Can You Beat Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Without Equipment?

foreign [Music] you know My Curse of Darkness Gatling gun only video was going to be my last Castlevania video for quite a while and I was going to save this video for much later but the day after I started replaying Symphony of the Night we got the new announcement for Nocturne the release date and then we got the trailer so I kind of figured that now I'd have to do a challenge for Symphony of the Night which is one of my most requested Castlevania videos and the challenge that I decided on was no equipment we all know about how the game starts you off with the best equipment in the game only to have death taken away which forces you to find more equipment throughout the castle but let's go a step further and see if we can beat the game without any equipment at all now I'm sure most people are probably expecting you to do this challenge in the Requiem re-release for the PS4 but actually no we're going to be playing the Sega Saturn version like a lot of early PS1 games Symphony of the Night got ported to the Sega Saturn with some extra content and like pretty much every Saturn game that was worth a crap it didn't get a release outside of Japan this version has mystified Castlevania fans outside Japan for over 20 years because well for one thing it was only available in Japan meaning you'd need a Japanese Saturn to even legitimately play the thing and due to Saturn's strong DRM and complicated Hardware emulation and ROM hacking haven't really been much of a thing until recently what's more is that with all the re-releases and remasters of this game over the decades none of them have actually included any of the new content that was added in the Saturn version it really seems like Konami wants everyone to forget about this version's existence but as of 2020 thanks to the efforts of ROM hacker Knight of dragon the Saturn version is now fully playable in English and that's the version we're going to be playing [Music] all right where was I oh yeah we start the game start a new save file and we can begin we start out with our iconic intro of Richter fighting Dracula in the final moments of Rondo of Blood now in Japanese foreign [Music] fast forward a few years and the castle is back but Richter is nowhere to be seen so Alucard awakens from his 300 year long beauty sleep beauty sleep that definitely had a noticeable effect and attempts to face Dracula on his own now we all know what's coming up and as much as I want to make it my head cannon that Alucard just decides to stop using equipment after death takes them away I also want to stay as faithful to this challenge as possible so I'm going to unequip everything at the start now you might think this means I'm going to be helpless against some of these enemies like the wargs seeing as how the game expects me to have my Best Equipment on me but they're not as tough as they look though I do get tossed around by the zombies a bit and they do bring me down to just one HP but I am able to make it through to meet up with death who takes away all my equipment oh you're just wait another few hours I'm going to show you that I don't even need equipment to kick your skeletal butt but anyway I start making my way through the castle into the Alchemy lab and no major issues yet most of these enemies are still going down in just one or two hits I mean it's going to be a while before I start having any real trouble with the enemies in fact here I would argue it's actually better to just go barefisted because you can attack at a more frequent rate than you can with the sword or the red rust even the knights are easy to take down and before long I get my first sub weapon and make it to the first boss slogra and gybon like most first bosses these two are pretty easy for the first phase of the fight at least I think this boss is divided into phases sometimes they go out of order but whatever the case when the fight starts slagra will wield a spear and gaibon will pick him up and drop him next to you like he won't even try to drop him on top of you when I attack him slogra flinches and then gaibon picks him back up this pretty much creates a loop that's just fall down get attacked fall down get attacked until he drops his spear then he'll attack you with his beak most of the time in this case I guess they realize that their first strategy isn't working so they separate now gaibon will fly around and shoot Fireballs while slogra just kinda stands around and it only takes a few more hits to kill him now I can focus on gyvon gaibon is kind of hard to hit in the air but he's a Sitting Duck when he comes down to attack you not only can you easily Dodge his Fireballs by crouching but you can easily land a lot of good hits while he's attacking and even if you're standing you could block his Fireballs by punching anyway after doing this just once he turns red but he only gets a chance to get off one attack in this form and then goes down after just three more punches foreign we move on and there's not much more to see in the next area it's still filled with enemies that pose no threat at all and can be taken out before they can so much as land a single hit and this is pretty much the same case with the next area the marble gallery and as soon as I arrive here I'm able to get the holy water which at this point is probably the best sub weapon because the way it works makes it perfect for taking out those larger tougher enemies which we will be seeing very soon I also make sure to take a detour to get the spirit orb so that I can actually see how much damage I'm doing but also so that I can open up a shortcut to the entrance and speak of the devil here's our first tough enemy and here's another