History YMMV / CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse

** ''Magazine/NintendoPower'' definitely solidified this mistake, given how overwhelmingly influential it was in the [[TheEighties 80's]] and [[TheNineties 90's]]. As can be seen in the lower-right corner of [[http://www.castlevaniacrypt.com/img/cv3/np/7.jpg this scan]], Sypha is drawn like an old male wizard and is described with male pronouns.

* TierInducedScrappy: Popular though Alucard is, he certainly isn't much in his first playable outing. He can't use subweapons aside from the stopwatch, he is just as slow as Trevor, and his projectile attack is slow and very weak, while it also can't be used on the stairs you'll be fighting on a lot. His only redeeming feature is his ability to turn into a bat, which lets you completely bypass most platforming sections, and can save you from death when knocked into a pit (as you can both switch to Alucard and transform while in knockback). The latter makes him the preferred partner among higher level players, since Trevor is more than capable of handling all combat and thus skipping platforming + insurance against cheap deaths is most useful, but those that can't handle combat well end up much preferring the other more combat-capable partners instead.

* SequelDifficultySpike: Oh yes. See NintendoHard above. Changes made compared to the first game in the series, like how walking up and down stairs works and because enemies that can do four marks worth of damage start appearing earlier in the game. The platforming and obstacles are also a bit trickier.

* ViewerGenderConfusion: This was especially common with Sypha before the days of the internet. The only way you found out she's a girl is beating the game with her as your partner. Considering how difficult the US version is, that's no small feat for kids of the day. The fact that the text leaves the prompt as "Take him with you?" on her select screen doesn't help. In Japanese, it was perfectly fine using gender-neutral pronouns.

** [[DittoFighter The Doppleganger]], who'll give you quite some trouble unless you exploit the aforementioned [[PauseScumming glitch to defeat it]], especially in the NES version where it deals 4 bars of damage (in the Famicom version it deals 3 bars of damage instead, giving you a bit more leniency against it). If you're playing a Trevor solo playthrough and thus won't have access to the aforementioned exploit, you better hope you get to it with Holy Water intact. And it's especially horrible when doing solo character runs with the non-Trevor characters, where you'll need to blatantly exploit the AI to have any chance of beating it on the NES version, especially with Alucard.
** Death is this as usual. He flies around summoning scythes and you die in four hits like the encounter in the first game, only he has a second form this time round. Fortunately, the second form is much easier than the first form, and the first, while really hard, is not as brutal as he was in the first game. This is due to you having more options and room to maneuver in the room you fight him, Death's first form having a lot less health (requiring 11 whip hits to defeat here compared to 16 in the original), and unlike in the original where you had to go through a [[ThatOneLevel notoriously difficult hallway]] full of [[GoddamnBats Medusa Heads]] and [[EliteMooks Axe Armors]] to get a chance at Death each time, Death's hallway has nothing but a collapsing bridge and a lone knight, while it gives you your choice of any subweapon (alongside a free double shot for a Cross).
** The Skull Knight King who appears at the end of Stage 5 if you continue along the Catacombs in Alucard's path. He's exactly the same as the WarmupBoss from the first level, except this time whenever you hit him, a bone projectile breaks off that circles around him and homes in on you, while never disappearing unless you hit them. These bones are extremely hard to hit, and are about impossible to avoid for long, especially if there's many of them out at once, while the Skull Knight King relentlessly pursues you. Additionally, if you end up on the left of him, there's no platforms to jump up on and only a long flight of stairs, so your only way to avoid getting hit by him here is to climb up the stairs, which leaves you a sitting duck to his bones. Also the Skull Knight King has increased health and requires 16 full-powered whip hits to defeat, meaning that's a minimum of 15 bones you'll have to deal with. Then for the kicker; if you die at any point on this level, the only subweapon available in the entire level is the Knife, which is mostly useless against him. So you'll essentially have to beat him with just your whip, if you don't carry a better subweapon from a prior level without dying here. The saving grace against him if you're stuck here without a good subweapon is that when he's attacked with your whip, he'll attempt to shield your attack and then counterattack with his sword that your full-powered whip outreaches, so if you can get him at the right spacing, you can keep whipping at him over and over while he's stuck in the same spot, damaging him while simultaneously destroying his bones as they're released until he dies.

** Sypha is popular not only for being a GameBreaker that will definitely help the game's difficulty, but also for her introduction of magic to the Belmont lineage and being the franchise's first playable female.

** Grant DaNasty can destroy aerial bosses with the axe and triple shot with ease, especially Dracula. Playing a game as Trevor with holy water and Grant with the axe can make short work of any boss in the game.

* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel: It's considered much better than ''Simon's Quest'', with some even considering it superior to the first game.

** [[DittoFighter The Doppleganger]], who'll give you quite some trouble unless you exploit the aforementioned [[PauseScumming glitch to defeat it]], especially in the NES version where it deals 4 bars of damage (in the Famicom version it deals 3 bars of damage instead, giving you a bit more leniency against it). If you're playing a Trevor solo playthrough and thus won't have access to the aforementioned exploit, you better hope you get to it with Holy Water intact.
** Death is this as usual. He flies around summoning scythes and you die in four hits like the encounter in the first game, only he has a second form this time round. Fortunately, the second form is easier than the first form, and the first, while really hard, is not as brutal as he was in the first game. This is due to you having more options and room to maneuver in the room you fight him, Death's first form having a lot less health (requiring 11 whip hits to defeat here compared to 16 in the original), and unlike in the original where you had to go through a [[ThatOneLevel notoriously difficult hallway]] full of [[GoddamnBats Medusa Heads]] and [[EliteMooks Axe Armors]] to get a chance at Death each time, Death's hallway has nothing but a collapsing bridge and a lone knight, while it gives you your choice of any subweapon (alongside a free double shot for a Cross).

