Game:

Castlevania: Dracula X (1995)

Duration: 7:51

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51

Okay... so... we need to save Annet somehow... but... I don't know. Did anybody see anything particularly strongly indicative of an unturned stone along the way?

It's not as though we don't have any clues or direction, however... at the very least, we know it would most probably be somewhere between Maria telling us that Annet is somewhere else and seeing Annet in a place where we apparently can't rescue her anyway.

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Stage 5'

Yep, the secret stage with only pain and suffering to offer us in return for all our hard work! I mean, it is suspiciously devoid of anything else of interest, after all... no secret routes, no way to get there unless we save Maria first, and no apparent positive result added to our progress towards winning the game, since it just unceremoniously drops us off at Stage 6 just the same as we would otherwise have reached with considerably less effort if we'd gone to Stage 5 instead.

In particular, we cast our suspiciousness-seeking eyes upon the room immediately following the one that fills up with water as we attempt to navigate it... you know, a room where there's absolutely nothing trying to kill us from a stage that does everything in its power to do so everywhere else. There's also a platform under the water with no apparent purpose, just in case that kind of thing happens to beckon for your attention and a non-background water source flowing constantly into the room below that isn't also some manner of platforming obstacle. If you whip it, you can destroy its opening and cease the flow of water... and without that flow, the whole room drains! (Yeah, sure... that's how these things work.)

At the bottom of a twisted "staircase" that's far less dangerous than it appears, we find a chamber.

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Hey, it's Annet! ... ... ...how? This room was totally underwater, has no door, and... I mean... just... what?! Oh... never mind... I just... I can't... whatever! We've found her! ... ... ...I care even less how she plans to make her way out than I do in Maria's case. (At least Richter cared enough in Rondo of Blood to assure his rescued maidens that the way back had been cleared... whether or not we believe THAT version either...

Okay, so that's that! We've saved both the damsels declared to be in distress.

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Stage 6: Death

Your "reward" for saving Annet is an alternate boss to Stage 6... it's Death! Man, he's really been dragging his old bones this time around rather than being proactively seeking Richter's demise.

This boss fight is completely copy and pasted from some of the resources for the very same fight found in Rondo of Blood, even when Death's very entrance to the scene is in complete defiance to a visual sense of scale and distance!

The bigger problem, much like the Carmilla-Shaft battle shoehorning... this place is just way too narrow a space! It's doable, obviously, but it takes a lot away from the originals.

Death's approach vectors in those lazy circles of his are far more problematic because of the tighter space and thus the greater potential for him to sweep in far more vertically than before... plus, his contact damage now adds the ever-pleasant experience of the Curse status ailment. Thankfully, he seems to have cut back on his random sickle generation... and the ones that DO appear are slow and seem to have really bad aim. Or no aim... it's hard to tell.

The second phase of the fight from Rondo also returns, mercifully without the transitional skull-shooting segment in between... but it too suffers from the area being too narrow. If you'll recall, striking Death forces a backstep in response... and if he got backed all the way to the edge of the rigging on which you stood, it would prompt a spinning jump attack. Now that edge is much closer and you have no room to allow for such a reprisal... so your options are either to wait for him to inch back towards you so that you won't trigger this behavior... or... we can abuse the subweapon the antechamber graciously provided for us.

The Dagger's Item Crash isn't one that gets a lot of use, because it keeps you locked in place so long and very rarely will there be a target that can sustain this much damage without dying or avoiding all but the start of the assault. In this case, we actually know that our quarry will be moving straight into the line of fire, Richter needs a healthy dose of invincibility, and Death will slowly edge back from taking damage. Win-win-win. (It's... like they KNEW!) This also incidentally deals with this particular form's tactic of negating subweapon attacks and sending projectiles of his own back at Richter... you'll still be invulnerable while throwing Daggers even if he's not too distracted to counter at all!

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Stage 7: Dracula

No more foolishness, only axes... although I find it interesting how the execution of an Item Crash interacts with Dracula's death throes and the stage-ending orb... thingy.

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And that's all! For real! No more Dracula X! (Neat!)

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