one both of which go down pretty easily thanks to the holy water now on the way down you might have noticed a doorway on the opposite side of the hall yeah this leads to the first Saturn exclusive area the cursed prison although I don't actually recommend going here right now because these enemies are much higher level than anything you've seen so far and will see for quite a while and even if you do make it to the end of the hallway all you're going to get is a door that you can't open because the switch is on the other side though I will say this is a great place to do some early game grinding if you don't think this game is easy enough but otherwise I'd say come back later getting back to the main path we've run into Maria in The Clock room who is sadly not voiced by yukari in this version beat up some stone roses and however you're supposed to say that get to the outer wall where we start seeing some Medusa heads and we have to fight the next boss the doppelganger and unlike the last one this one is actually pretty difficult mainly because unlike my Alucard this one isn't doing any kind of Challenge and he can use whatever weapons he wants Landing a punch is pretty much impossible without taking a hit because the doppelganger has a sword but worst of all with the way knockback works he can follow this up with more attacks until he pushes you into a corner and this could drain all of your HP in one fast combo did I mention that he can also turn into a bat and fly into you the holy water isn't really much help against this boss either because of how much of a small Target he is and even if you do manage to catch him with the Holy Waters Flames it'll only hit once or twice because the recoil will knock him out of it after I don't know like 10 or so attempts I go down and replace my holy water with a knife because at least with this I can hit him more consistently and it doesn't use up as many hearts and this proves to be the ticket it does still take a couple more attempts but at this point I've somewhat figured out his attack pattern in my final attempt I'm able to dodge a good chunk of his attacks and I'm able to get a few lucky hits on him when he's hopping around there are even a few instances where I'm able to land a few punches on him while he's crouching the biggest game changer though is definitely the knife while it is only dealing two damage it does allow me to safely hit him without the risk of getting too close and thanks to it I'm able to take him out with just four HP to spare ah [Music] all right now time to go to the library where I meet the librarian and by The Jewels open so that I can open those blue magic seal doors and move on I head back to the Alchemy lab open the door to the Royal Chapel which is a little more difficult because of the abundance of flying enemies and at the end we have to fight another boss the hippogriff and yeah it is pathetically easy all it does is fly around and swoop down making it vulnerable to my attacks which are doing 16 damage more than I've done to any other boss so far I'm pretty sure what it's actually doing is trying to lay eggs because there is one instance where I choke and get hit and then take another hit from some smaller birds that pop out of some eggs and after that it goes for a fire breath attack which I do get hit by and take 30 damage but by this point the fight is already over and I finish it off cool okay Now we move on to the part where we get the leap Stone allowing us to double jump where there is also a conveniently placed teleporter which I used to go back to the outer walls and then to the Clock Tower with all the annoying enemies like the floating skulls the Giant floating skulls the Medusa heads the golden Medusa heads the harpies this is probably the worst area in the game for any type of short-range weapon and that goes double for the holy water but I don't want to get rid of it because past that are the sword Lords and I pretty much need the holy water for them though even with that I just barely make it through the area and at the end I have another boss I have to fight karasumon but this is probably the easiest boss in the entire game throughout the entire fight he manages to get off two attacks the feather shot one and the dark homing orb one both of which I dodge after that well congratulations you beat him whenever you attack he'll fly back and into the air and won't do anything until he hits the ground where you can just hit him again causing him to fly back again and again and again and you get the idea he's stun locked he can't do anything you win just keep doing this until he's dead my reward for beating him is a life bonus and a shortcut to the castle keep yeah that boss isn't actually required but it's so easy there's really no reason to skip him unless you're doing like a pacifist run or something also now that I have the double jump ability I can use it to get to the top left area in the clock room which takes me to all rocks's quarters then to the Coliseum which has one of my favorite soundtracks in the game but a lot of hallways guarded by tough enemies that have pretty decent rewards at the end and even the toughest enemies aren't anything a little holy water won't take care of the only ones I just straight up ignore are the blade Masters because they hop around a lot and deal a lot of damage and I just don't want to deal with them now the boss of the area is Richter or more specifically his pet Minotaur and werewolf now the Minotaur is a complete joke after getting hit by his flying Dash attack I repeatedly punch him in the kneecap and kill him before he can even do anything else the werewolf is a little trickier because he's a smaller Target and moves around faster but he barely has any HP