After having worked your way up through the castle entrance and the adjacent dungeon, you reach the second of three blocks of Castlevania only to find yourself… outside? With a forest in the background?

Block 9 of Dracula’s Curse is a strange one in terms of aesthetics. Although the level design corresponds neatly to the course charted on the in-game map — you’re ascending from the ground level of the castle to its highest point, where Dracula waits — it lacks a cohesive visual identity of its own and does strange things… like featuring a forest and a waterfall in the middle of a towering castle.

But this reflects the nature of the level’s play mechanics. In Block 9, all the chickens come home to roost. There’s nothing new here; instead, it features every notable trick and trap of the previous stages in what amounts to one of those Remix stages in Rhythm Heaven. The game doesn’t dwell on any one hazard for long, instead simply challenging you to survive one before escorting you to the next. A long memory and quick reflexes prove to be your greatest asset here: The memory to recall how these various devices worked the first time around, and the reflexes to switch mental gears as necessary.

So no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that there’s a forest grove in the middle of the castle, but you don’t really have time to stress about it as Harpies immediately begin bombarding you with Flea Men once you reach the second screen of Block 9-01.

Beyond that, you face a climb that combines threats from both Sypha and Alucard’s route. So I amend what I said before: Technically, this stage doesn’t offer new dangers into the mix… but since you can only see one route or another in your initial through the adventure, this is the first time you’ll be dealing with some of these elements. In other words, memory, reflexes, and adaptability all come into play here.

The first leg of Block 9-02 features the rising and falling spike hazards of the catacombs route with the background detail of a waterfall. The waterfall is simply a visual detail for the moment, but it’ll come into play later.

Beyond the spikes you begin to climb… and the climb combines the deadliest bits of the ascent up Block 5′s tower on Sypha’s path in a single sequence. The long staircases flanked by Dragon Cannons you’ll remember from before, placed just far enough back that you really have to reach to take them down and climb cautiously to prevent intersecting their field of fire. However, this sequence isn’t content to leave it at that; it also throws the swooping gargoyles from later in Block 5 into the mix as well. Previously, these enemies appeared separately, but here they collaborate to make your life hell. Dodging the widening sine path of the gargoyles while slowly making your way up the stairs would be difficult enough without the need to avoid being pelted by fire, but the two challenges in tandem make for a brutal climb.

Still, it’s not unfair. Because both sets of foes work on timers and obey patterns, you can find safe spots and dodge as needed. But you need to pay perfect attention not only to the enemies’ behavior, but also to your movement and how the slope of the stairs causes you to interact with their actions. You need to think two moves ahead and act almost like a mind-reader so that your character’s sluggish movement can keep up.

Block 9-03 brings back another familiar hazard from Sypha’s path: Ratchet scrolling. This time, you’re beset by armored Skeletons wielding swords (which act quickly to block your movements) as well as those nigh-invulnerable fuzzball things that circle the blocks and force you to be mindful of your footing as you climb. Again, if Sypha is lucky enough to have an ice spellbook, this sequence can be fairly trivial; otherwise, though, it’s tough. The layout is too confined to allow Alucard to fly to safety (and the auto-scrolling hampers that approach anyway), while the confined sides and patrolling fuzz-things make Grant’s evasion tactics risky at best.

At the tower’s peak, you face yet another challenge from Sypha’s route: A spillway flooded by rushing water. This one is much trickier than the aqueduct in Block 6-0B, though. It consists of two tiers, forcing you to make your way left across the lower level then climbing to double back across the top. And since water falls off either side of each tier, that means you have to contend with two falling streams on the lower level — which in turn means that the direction of the water’s flow changes three times as you march left. Meanwhile, you’re still beset by Fish Men and crows, because this is the next to last block of the game and why should they go easy on you?

And, should you survive the watery portion of Block 9-04, the final leg of the stage reprises a hazard from Alucard’s route: A length of spinning floor tiles (several of which are lined on the lower side by spikes) patrolled by Medusa Heads. Below, nothingness spans the entire length of the unstable floor. There’s no more mercy left in this game’s design. You’ve had your training wheels, and now it’s time to prove you can get through without a safety net.

