts more weight on platforming challenges. Expect rooms full of buzzsaws, blood pits, air dashes, and leaps of faith, some of which feel more like Super Meat Boy than Symphony of the Night.

The opening is the slowest part. The game improves once you leave the streets of Paris and reach Dracula’s castle, and at its best it’s inventive, with a music puzzle played on an organ, a network of connected mirrors and a Clock Tower climb. There’s plenty to come back for, too: a thorough playthrough can take around sixteen hours and still leave you at about 92% completion, with optional areas, weapons and upgrades rewarding the backtracking.

It isn’t all smooth, though. The main complaint is the controls. Rose’s moves are locked to eight directions while enemies and projectiles move freely, so the whip doesn’t always catch where you’d expect. Fast travel is awkward to unlock, and one area removes your map.

So I think the picture is clear. Belmont’s Curse is at its best when you’re fighting, and less so even in the stretches between fights. Whether that bothers you depends on what you want from a Castlevania game.

Here’s what that means on Switch.

The Switch version has had a confusing run-up. It came out on the same day as every other version, October 15th, but it’s a Nintendo Switch game, not a native Nintendo Switch 2 version. Konami’s own specs list the frame rate as 60fps on other platforms and 30fps on Switch.

The better news comes from the demo. Players who tried it on Switch 2 through backward compatibility reported it running at 60fps rather than 30. Those same reports mention characters looking a little fuzzy at a distance and some frame-rate dips going into cutscenes, but say it mostly ran well.

There are two caveats. That was the demo, not the final game, and I haven’t seen a full review of the Switch version yet. Given the reported frame rate drops on PS5 Pro, I’d want to see how the full Switch version holds up before calling it a good way to play. If you’re on an original Switch, the demo is the easiest way to find out whether 30fps works for you.

Metroid Ravenous turns Samus into the predator

Now for the other half of the genre. Nintendo revealed Metroid Ravenous in the Nintendo Direct on September 9th, and it’s out on January 28th 2027, exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2. That makes it the first new 2D Metroid since Metroid Dread came out in October 2021, a gap of more than five years.

Samus crash-lands on a moon and is ambushed by five assassins, whom Nintendo calls the Space Ninjas. She’s severely wounded and has to work her way through an underground world to get back to the surface. In the trailer, she narrates it herself and sums up the game in four words: “It’s eat or be eaten.”

That line is the core mechanic. Samus taps into her latent Metroid powers to regain energy by feeding on enemies; Nintendo says you stun an enemy by countering its attack, then move quickly to drain it. The trailer also shows a dash that lets Samus phase through walls, the ability to run across water, and the return of Dread’s parry. The five Space Ninjas wait for her throughout the map as one-on-one boss fights.

What I like is how this flips Dread on its head. In Dread, you spent much of the game as prey, running from the EMMI robots. Ravenous looks like it makes Samus the thing everything else should fear.

Nintendo hasn’t named the developer, but MercurySteam, the studio behind Dread and Metroid: Samus Returns, reposted the trailer on social media, which all but confirms it. Alongside the game, there’s a Special Edition with a SteelBook, an exclusive Samus amiibo in her Metroid suit, and separate Samus and Chozo Statue amiibo at launch. As far as I can find, Nintendo hasn’t announced a price for the standard edition yet.

Metroid Fusion is your homework before January.

To understand where Ravenous is coming from, go back to Metroid Fusion. That’s the game where the X parasite infects Samus and a vaccine made from Metroid cells saves her, which is where Metroid DNA first becomes part of her. Metroid Dread built on that, and in its final moments Samus briefly unlocks a Metroid form. Ravenous looks set to take that thread further.

Fusion is on Nintendo Switch Online, in the Game Boy Advance library that comes with the Expansion Pack. It’s short, tense and still one of the best games in the series. Play it, then play Dread if you haven’t, and you’ll arrive at Ravenous with the full story.

If Belmont’s Curse leaves you wanting more Castlevania, the Castlevania Advance Collection and Castlevania Dominus Collection are both on Switch. Between them, they cover all six handheld games from the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS era.

Both series are moving in the same direction.

Here’s what I find most interesting about these two games arriving together. The studio making Metroid, MercurySteam, made its name with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. The studio now making Castlevania built its reputation on a Castlevania-inspired game. Each series is in the hands of people who learned from the other, and both are pushing toward fast, precise, demanding combat.

Not everyone sees that as progress. Some long-time Metroid fans found Dread’s later boss fights overly exacting, and see Metroid as an eerie treasure hunt rather than a test of reflexes. That’s a fair point, though Dread kept that eerie atmosphere, too. Belmont’s Curse shows the same tension: strong fights, and a less even experience between them.

I don’t think the genre is losing its exploration yet, and the best evidence is the next game on my list. But Ravenous will really test whether Metroid can lean harder into combat and still feel like Metroid.

Three more Metroidvanias you should be playing.

Start with Hollow Knight: Silksong. Team Cherry’s sequel came out in September 2025 and plays on Switch and Switch 2. Its combat is fast and often punishing, but its enormous world is full of secrets. If anyone tells you a Metroidvania has to choose between demanding fights and deep exploration, Silksong is the counter-argument.

Then there’s Animal Well, which came out in May 2024 and sits at the opposite end of the genre. One developer, Billy Basso, made it almost entirely, and it has very little combat. It’s about the world itself: strange tools, hidden rooms and secrets layered so deep that players worked together to solve some of them.

Finally, the newest of the three: Well Dweller, from Kyle Thompson, the developer of Crypt Custodian and Islets, released on September 22nd. You play Glimmer, a tiny bird armed with a matchstick, on a mission to burn a wicked queen and rescue his family. It’s a dark fairy tale with a cosy streak, and it’s on both Switch and Switch 2 for £19.99. Early reception has been strong, with an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam and, reportedly, a Metacritic score of 91. If you’ve not heard of it, it’s the one on this list I’d most like you to try.

Tell me your favourite Metroidvania.

So, that’s where the genre stands this autumn: Castlevania is back with a combat-first reinvention, Metroid is three months away, and an excellent run of indie games fills the gap.

Now I want to hear from you. What’s your favourite Metroidvania of all time? If you’ve played Belmont’s Curse, especially on Switch or Switch 2, how is it running and what do you make of it? And after that trailer, are you excited for Metroid Ravenous, or would you rather Samus went back to quiet, eerie exploring? Let me know in the comments.

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