After killing another boss, I realised I had four of the five parts of Vlad already, meaning I was getting close to completing the game. However, it took me ages to figure out where the final piece was – and it turned out it was being held by Death in the Reverse Caverns area of the map.
I was expecting him to be hard, but in fact, since I’d just killed another Doppleganger of me which led me to a Dark Sword (which is really powerful against Dark-type enemies), Death died pretty quickly. My pet sword actualy finished off his second form on it’s own, which was quite good. In fact, my sword is getting very good now, actually aiming for baddies properly most of the time instead of randomly spinning in empty spaces on the screen.
With all Vlad’s bits, it was back to the upside-down big clock thing, and there was Shaft again. Who died so quick I hardly got a chance to see his attack pattern (mainly due to my sword pet again, actually). Then… Dracula himself. After a cringe-worthy bit of dialogue (complete with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and punctuation faux pas), I got to attack him.
He had piles of HP, and I didn’t have a crucifix on me to help. However, I did have some “resist Dark” potions, and a couple of smart-bomb type weapons. Then it was just a case of standing underneath him chucking axes up into his face(s). Luckily, since he filled almost the entire screen, my sword pet could get a load of hits in almost anywhere it span, so it wasn’t long before Dracula was dead and the dialogue got worse (in every respect). Finally – the credits! With spelling mistakes 🙂
So that’s another Castlevania game complete. I was hoping for an achievement for completing it (but no), and I didn’t unlock Richter Mode either, so I suspect I haven’t explored enough of the castle yet.