and doesn't move around fast enough to make him resistant to my holy water and after taking hits from just a few of my attacks he goes down I get the missed Soul ability which allows me to pass through barred walls and get to the boss of the long Library which is the second area that I need the double jump to get to and this boss is the Lesser demon this boss is not strong at all he barely has any attacks and they're all extremely hard to get hit by but what he can do is summon other enemies albeit weak ones that I can kill as soon as they spawn but he has iframes when summoning them not to mention he's in the air for most of the fight I'm able to land a few good hits at the start but after that I pretty much just have to start jumping to land any hits this fight isn't really difficult but it does take a little while mainly because it takes me a couple of minutes to realize that he's not going to land on the ground after he starts flying but I do figure out a good strategy as soon as he starts spawning minions if it's the mud man I'll throw some holy water at the ground and then jump up to hit him if it's an ectoplasm well I just have to kill it and wait and with this taking him down does not take long at all my reward is the battle which allows me to transform into a bat meaning I'm no longer restricted by gravity when exploring the castle this means I can fly up the middle path in the clock room to get the gravity boots which let me super jump and I can get to a hidden area in the upper part of the castle keep that gives me the power of mist which lets me stay in Mist form for as long as I want provided I have enough MP this form does consume MP faster than the battle but you are invincible while in this form so it's a good way to cheese your way through difficult areas I also do something that I completely forgot to do earlier that is push the button that opens the blocked off areas of the marble Gallery allowing me to go into this fake save point which takes me to the nightmare area Alucard gets a fake vision of his mother before being executed and what do you know it's the succubus and this is another extremely easy boss for the first part of the fight she only goes for her Wing Spike attack thing where she just shoots giant spikes out of her wings as long as they're not standing in the way of the fingers of her wings you won't get hit the only hard part of the fight is when she starts cloning herself yeah once she gets low on HP she'll start creating clones of herself and start shooting magic balls at you from across the room these are pretty hard to dodge and the only way you can find the real succubus is by just attacking all of her clones until you hit the right one she does this twice in the fight and it brings my HP pretty low but she has so little HP by this point the fight is already almost over and a few punches later I beat her [Music] oh yeah oh she literally gets banished to the shadow realm and I'm rewarded with the gold ring one of two items I need to open the secret door in the clock room also I'm pretty sure I was under leveled for that fight because I gained four levels after beating her oh and while I'm here I think this is a good time to revisit the cursed prison seeing as how the other entrance is right here now as much as I think the curse prison is a cool area and I appreciate igarashi for adding new areas into this version it's really just more of a shortcut than anything else but it does contain the astral dagger which is a neat weapon alright time to head into the underground caverns and there's not a whole lot to say about this area the enemies are really easy I mean it's mostly just frogs and toads and in order to move on to the next area you have to activate a switch that spawns a skeleton ape in this one hallway then lead him to this wooden plank and have him throw his exploding Barrel at it to break it and then you can move on to the abandoned mind where I have to fight the boss almost immediately the Cerberus and this is one of those bosses with a blatantly exploitable weakness to Holy Water its attacks are decently strong but they're not hard to avoid and this whole area is set up perfectly for baptizing it in holy water I just stand on top of one of the platforms and when it goes for its diagonal fire breath attack I span the holy water and this fight doesn't even last a whole minute thank you now that was a pretty easy boss but the exact opposite is the case for the next one which I do need to beat before moving on to the next area the boss I am referring to is all rocks now that I have abilities that remove the restrictions of my vertical movement I can go into the main area of all rox's quarters and challenge him now all rocks may not seem so bad at first I mean his first form just slowly moves around and tries to attack you with these easily blockable and dodgeable projectiles which he launches from the ground giving me plenty of time to punch the Daylights out of him but once you get past that phase he goes into his true form a giant green lizard thing this is where things really get hard because well for one thing the holy water doesn't really work here because from it he only takes one damage with each hit and he doesn't even stand in one place long enough for it to be reliable punching him does more damage six on most of his body but 22 on his head which is his weak spot and usually my punches hit twice simultaneously but because of his erratic movement pattern it's really difficult to land a hit without getting hit myself to make mattress worse he starts to get more aggressive and his attacks come out more frequently and faster as his HP gets lower and for a mid to early game Boss he has quite a lot of HP this is the first time in a while I