* TierInducedScrappy: Popular though Alucard is, he certainly isn't much in his first playable outing. He has the largest hitbox of the cast, he can't use subweapons aside from the stopwatch, he's slow and generally clunky, and his projectile attack, though not terrible, can't be used on stairs, and you'll be fighting on stairs a lot. His only redeeming feature is his ability to turn into a bat, and even that chews through hearts so fast that it's really only useful over very short distances.

* EnsembleDarkhorse:
** Alucard was a relatively minor character in this game, but he evidently had enough of a fanbase to later become the main character of ''Symphony of the Night''.
** After Alucard's breakout into one of the series' more popular characters, usually Sypha takes the spot, since she's less than likely to return in games that didn't cover ''Dracula's Curse'' (needing to have other mages, preferably her descendants to represent her), but she remains popular as the mother of Belmont's magical gene (and tends to be portrayed without her hood afterwards, making her more blatantly attractive from get-go) and being a GameBreaker that will definitely help the game's difficulty.
** Aside from Sypha, there's also Grant [=DaNasty=]. His more loose JumpPhysics and WallCrawl ability tremendously helped the harsh platforming scene of the game making him popular amongst speed-runners. Even moreso than Sypha, Grant has ''never'' saw the light of appearance in other games aside of his home game and ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaJudgment'' (where he actually got a fair characterization in spite of a base-breaking bandaged mummy design when others' characterization ended up being polarizing), always being given the ChuckCunninghamSyndrome and the best he got was a descendant in a novel that took place after ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow'' (Michelle [=DaNasty=]). It was this fact that somehow made him popular in the fanbase that clamored for Grant's grand return one day.
* {{Fanon}}: Some previews in Nintendo Power and elsewehere lead to the impression that the three companions are ghosts, and when you hit select you're actually giving them control of Trevor's body. This does seem to make sense given that you defeat both Grant and Alucard in combat, and Sypha emerges from a petrified state. This is Jossed by the various endings of the game, however.

* BreatherBoss: In the Famicom version, the Bone Dragon King, as his entire body can be attacked to harm him, which has a twofold effect; it obviously makes him a lot easier to hit, but due to each of his segments having individual hurtboxes, it also allows single attacks to register multiple hits on him. So even though you fight him in an area where you risk getting knocked into BottomlessPits, you can deplete his lifebar ridiculously fast and end the fight before it even really gets going. Then when he reappears at the end of the second part of the level, he'll have almost no health left and can only take 2 more whip hits, making the rising water a nonfactor. This isn't so in the NES version, however; there only his head can be harmed, making him a lot more difficult to hit and removing the ability to register multiple hits on him with a single attack, and he leaves the first fight sooner, so when he reappears for the second fight, he'll have nearly half his health for it, which, when combined with the difficulty of hitting him, makes for a true TimeLimitBoss.

* BreatherLevel: On the Alucard path, opting to finish Stage 5 rather than going to the Sunken Ruins, takes you to the Catacombs beneath the castle for Stage 6. It's unusually short, has fairly simple challenges, and both Grant and Alucard have ways to make it even shorter. Even the boss (Frankie, who appears in Stage 5 of Sypha's route) is pretty easy.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Alucard was a relatively minor character in this game, but he evidently had enough of a fanbase to later become the main character of ''Symphony of the Night''. After Alucard's breakout into one of the series' more popular characters, usually Sypha takes the spot, since she's less than likely to return in games that didn't cover ''Dracula's Curse'' (needing to have other mages, preferably her descendants to represent her), but she remains popular as the mother of Belmont's magical gene (and tends to be portrayed without her hood afterwards, making her more blatantly attractive from get-go) and being a GameBreaker that will definitely help the game's difficulty.

* GameBreaker: Sypha's Lightning spell; it shoots out three large blue orbs that fly around the screen, each individually dealing twice as much damage as Trevor's full-powered whip, and they go through targets and can individually strike multiple times as a result. It'll lay waste to any normal enemy, while trivialising most bosses in the game, and it only costs a single heart to use for each use. You can't get the double or triple shot powerup with it, but then it has this game-breaking power upon immediately obtaining it. The only real downsides to it are that it's the rarest subweapon to find in the game, and you may find one orb not homing in properly and circling around its target without hitting it and not leaving the screen, where you're then unable to fire out another Lightning until it finally goes away; this is particularly prone to happening against Dracula's final form.

* SpecialEffectFailure: When a character dies via SuperDrowningSkills in the NES version, the splash is made after their head falls into the water, instead of causing their sprite to disappear like in the first game. It wasn't even animated in the original version.

** Aside of Sypha, there's also Grant [=DaNasty=]. His more loose JumpPhysics and WallCrawl ability tremendously helped the harsh platforming scene of the game making him popular amongst speed-runners. Even moreso than Sypha, Grant has ''never'' saw the light of appearance in other games aside of his home game and ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaJudgment'' (where he actually got a fair characterization in spite of a base-breaking bandaged mummy design when others' characterization ended up being polarizing), always being given the ChuckCunninghamSyndrome and the best he got was a descendant in a novel that took place after ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow'' (Michelle [=DaNasty=]). It was this fact that somehow made him popular in the fanbase that clamored for Grant's grand return one day.