Do the renegade prompts if you can. They're always worth it.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night: I'll add two new rules:
- No familiar
- Any rule can be broken to unlock stuff
I went through all of the Castle of Balance except the final boss gauntlet.
The game definitely got a bit rougher around the chapel, then a lot rougher in the coliseum. I learned to just avoid invisible rapier ladies, among other enemies.
I don't think I can actually beat Richter for the bad ending, because he's jumping all over the place like a rabbit, and his Holy Water Item Crush does a ton of damage (multiple hits on a 0 def Alucard) and is unavoidable. (Edit: Oh right, the mist. I need to try this out)
Bosses that
1) can be reached by a fist only Alucard standing or crouching
2) stay in one place, at least once in a while
just die to a barrage of punches (= MASH SQUARE), and that's every boss so far except Doppleganger, Minotaur/Werewolf, Orlox and Gandalfoon.
Minotaur / Werewolf aren't moving at the very beginning of the battle, I just Hokuto no Ken'd Minotaur, then beat Werewolf easily enough because -I- am the super bare handed badass. My main strategy was crouching in front of him and punching.
Orlox was really hard at low HPs, he has to be harmed by impractical jump-punches and he throws fireballs all over the place. Plus, the lower his HPs the faster his attacks. I beat him by mist-teleporting between his legs and crouch-punching him there. It works.
Granfaloon ah ah ah ah oh god.
Essentially his pattern depends on how many parts have been destroyed, roughly it's:
- 0 parts destroyed: Not much, just throwing a few zombies around
- 1-2 parts destroyed: More zombies thrown around
- 3 parts destroyed: Less zombies thrown around, but a new laser attack rarely used
- 4-7 parts destroyed: Laser attack used more often
- 8 parts destroyed: ARMAGEDDON
He's pretty harmless w/ 3 parts destroyed so I aimed for that. I beat him by destroying all three parts on his right side because then he wouldn't be able to throw zombies at my face while I was attacking the core. Attacking the lower right and middle right side were easy enough. I beat the upper side by flying next to it as a bat, transforming to human form, punching, then retransforming into a bat, etc. Then the core went down pretty fast.
Symphony of the Night doesn't actually hold up very well as a Castlevania game. There is way too much backtracking, there's no balance, level design can get really empty, there are too many secret rooms.
The inverted castle, while super cool, has no level design at all, everything is inverted so nothing is designed to be interesting, but you have unlimited movement like you're freaking Kirby so whatever. Let's throw enemies with higher stats standing in there and call it a day.
SOTN's riding entirely on style: The aforementioned inverted castle, pressing up near a cliff, the water fountain turning into blood, the confessional, backgrounds, music, that animation you see before fighting Doppleganger, art style, attacking the shopkeeper from the lower floor, all the food, divekicks, owl fighters being sad when you kill their owls, etc.
Style does carry SotN pretty far. But I think it fares really badly nowadays compared to the more modern Order of Ecclesia and to a lesser extent Portrait of Ruin, which have way less backtracking, better level design, more satisfying combat, and cool bosses.