actually need to rethink my strategy so what is there for me to do well obviously punching on its own isn't enough and the holy water just isn't cutting it but there is another really powerful sub weapon that I haven't tried yet the cross this sub weapon is kind of like a super move I mean it has the same effect as Richter Super Attack when he has the boomerang equipped but it requires a hundred Hearts to use so I can only use it once at the moment I also decide to start using my sword familiar because why not I mean they don't count as equipment and I also have spells that I haven't been using either I mean I've never really used spells in this game because they require all kinds of weird button combinations that I'm just not good at but I'm kind of starting to get desperate here so I attempt all rocks again and the cross definitely helps but it doesn't do enough damage for me to cheese the entire battle with it what I have to do is play as carefully as possible until he starts to get low his fire breath attack is the one that's giving me the most trouble because of the pattern it hits you with and how long it lasts but I found out that I can avoid this attack by either turning into mist or by using my Hellfire spell yeah this attack lets Alucard use Dracula's Fireball attack where he'll disappear for about a second and then attack with three fireballs and you're Invincible during this whole process it's a great way to dodge his attacks while dealing damage but it's also kind of difficult to pull off and you can't afford to mess up the input my sword familiar also seems to be helping quite a bit I mean it's not doing a lot of damage but it is hitting a lot and some sometimes blocks all rocks's attacks too once I notice his patterns start to get faster I use the cross and it hits him dozens of times and Deals massive damage but it doesn't kill him but three more Fireballs to The Shins do foreign that was probably the hardest boss so far and my reward is the echo of battle and now I'm going to enter the catacombs the deepest area in the castle and home to mostly harmless but some more annoying enemies like the UCO box these little guys like to fly around drop little Fireballs everywhere but the reason I wanted to get the echo of batsol is because I need it to get through this dark room surrounded by spikes the echo of battle is the only way you can see the spikes in this room I mean theoretically it's not required but getting through without it requires a lot of trial and error and a lot of luck although now that I think about it I probably could have made it through with the power of mist but anyway on the other side of this room you get the spike breaker armor which lets you move through spikes now I'm able to access the area where you get the silver ring but before going there I want to fight another optional boss and one of my favorites in the game the Legion or grandfalloon as he's called in this game if you fought this thing in pretty much any other Castlevania Game well you should know what to expect the legion is a giant mass of dead bodies it's not that hard to beat but the atmosphere and design of the boss more than make up for this it doesn't have much in the way of attacks but the bodies will fall off of it and attack you from the ground and when they come at me I can easily take them out by punching them attacking the main body is a bit tricky though because of how short a range I have it's difficult for me to find a good position to attack it at my familiar however is actually working wonders in this fight because while I'm busy defending myself against the bodies this thing is cutting up the main body and it's dealing decent damage with a lot of hits It's not long before chunks of the outer body start to fall off and once the core is exposed it'll start to attack me with its tentacle lasers I get hit by the first one for 53 damage and I think that's a sign that I should use my cross which is what I do and it finishes off the boss oh and my reward for winning is another sword that I can't use but that's okay I just wanted to show you the boss but now I think it's a good time to move on with the game and be done with the main Castle but before I do that I want to take some time to visit the other Saturn exclusive area in this Castle the underground Garden home to this awesome electronic Jazz rendition of Vampire Killer good Ness as well as many new enemies like the wannabe Belmont skeletons Pokemon dugongs and oh sweet Jesus kill it with fire or blunt force or whatever it's a cool area but like the cursed prison it's pretty small after this main area you have to fight your way through some hallways and at the end you find a new boss the skeleton leader this is very much a kill or be killed boss and despite it not being very hard it does take me several attempts first of all as soon as he spawns in he'll throw a very fast shuriken at you that's guaranteed to hit you on your first attempt but this battle is problematic mainly because so many of his attacks cause poison which makes my damage output go from eight to one and because potions are banned I can't use anything to cure it if I get hit by a single one of his poisoning attacks it's pretty much an automatic reset but his other attacks are still powerful on their own he doesn't have a lot of HP only 444 which is pretty low for this late in the game on my successful attempt I pretty much handle this normally until my HP gets low and at that point I use my cross and that does more than enough damage to finish him off foreign for beating him is besides the life bonus absolutely nothing anyway getting back to the main story in the Royal Chapel you may have noticed this hallway surrounded by spikes at first you might think you could