Your reward for surviving this hell is one of the toughest fights in the game: The Doppelganger. This wraith fights with the same capabilities as you — more, actually, since you take damage from colliding with it but not the other way around. The Doppelganger transforms to resemble whichever hero you’re currently controlling and will instantly shift if you swap. Its whip range is as long as Trevor’s, it can use subweapons, it can jump and run the same as everyone.

The one saving grace here is the fact that the Doppelganger’s endurance isn’t as high as most other bosses, so it suffers damage pretty hard. That’s something, I suppose.

Of course, Sypha can pretty easily cheese it with the lightning spell, since it favors the fire book when you switch to her for whatever reason. Sometimes playing as Sypha to beat the bosses feel like cheating, but in this case I don’t think anyone could blame you for not wanting to die pitifully against a brutally difficult boss, forcing you to make your way through the double waterfalls and unstable hallway a second (or third, or fifth, or…) time.

Regardless of which route you selected to take through the core of Castlevania III, all roads eventually converge at the beginning of Block 8: Castlevania itself. And the scenery should look very familiar indeed.

Yes, it’s Stage 1 of the original game, reproduced in wonderfully faithful form — all the way down to the music and enemies, in fact. It’s not just a simple copy-and-paste reuse of resources, though. As befits a trip through the castle entrance in a prequel set hundreds of years before Simon’s journey, the area feels less worn now. The broken, headless statues from the first game now stand whole, secure in alcoves lining the room. The raised platforms that used to play host to a reclining attack panther for no good reason have a purpose now: They’re the landing of a stairway that leads to the upper levels. Rather than march forward through the Fish Men’s basement and beyond, you ascend much more quickly to Dracula’s lair.

Fittingly, Block 8 feels like a combination of the first and fifth levels Castlevania. The marble entry chamber connects to a grim dungeon through a linking corridor beneath which rows of spikes skewer human skulls.

The familiar zombies and bats of Block 8-01 begin to recede in favor of new foes as you enter Block 8-02: The spiders that showed up frequently throughout Alucard’s route, and the Axe Knights that dominated the dungeons of Castlevania. Skeletons of all stripes appear. And while the color scheme remains a warm brown and grey compared to these equivalent stages in the first game, make no mistake: This is very much the same essential territory, a cross between a dungeon and an armory.

Fittingly, it doesn’t really matter which companion you’re traveling with at this point. This is classic Castlevania fare, and as such the warrior best suited to the task is Trevor. (Yes, the screens here — provided by VG Museum — contradict this claim, but trust me on this one.) There are no fussy platforming sequences, alternate routes, no need for fancy magic spells. As you enter the final stretch, Dracula’s Curse pauses for a moment to take you back to the basics. If you’ve taken Alucard’s route to get here, this will undoubtedly come as a tremendous relief in the wake of the inhumanity of Block 7. Either way, though, this stage serves as a sort of sorbet between the perils that have come before and the gauntlet of the final obstacles.

It’s only when you reach Block 8-03 that the level starts playing for keeps — and even then, it’s not entirely unkind. It actually hands you a Boomerang and a double weapon multiplier right at the outset: Essential tools for the boss ahead. Of course, it can be a bit tricky to hang onto these items all the way to the boss, but the effort pays off.

The last portion of Block 8 sends you over a bridge that begins collapsing behind you once you venture onto it. You’ve dealt with this mechanic before if you came over through Sypha’s route, but fittingly this permutation proves to be far more dangerous than the one featured in Block 6-0D. There, you could simply fall in with the game’s natural rhythms (dashing forward as quickly as possible and jumping to take out the Fish Men in midair) and never have to worry about succumbing to the bridge’s collapse. Not so here: Patrolling the middle of the bridge is an Armored Knight, who meanders slowly, has too tall a hitbox to leap safely, and requires multiple hits to clear out of the way. You’ll have to pause in your panicked advance in order to destroy this obstacle, which allows ample time for the tumbling bridge (which falls very slightly faster than you walk) to catch up with you.

Of course, you can work around this with a companion: Grant can clear the knight with a jump, Sypha can blast it with one shot of the flame spell, and Alucard can do his usual and just fly over it. Still, coming up with this strategy on the fly can be tough when you have a nerve-wracking chasm of instant death creeping up on your heels. It’s a fair but demanding wrinkle on a familiar hazard and makes great use of the hero-change mechanic.

