After trying several times to kill Dracula, I gave up. The final boss has two phases: one where he appears and disappears, and has three attacks – poison clouds, laser beam, and meteor strike, and after that he flies around a lot, then turns into a load of bats and a giant eyeball. The first phase was easy, especially if I used the DSS card combo that effectively grants you double energy. The second, however, was not. Dodging Dracula flying …
Damn that Devil thing! I either get past it unscathed and then have my HP demolished by the Dark Armours, or the thing kills me. Thankfully, I found a fantastic way of killing Hugh without me losing much energy at all – shoot a load of crucifixes away from him, then jump over him and them as they come back, they all pass though Hugh and Super Damage ensues. Aces. So after a couple of attempts with this tactic, he …
I’m getting near the end now. I can smell it. That, and I’ve uncovered more than 80% of the map and have only one “magic power” left to obtain. Killed Camilla, who was actually very easy once I took my time about it and actually dodged her attacks rather than blindly trying to whip her. My axes proved very useful too. My power-up gained was Roc’s Feather (isn’t that Link’s power-up? Hmm…) which lets me jump very high indeed. Then …
Off I went to the bit where the acid water was, and as expected, it became normal water again. I then worked my way through quite a few lizardmen, ice women things, and some witches, before finding a huge ice demon thing which killed me. So I tried again, took a slightly different route, and found a save point. Just past that, was the next boss – Camilla (who is the woman right at the start of the game who …
Decided to try and level up a few times before attempting Death again, and also found some Chain Mail (which was better than my armour at the time), and realised that equipping two Cursed Rings would boost my strength and defense hugely (although my luck would drop – not important for a boss fight though, I don’t think). I also found a HP Max upgrade too, which would help. It still took me five or so goes to kill Death, …
Aha! I think the rivers of acid bit was the wrong route to take, as I found another way to go today, into some sort of warehouse or something. And there, so my dismay, I found Irritating and Unnecessary Gaming Cliche #2 – crate puzzles. GAH! How many games must people RUIN with crate puzzles? And why are they always actually crates? Surely other things could be used instead? Broken Sword 3 and Lost in Blue both had game-almost-breaking crate …
Dragons SLAIN! Hurrah! I found a pattern I could stick to that made them much easier to kill and dodge, and so they were soon dead. And then it was off on another wander around the castle opening areas I couldn’t previously get to, since I can now push big crates out of the way. Found some more HP/MP/heart upgrades, and then wandered into an area full of Ice Armour baddies and some sort of acid water. Eurgh.
Spent ages trying to get through the moths-and-triffids area, and found it pretty hard going. Retreated instead, and worked my way around areas of the castle trying to find new areas (which I didn’t really manage), and secret rooms leading to power-ups (of which I found loads). My heart, HP and MP maximum levels were then somewhat higher than previously, allowing me to get through the moths to another save point. I then wandered around to bump my level up …
After what seemed like ages, I finally found another boss – a giant ram’s head thing that threw ghost faces and stuff at me. He was really easy to kill though, as I had my magic fireballs-that-spin-round-me on (which killed most of the projectiles before they hit me), leaving me to just jump-whip his head over and over. Once dead, I could hit a switch which I think has now made new pathways available elsewhere on the map. No new …
I’ve just realised that this game has an ID in my games database of “1337”. Hilarious. Anyway, I’ve now opened up what seems to be a huge portion of the map. I’m getting very lost still, trying every dead end with each new power-up I get. My most recent one is wall-jump, and with it I’ve got into an area full of were-bears and hippo things and all sorts of baddies that take loads of hits. I’ve found three teleporters …
I killed the puma boss thing without much difficulty on my first attempt today. I’d levelled up a few times first, however, and had picked up some better armour and a couple of cards (which when combined gave me a magic power that made my whip do more damage), all of which helped a lot. I then wandered round for a while trying to find where I needed to go next, which turned out to be pretty obvious as it …
Since I’m limited to handheld consoles at the moment (I’m at relatives for Christmas), I’m using this opportunity to actually start some games I’ve had for a while but not touched yet. See also Contact on the DS from earlier today. Anyway. Since I have all three GBA Castlevania games, this is the one to start with. When it came out, people complained it was virtually impossible to play on the non-lit-screen original GBA. No such problems with the super-bright …
Normal Mode is too hard. This is now a Fact. As such, I can’t make it past level 14, so I’ve knocked the difficulty down to Easy (because I’m a coward) and managed to get to 23. I’d have managed much further, but the second Guardians level wiped out virtually all my lives, and all of my continues. I wish I knew what all the little potion things do. I know the shield ones give you, uh, shielding, but the …
Wow. This is my 100th GBA game, which is a milestone in itself, but it’s also the first non-licenced, home made cartridge-based game I’ve ever bought! Qwak is a remake (or port, or mix of the two – I’m not entirely certain) of the Amiga game of the same name. The GBA version is done by the original author too, so you can be sure it’s authentic! I don’t have the Amiga version, and I don’t recall playing it either, …