just fly through with the batsold and pass through the Gated area with mist except at the end there's a blue door and since you need to be in your human form to open these doors well that's what the spike breaker is for what you're actually supposed to do is simply walk through it with the spike breaker armor one problem though the spike breaker is a piece of equipment and this is a no equipment run now there is another trick to getting through it without the spike breaker and that is by using a potion when Alucard uses a potion he gets iframes that will allow you to open the door and go inside but the potion counts as equipment too because it has to be equipped before I can use it so what does this mean is the run over well I'll leave it up to you to decide of course I'm not gonna end the video here but with the rules I've been using up until now I can say that it's not possible to beat Symphony of the Night without equipment but it is possible if you make an exception for potions and other consumable items so I go inside the room run into Maria again get the silver ring and now I can go into the clock room and oh wait I have to equip them ah man this game really knows how to kick me while I'm down so yeah the hidden door that leads to where you need to go will not open unless you have both the silver and gold rings equipped I mean they don't do anything but still and with that I can say it is not possible to beat Symphony of the Night without any equipment at least under normal circumstances I am aware that there are speed running tricks that let you skip the upcoming Richter fight but I'll get to that in a minute for now I have to go into this giant Cube thing and meet Maria who wants to test me before giving me what I need to fight Richter so we have to fight her as a boss and holy crap this is what you call a difficulty Spike if you played the PSP version you might think that this fight would be pretty much identical but no in that version they changed Maria so that she plays more like she did in Rondo with blood here she plays more like a fighting game character and this boss fight reflects that her attack pattern is much more erratic and unpredictable her attacks come out really fast fast and that throwing knife attack I'm convinced that when you're jumping and she does that you have no choice but to take a hit although for her first phase it actually isn't too difficult it's really hard to land a hit without her immediately countering with a much stronger attack of her own but at least I can still deal damage now things don't get really bad until her second phase where she'll protect herself with this Elemental force field and with it I can't attack not with my fist because I don't have enough rage if you were thinking I'd be able to cheese this fight with the cross you'd be wrong because she outright blocks any and all damage from it I tried going back and getting some holy water which damages her but only deals one damage with each hit I tried just about everything waiting things out to see if her Shield will go away using post-hit invincibility to get inside and try attacking her nothing seems to work the only thing I haven't tried yet is relying on spells I try the Hellfire spell and it kinda works I'm not sure what it is at first I tried using it to teleport inside of her shield and attack and the first time it worked but I couldn't consistently replicate it after that however there is another attack I can do with this if I hold up while using this spell Hellfire will become dark Inferno that's the dark ball attack that Dracula uses and this one seems to work much better when it hits it deals 19 or 20 damage and most of the time it seems to hit but not always but it's my best attack at the moment after some more trial and error I think I have Maria figured out dark Inferno seems to hit more consistently when I'm closer to her it also seems like her AI isn't sure what to do when I'm in the process of using this attack so she just keeps backing up sometimes I'm able to get really close and have this attack hit multiple times for each ball but most of the time it just hits one or two times another thing I have to keep an eye on is how much MP I have this attack doesn't use up a lot of MP but using it over and over again does cause my meter to get low before too long and if I get to a point where I run out well that's basically another reset this is probably the hardest boss in the game and I gotta give igorashi credit this one definitely made me have to strategize and think about what I was doing there aren't any cheap exploits or tricks you can rely on the only way to do it is to just do it [Music] foreign [Music] that were worthy Maria gives us the holy glasses which allows us to see what's controlling Richter and ah yeah this is also a piece of equipment though this is where I should point out that I am aware of certain speed running tricks that allow you to bypass the Richter fight however the most common one in the Saturn version the room before where you fight Richter is a completely different load Zone in the PS1 version you could just walk right in but in the Saturn version it takes you to a different screen every other trick that should be possible despite this limitation I wasn't able to do and I can only assume that's because I'm playing the Saturn version there aren't really a lot of speed runs of the Saturn version to go by so if anyone who is more familiar with this version wants to correct me be my guest but for now I'm just gonna have to do this the legit way which means breaking the rules once again by equipping my holy glasses when you equip the holy glasses you'll see this floating orb around Richter which you need to attack without killing Richter I tried attacking