At the end of it all awaits — not surprisingly, given the nature of the middle portion of the block — none other than Death. He’s in much better form than in Simon’s Quest, behaving much more like his old self rather than the toothless wraith of the second game.  He bobs and weaves about the room, not behaving aggressively, exactly, but perfectly happy to crowd your protagonist for some hardcore collision damage. Meanwhile, his scythes spin through the air — four at a time now rather than the trios from before! — orienting themselves on your position at the moment they materialize and making a beeline for that point.

Despite these factors, this encounter with Death feels less overwhelming than in Castlevania. In large part, I think this is because he and his scythes move more slowly than before, giving you a little more time to react. Also of note is the fact that the raised central platform of Castlevania’s Death battle has been abolished, with a handful of suspended blocks lining the chamber but a lower central floor. This makes more of a difference than you might think, because it gives you a full character’s height of extra space with which to dodge the Grim Reaper. It also means there’s more space for Death to move through, meaning he’s less likely to want to occupy the same space you’re in. With more time to react and more room in which to do it, this fight can be tough… but it’s nowhere near the insane beatdown the first game delivered.

That being said, as of Block 8 enemy damage values hit their max for the game, leaving you very little room for error as every character goes down for the count in four hits.

Oh, but you didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? Have you learned nothing about this game?

After reprising the single most difficult fight in Castlevania, Dracula’s Curse then turns around by immediately introducing a second form for Death. I can’t imagine that anyone in the world took down the Grim Reaper in the first game and though, “If only this battle had another phase!” And yet here we are.

The good news is that Death II is almost laughably easy. He drifts across the screen from right to left, describing a series of clockwise loops as he moves. This is about all he does, though. Once per loop, he’ll spit a scythe at you — but only one, and with plenty of telegraphing. There’s really no excuse to take any sort of damage here; if you managed to hang onto the Boomerang and multiplier, this fight is a joke.

Savor that sensation, though. The road ahead can be quite demoralizing.

Here we are at last, at the end of Alucard’s route — and, by tragic happenstance, the worst stage in the game. Block 7 on the “main” route has the unfortunate distinction of being a genuinely poor piece of game design, entirely reliant on tedious waiting, extended pattern memorization, and flawless traversal of gimmicky stage mechanics. It also lacks any new or interesting mechanical or visual elements, consisting of retread tiles from the previous catacomb stages as well as the falling-object features seen in Blocks 5 and 6.

It actually starts out quite strong. The second screen of the stage features this interesting application of the block-dissolving acid drops from before. Instead of eating away the blocks that comprise your route, here they create your path forward. They also unleash a threat in the form of the Flea Man above, who is probably out of range of most of your weapons. When the acid breaks through its chamber, it’ll drop down and attack. It create a welcome sense of tension in an otherwise passive sequence. Yes, you have to stand there and wait for the acid to work its magic, but you can’t afford to just stand around, because at some point the Flea Man is going to drop down and leave you a very short window in which to react.

Of course, you can totally just kill the one on the right immediately.

Alas, it starts to go downhill from here. Which is strange, seeing as the motif of this stage involves climbing upward.

Block 7-02 isn’t too bad. It even shows a touch of classic Castlevania architectural consistency with a series of blocks suspended by cables from timbers shoring up the caverns. The bulk of this block takes place in the foundations and along the cliff face outside of the castle (if you check the map, a large portion of the structure sits on a rocky overhang above the lake), and the first half of the block mostly involves traveling through the interior sections.

The Gargoyles seen elsewhere in Sypha’s ratcheting tower appear for the first time in this route, used in a very different way. When we saw them before, they were sent to harass you as you slowly made your way up stairs; in this instance, though, you’re moving across a horizontal space, and their chaotic sine wave pattern forces you to time your movement to avoid being clobbered from an awkward angle.

At the end of Block 7-04, you face off against another instance of the bat boss you fought at the end of Alucard’s Block 4 — the only instance in the entire game of the same boss showing up twice along the same route. It’s much easier this time around, though, as you have much more room in which to maneuver. You can basically stand by the door to the lower right and chuck axes for a no-sweat victory.

