Game:

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (1993)

Duration: 10:58

2,240 views

14

Wait, what? Maria, your commentary on the stages in their titles are getting less and less coherent by the stage! ...well, sorta... "The Last Divergence" is really anything but, and this one... just who is the intended target of the phrase? Who's atop what brethren?! ...I guess, knowing the content of this stage and Maria's capacity for mayhem upon the forces of evil, it clearly refers to the bad guys being slain and added to the re-dead undead in a pile. (Works for me!)

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Stage 4, Torture Chamber: Atop the Corpses of Thy Brethren

You know what's weird? This stage is so sprawling compared to most others and has so many obvious alternate paths... but it doesn't seem to actually have its true alternate path hidden in any of that noise? What's the deal with that?!

In light of this, I'd still recommend quite strongly that you take the path Richter followed last time, especially with the detour that takes him to a 1up... the path we see here instead might be shorter, but it's riddled with ridiculous volumes of spikes and swarming Fleamen. You can skip out on those by NOT pressing the obvious trap buttons because I feel compelled to press any button on the way so we can see what they do.

Speaking of which... let's see... button, button, who's got the button? Well, let's see here: there's one covered by the unusually immobile Fleaman that somehow doesn't activate the switch even if he's clearly depressing it with his body mass. There's also one that causes that spiked block to ram into the wall. We've got pressure plates that summon endless swarms of Fleamen from somewhere unknown through the ceiling, too. Curiously and totally unintuitively, there's also switches prior to a White Dragon that control what flavor moneybags it drops.

Besides that, Maria is clearly gifted to tackle this route without much trouble and even further shortening certain sections because she's got a cheating second jump. It's almost like I knew this might happen... as if I was familiar with this game from having played it "a little" too much... very strange indeed!

Now, I say most of the stages have reasonable cues as to where their secrets lie... this one... just... what? It's the equivalent of finding a gobbet of wall-meat, but instead it's the entire basis for advancing to a different path... I'm not sure I approve, but I'm also not sure if I could've personally handled this stage being any lengthier or more complex... and that's one of the things I really like about this game!

Anyway, you'd better be up for a serious fight on your way through the newly-established path... by completely destroying an entire wall, which, based on what we know is upstairs, was almost certainly load-bearing. (Sorry, Dullahan!)

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Carmilla (and Laura)

(What's up with the intense lime green of this boss antechamber, anyway?)

Hey, cool! This one's like... I guess the earliest distillation of all the unclear and offscreen and downright vague appearances (or lack thereof) by Carmilla, one of Dracula's oft-recurring entourage, albeit one with a sketchier track record as to whether or not she'd make an appearance. Usually she'd be some vague reference... maybe a ceramic mask crying "Bloody Tears"... I don't think the more... graphic depictions of her... other character assets--aspects (I meant aspects!) had become the norm yet...

And speaking of her... uh... the now-traditional form Carmilla takes is... a naked woman riding a skull. Yes. That's... ... ...uh... sure. (Castlevania Judgment's wardrobe doesn't seem so bad by comparison now, does it?) She also employs the constant rapid flash pseudo-transparency effect that this game is so fond of, so I don't know how it'll all wash out on YouTube in the end...

Carmilla's attacks are indeed bloody tears... that explode... while she patrols the skies on her skull ride. If you touch her, you're hit with the Curse status effect, which is really not a good thing to have when you need to get away from falling parabolic-path explosions.

This is actually a slightly confusing dual boss. Once you attack Carmilla, the seemingly random woman (Laura) in the dress walks around, trying to lock lips on any hunter she finds. If she catches you, you're held in place and hearts are drained continuously.

To further confuse matters, Laura is totally immune to attack at this time, so you might as well just stay away from her while you deal with Carmilla. Once her master goes down, though, you'll be left with some small bit of the boss life bar undiminished, and this is your cue to turn your sights on Laura... she sheds her dress and reveals herself to be a limber martial gymnast... in a cross between a catsuit and bondage gear... with... cat ears? She's not too tricky to deal with, just don't be greedy trying to get extra hits on her and it'll be fine.

Here we see Suzaku's Item Crash, the final of Maria's mythical beasts put to full power... it's surprisingly powerful, but self-explanatorily generic screenwide damage.

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