it with my fists but it wasn't long before I just said screw it and use my cross and this automatically finished him foreign [Music] it reveals the dark priest shaft who was the one controlling Richter and it summons the next section of the game and we get the best item in the game the godspeed shoes which let me run faster and it's exclusive to the Saturn version Konami why have you not put this in any other version of the game anyway we can now explore the inverted Castle which as you probably expect is the same castle we just went through just upside down but also with new bosses enemies and items you might think that going through it would be a similar process to how it was in the first castle but it's really more of a last stretch of the game kind of area albeit a very big one there are all kinds of bonuses and overpowered weapons and abilities scattered all over the place like dirty clothing in a college dorm I mean in the quote-unquote secret room that's right there after you enter there are three life and heart bonuses now the first boss that I encounter happens to be Medusa which is found in the anti-chapel and is one of the mandatory bosses the this fight doesn't go too well at first once again I'm at a huge disadvantage due to my lack of range and her attacks are pretty strong however I can always try bunny hopping yeah the dive cake has been in Castlevania as early as Symphony of the Night but it's also kind of unpredictable as usual and most of the time it works but sometimes you'll just randomly take a hit and get knocked back even then it's only doing six damage which isn't as much as I would like so I just leave and challenge the Darkwing bat instead if you played Castlevania before it's the giant bat only this time it's fought much later than usual and it really just flies around and occasionally blows wind at you knocking you into the wall for some damage but I can easily avoid this with my Mist form I too find this boss kind of annoying just because of how narrow its hitbox is but you can get some good hits on it by bunny hopping while it's flying horizontally after a while I get hit by its blood sucking attack which takes away like 120 damage so after that I just use my Ultimate Weapon the cross and that does more than enough damage to finish it off [Music] and this gives me the Ring of Vlad the first of five parts of Dracula I need to collect before I can face him and this one gives me plus 10 intelligence I head back to the anti-chapel and challenge Medusa again only this time I bring along a secret weapon oh [Music] okay [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] and that gives me the heart of Vlad which makes me immune to the curse ailment man we just got here and we've already beaten two of the five mandatory bosses of this part but don't worry I will be doing as many optional bosses as I can I explore some more and well when I get to the inverted all Roxas quarters I start seeing karasu mods we've reached the point where we're now encountering bosses as normal enemies but they're still pretty easy to beat though the boss of this area is ahmadon II which is this game's version of the giant mummy I almost decided not to even include this boss in the video just because of how easily he gets incinerated by my holy water just watch oh foreign now the first of the optional bosses I want to fight are the Clones of the Castlevania 3 characters who you fight in the Coliseum and you fight them all at once when you start your first attempt at this fight it may look overwhelming at first but you'll soon learn that you don't have a whole lot to worry about you are fighting three bosses at once but they all pretty much just Spam the same attacks over and over the only one with a bit of variety is Trevor with his different sub weapons but either way once you take out one of them it gets much easier and when you've taken out two it's pretty much over Cipher is the one that I decide to focus on first her floating in the middle makes her vulnerable to bunny hopping this is also the first fight where I'm able to get any real use out of the Soul steel spill Yeah by doing a really complicated button combination you can do this move that hits every enemy on screen multiple times and restores 8 HP for each hit it hasn't really made enough of a difference in earlier bosses because it just wasn't doing enough damage or restoring enough HP to be used as anything other than a last-ditch attempt to bring back some HP during a boss fight but with three enemies on screen it works great and before too long Cipher gets taken out after that I try to focus on Trevor but Grant actually gets taken out by my familiar and then it's only a couple more hits before I take out Trevor foreign [Music] s for beating them but it's still a neat boss I then make my way to the necromancy lab where we fight another one of my favorite bosses the else above although despite being one of my favorites he's also one of the most frustrating now he may not seem so bad on paper he's a big Target he doesn't move and he doesn't even have any attacks of his own he instead summons fly Minions that fly after you and fun fact these flies are based off of BL Subs design from the dictionary infernal which is the same design that inspired Beelzebub from Megami tensei but the worst part of this fight is that there are many of these tiny worms that fall from his body they are extremely hard to see and while they only deal one damage if one makes contact with you you're getting poisoned which will both weaken your attacks and double any damage you take from the Flies it's guaranteed to happen at least once in every attempt and I'm not really in any position to be soft resetting every time because of how tough this