Of course, it’s probably for the best that the bat is so easily defeated, because at this point you’re unfortunately only halfway through the stage — and this has been the easy half.

Here’s where Route 7 goes badly off the rails. Outside the castle, the only way to ascend the lakefront cliff is to climb blocks. This is a reprise of the falling blocks that appeared in Block 5, except here it’s not an obstacle but rather the only way to advance. The use of falling blocks creating a staircase actually showed up slightly earlier in this block as you needed to let blocks drop to give you a foot path to a door high on the left side of the screen, but here it’s taken to an unfortunate extreme.

The problem with this sequence is that it’s incredibly protracted — it takes a couple of minutes for enough blocks to drop to let you reach the exit above. In that time, the blocks fall in a pattern; they’re not random, but there’s practically zero time to move out of the way once a block appears on-screen. So you’re forced to memorize the pattern and respond to it, over and over again, until you finally reach the top. It’s a long, tedious process fraught with room for error yet which offers very little clemency.

You can of course totally breeze past it by turning into Alucard and flying to the top, but that assumes you’ve chosen Alucard as your companion rather than sticking with Grant, going it alone with Trevor, or doing a second-quest runthrough with Sypha (in which case there’s even less room for error given the higher damage you suffer from being hit by a block the second time around). The fact that the only way to make this sequence not a toilsome chore is to rely on an optional character seems like a huge design misstep. It might not even be entirely terrible if this stage had been one of the optional spurs of Alucard’s Block 6 — if you could take on either this level or the ruins, say — but unfortunately it’s a mandatory challenge regardless of which path you take on this route.

The next sequence would be maddeningly difficult under other circumstance, but after the block climbing episode it actually comes off as a bit of a relief for its reliance on old-fashioned mechanics. You ride a series of moving platforms across open chasms, after which you have to traverse a lengthy expanse of flip traps while being harassed by Medusa Heads. This might actually be the redeeming feature of this stage; you’ll remember the Medusa Head and flip trap combination from the very first block, but here it lacks anything like clemency. There’s only a tiny span in which you can accidentally drop through a spinning trap without plunging to your death… and several of the blocks flip over to create spike hazards, so even if you don’t fall you’re boned regardless.

Theoretically, you could also bypass this with Alucard, but the tight sine pattern of the Medusa Heads combined with the abundance of spikes about the area make even the bat trick a dangerous proposition.

Finally, the last section of Block 7 ends with another auto-scrolling sequence filled not only with durable foes and gargoyles and crumbling blocks. There’s much less room for error here than in any previous tower ascent.

And, at the end of it all you have to face the same three-part spirit boss gauntlet that ends Sypha’s route. This part really shows the relative boss-crushing capabilities of Trevor’s companions. The gauntlet was total cake with Sypha and, say, the lightning spell; here, it’s downright demoralizing in its difficulty. There’s no easy solution unless you’ve somehow managed to make it this far with a triple boomerang or holy water or something (as in the image) — and even then you only have one shot at it, because the 7-07 tower climb doesn’t offer enough goodies to beef up Trevor’s crew to that level again. And, of course, if you don’t manage to make it all the way through the rough going of the auto-tower and three bosses in a row, you’ll run out of lives and have to do this entire block all over again.

Persevere, however, and you’ve completed Alucard’s route. You’re in Castlevania itself, and you can rest assured knowing that while the road ahead is no cakewalk, nothing to come compares to the hair-pullingly horrendous design of the gauntlet you’ve just completed. Hallelujah.

If you elected to take the lower route after recruiting (or not) Alucard, you’ll skip entirely over Block 5-07 and the castle foundations, instead traveling a roundabout course that takes you through a series of partially submerged Roman-era ruins at the outskirts of the castle.

The idea of crumbling ruins outside of and predating Dracula’s own castle seems like a nice nod to history (Romania having been conquered by the Roman Empire, hence the name), though I honestly don’t know enough about the region to say with any certainty that the Romans constructed their classical, Greek-inspired marble structures around such a relatively remote province. I’m guessing no, but maybe it doesn’t matter. More likely the developers were working from a different source of inspiration entirely:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, to which the 8-bit Castlevania games bear some suspiciously potent similarities. The submerged Roman-era castle ruins could simply be a coincidence, but if you look back at some of the scenery in Block 1 you’ll notice that the town’s background featured a lot of those detached arches in the background. In any case, it lets the mind wander in interesting directions.

