Air Date: November 18, 2018
In this video I begin the final stage in Castlevania 3 Dracula curse for the Nintendo entertainment system console. After entering my username and passcode, I proceed to complete the final stage of the game and arrive at Dracula with Sypha, who has to be my favorite of all the spirit characters.
The quickest way to arrive at Dracula and collect Sypha from the first stage is as follows. Take the lower path instead of going to the clock tower after beating the first stage. After completing the second stage take the upper path which shows the statue silhouettes. From here you will take the ghost ship and have a linear path through the rest of the stages arriving at Dracula.
Before the Dracula battle, I get Sypha the fireball magic from the candles right before Dracula, this candle is the second to the last and normally contains the dagger if you were Trevor. After collecting the items I like to descend back down the staircase to collect the re-spawned hearts on the lower level. From there I climb back up to collect the re-spawned hearts from the candle on the upper platform. You can complete this as many times as needed to power up your heart supply before the final battle.
When you engage Dracula, I found that the best way to deal with the flame pillars is to move around a lot so he trouble pinning you into a single block. This will cause the pillars to be positioned further apart and allow you time to move out of the way of the third large pillar. Normally you have enough time to strike his head two times before the arrival of the third pillar which can be dodged by moving to the right or left. I like to switch to Sypha for the first form. Her spells take out three bars of Dracula’s health each time you hit his head making the first form pretty easy.
The second form involves five faces of Dracula sharing the same body. They like to float around the room and spit liquid down at your character if you get underneath of them. I keep Sypha for this battle too. Once again her powerful magic will lay waste to the floating forms heads more quickly than Trevor could.
The final form looks like a huge dinosaur and the weak point would be his head. At this point I tend to switch to a defensive attack posture, staying at the lower left side of the screen. I like to wait at the end of the third block and launch a counterattack after dodging each of his beam attacks. He likes to summons elevating blocks from the floor tiles and you will be safe as long as you don’t venture more than three tiles from the left hand side. If you wait on the ground and move to the left after he shoots you will be able to avoid his beams easily, even if you only have three tiles to work with. Take your pick of character here. I normally switch to Trevor if he still have the axe from earlier in the stage. You can leap up without the floating platforms and land an axe hit on his head. The other method would be to continue with Sypha’s fireball magic. If you use her, leap on a plat form as it passes overhead and jump up to land a fireball blow. After this return to the ground to dodge another beam. After a few rounds with either of these approaches the final form will fall.
After defeating Dracula, I let the ending and the credits play through.