boss is I swap for the ax and it seems to be doing better but remember what I said about this only being not so bad at first well I keep attacking the boss but once I start dealing enough damage his body parts start falling off which means now I have to keep jumping higher and higher every time I want to attack when it gets down to just his upper body I'm just barely able to hit him with my ax after double jumping but the worst part is that he starts summoning more flies to go after you they're not too hard to dodge but if I'm poisoned which I am throughout the majority of this fight I take over a hundred damage from them at the very least I can heal with soul steel but it doesn't work as well as you might think because the flies go down after just one hit there's really no easy way to go about this fight you just have to be careful be fast and be lucky and in a good attempt with all of these things you will be able to beat the boss oh now I haven't really been talking much about the enemies in the castle because I don't really think most of them are worth it however in the lab there's this one area with lesser demons walking around only now they're able to summon much more powerful enemies with their ability including other lesser demons which can summon other lesser demons and you'll get the idea I tried to see if I can nuke them all at once with soul steel and this happened peace at the reverse entrance I also have my first encounter with what is probably the worst enemy in the entire game the Blue Venus weeds these things may not look so tough but they're actually very strong and their projectiles can hit you from anywhere like they don't even have to be on screen one minute you see one and try to back away the next you're getting pelleted by these flying Thorns oh and the hell Garden isn't much better because now you have cave trolls that jump around and shoot lasers at you cave trolls shooting lasers really cave trolls are supposed to be big and slow and stupid did igarashi ever read The Hobbit now while there's no boss in this area there's the Alucard spear one of my favorite weapons mainly because of its huge range although I do find it funny that Alucard is using it incorrectly I head into the reverse Caverns which has even more of the Blue Venus weeds that kill me a lot and I make my way into the cave where I finally get to face the Grim Reaper and he can't take away my equipment here because I'm not using any but yeah out of all of death's incarnations throughout the Castlevania Series this is probably the easiest one to beat but it does still take me a few attempts the main reason this fight is so easy is because unlike his other incarnations death doesn't actually have an idle hitbox meaning you can't bump into him and you won't take any damage from touching him his spinning sides are pretty numerous but they can easily be countered with just about any attack and avoided especially with my power of missed ability I just keep tossing him around with my punch until he gets to his next phase where he'll summon two electric balls that home after you very slowly it doesn't really change much but after that he goes for his floating green skull attack these things travel much faster and closer to him making hitting him extremely difficult this is what gets me in my first few attempts but he'll stop doing this after a while even if you don't do any damage to him so I just stay in my Mist form until he starts going for his weird Boomerang attack thing this thing is somewhat tricky to avoid at first but again it doesn't take me long to figure it out I just wait for him to attack Dodge follow them back punch him and repeat I do get kind of low on health and I try to see if I can heal with soul steel but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to work I decide it's better to just fight with low HP than get carpal tunnel in my right hand so I attack and finish off his first form after getting past this form well you now have to deal with the second one but this one is actually even easier than the first as soon as he switches to this form I immediately use my cross which does some good damage but it doesn't kill getting close to him now is a little more dangerous than in the last fight because he now attacks with his claws but they're actually not too hard to dodge especially with the godspeed shoes however the way I go about this is by attacking then using the power of Miss to get through to the other side and I keep doing this until I'm able to take him out and get the eye of Vlad cool cool [Music] we pass into the floating catacombs where we have to fight gallimoth the toughest and arguably hardest boss in the inverted Castle this thing has 12 000 HP that's even more than Dracula and I'm also doing just one damage to him that is to his legs gallimoth actually has a weak spot on his head where I'm dealing 39 damage to him with each hit you might be wondering how I'm going to be able to consistently hit him there but there is an easy solution bunny hopping yeah it's actually a lot more effective here than it has been against any other boss the issue is finding the right time to hit him well I found that when gallimoth goes for his zapping attack where he reaches over with his little wand and shoots electricity at the ground if you super jump right as he starts this attack you'll be able to reach his head and while this attack is going on he can't do anything and because of how long this attack lasts I'm able to get around 15 hits each time so that's almost 600 damage with each successful chain of attacks but of course this relies on him actually going for this attack which he usually does but his other attacks are this one where he'll shoot some electric orbs at you one where he'll shoot a wave of electricity above you and one where he'll simply attack and all of these attacks can easily be avoided by changing into mist it's kind of annoying because sometimes he'll go for these attacks over and over again but it seems like there's a sweet spot that you can stand in that makes his ai go for the electric attack it does take a good number of attempts because I mean with how much HP he has it's kinda hard to go that far without making enough mistakes that cost you the game but if you get low on HP you do always have the option to go for soul steel which helps but this also drains your MP significantly and you don't really want to be caught with an empty MP gauge because that means no super jump and no mist form but once you do get through him and beat him you deserve a pat on the back [Music] all right the main reason I wanted to do this boss is because the reward at the end is the gas cloud Soul which makes the Mist form now deal damage yeah it's probably my favorite soul in the entire game because it allows me to do cheesy crap like this thank you [Music] and yes that creature was the last mandatory boss of the inverted Castle now that I have the tooth of Vlad not only do I get a plus 10 strength boost but I have all the necessary relics to fight Dracula just like before you go into the clock room the path will open and then and that little Cube Arena thing we have to fight shaft this one is pretty simple shaft just flies around and then goes for attacks that are sporadic at first but predictable once you've learned his attack pattern they don't do a lot of damage anyway you really just have to wait for him to stop at a good spot close to the ground so that you can land some punches if you do get low on HP Soul steel actually works amazingly for this battle because each of those little green orbs counts as an enemy you can't do any damage to them but the game still registers them as enemies and you can still get HP from them either way shaft doesn't have a lot of HP so just keep doing your thing until you get to Dracula foreign [Music] it's two mothers again this is without doubt one of the easiest fights against Dracula in the entire series at least as far as Castlevania final boss standards Go I mean for one thing you only have to fight one four the first is basically what shaft was but it's still kind of difficult at first you'll be in between Dracula's two giant Claws and his primary means of attack is by slashing you with them there's pretty much no animation before it starts it just comes out instantly it'll probably get you the first few times but once you get a feel for the pattern you'll be able to avoid it pretty easily well at least as easily as I can the way Dracula flashes when I punch him is kinda distracting it takes me a few attempts to get the pattern down but once I do I'm easily able to dodge them with Grace and other than this Dracula doesn't really have much in the way of attacks he'll summon one of his minions between his hands and crush them which I easily dodged with the Mist form then he'll go off screen and attack with some kind of exploding Magic Orb which I can also easily die then he'll attack with his three heads and use them to shoot triangles which I'm not exactly sure how I'm supposed to dodge them but I just do it the easy way and use my Mist form once he's done with that I change back and start punching him again and just repeat the whole process while Soul stealing whenever my HP gets low and yeah other than that there really isn't much to say Dracula doesn't have any secret moves or anything when his HP gets low he never changes patterns it's just one big endurance test to see if you can Outlast him and I don't really have to change strategies either I do have enough hearts for two cross attacks so when I start to get kinda low on HP I use my first and after that I don't even need to use my second one because my sword familiar lands the final blow and then we're done Lisa [Music] the castle disappears we all say our goodbyes and then the credits roll so is it possible to beat Symphony of the Night without equipment no it is not at least not on the Saturn because there is that part that requires the gold and silver rings to be equipped and then the holy glasses for Richter and then the spiky hallway that requires either a potion or the spike breaker armor the usual speed running tricks did not work for me in the Saturn version but like I said before if anyone more familiar with this version wants to prove me wrong you are more than welcome to and I could say that it is at least possible on the PS1 and PSP versions but yeah that is going to be it for this video I hope you all enjoyed and I do have one more Symphony of the Night video that I want to get out before Nocturne comes out but until then be sure to check out my links in the description consider leaving a Kofi donation of just three dollars be sure to rate comment and subscribe all that good stuff and until the next video I will see you all later [Music] my day's done sometimes I don't like the person

Channel: Nyarly

Views: 62,651

Keywords: Castlevania, Konami, Netflix, Hector, Belmont, Trevor, Simon, Richter, Soma, Cruz, III, NES, PS2, Xbox, Microsoft, Sony, Gaming, Video Games, RPG, JRPG, ARPG, Metroidvania, Metroid, Nintendo, Sypha, Belnades, Grant, Danasty, Alucard, Symphony of the Night, Anime, IGA, Igarashi, Koji, Bloodstained, Lenore, Carmilla, Aria, Dawn, of Sorrow, St. Germain, Persona, Megami Tensei, Atlus, Japan, Metal Gear, Hideo Kojima, Action, Dungeon, Vampires, Demons, Monsters, Castle, Smash, SSBU, Moon, Nocturne, Sega, Saturn, Genesis, Gameplay, Commentary

Id: YR5zWoZgoIw

Length: 48min 22sec (2902 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023