As for the stage itself, it’s a doozy — a harshly challenging stage with a completely unique format that will actively conspire to destroy your happiness. If ever a level would tempt you to abuse the HELP ME code (enter your name as HELP ME at the beginning of the game and you’ll have 10 lives per credit instead of three), this would be it.

The theme of this level is Fish Men, bats, and Skeleton Dragons. It’s a grueling combination: Fish Men and bats spawn infinitely, so there’s never really a chance to stop and rest as a new threat is constantly popping up throughout the level, endlessly threatening to pop you backward into the water through the uneven surfaces… many of which force you to advance at a breathless pace lest they crumble beneath you. The few spots where you can catch a breather are guarded by Skeleton Dragons that bob and weave to evade your attacks while retorting with fireballs that sometimes fly just outside your attack range but still manage to intersect Trevor’s hit box.

Even skipping the action with Alucard in bat form (or trying to climb around hazards with Grant) can be more trouble than it’s worth, since the constant barrage of foes and projectiles span the entire height of the screen and are more likely than not to bump into your friend the bat.

After traversing entirely too much hazardous ground and fighting a bunch of Skeleton Dragons, you arrive at an area where the color scheme changes. This means “you have reached the boss.” Of course, you have to fight one more anchored dragon first, because nothing in this game can be that easy.

And it turns out all those Skeleton Dragons were building up to something: The granddaddy of the species, which appears from behind you and promptly pits you against one of the most difficult battles in the game.

Unlike its lessers, the Skeleton Dragon King is not anchored to the scenery. Instead, it drifts freely about the arena, and until you learn how to lead it, its wide, arcing movements can be a source of intense frustration. There’s very little safe ground in this fight, and the Dragon King tends to follow you around. If you go about this battle wrong, you’re very likely to cause it to take a trajectory that causes it to pass through every single point of safe ground, cornering you before flinging you into a pit. With other bosses, you’ve had the option of leading them toward high ground then jumping over them to safety, but that’s not possible here; the Dragon King’s spine is so long that you can’t actually jump over it with either Grant or Trevor. If you act quickly enough, you can switch to Alucard’s bat form and dash to safety, but even that is no guarantee of success.

The trick to this battle is to come equipped with a good subweapon and learn how to manipulate the Dragon King’s movements. It’s kind of like being a matador, except you’re facing an undead creature of mythology over an open chasm rather than, you know, an angry cow. Ideally, you can get the Dragon King locked into a circular pattern in which it simply spins around you on the center platform, allowing you to smash its face (its only vulnerable point) repeatedly as it follows the same path to its doom. This tactic isn’t without its risks, though; if it decides to break from the loop, it’ll hit you right into the gaps on either side of the center space and you will totally die.

To make matters worse, you can’t actually defeat the Dragon King here. Once you reduce it to one-third of its health, it flees from battle, smashing through some sort of dam or aqueduct above in its hurry to preserve its un-life, which causes the entire stage to flood. You’re forced to escape the ruins before they become a watery grave.

Block 6-04 may be the most anxiety-inducing stage in Castlevania III. You’re probably down a few lives after the incredibly difficult route to the Skeleton Dragon King followed by one of the trickiest fights in the game, the area is slowly but steadily flooding, bats and Fish Men are popping up all over the place, and the few platforms available to travel on begin to crumble as soon as you set foot on them.

There’s a particularly tricky part where you have to jump down from a high platform onto one below where Fish Men like to set up shop. It’s a small space you’re trying to reach, which means there’s very little margin for error in your landing if you want to hit whatever enemies have landed there without being flung back into the water. But you can’t afford to stand and wait for them to disappear, because the blocks above will only hold for a few seconds before crumbling away.

Really, the best course of action here is to make a mad dash for it and simply try to reach the end, collecting only what you absolutely need (namely, two whip upgrades for Trevor). The innate rhythms of Castlevania mean that if you simply go at the game’s natural pace you’ll stay ahead of the enemies, quite likely preventing any of them from appearing on that tricky lower platform midway through in the process. And if you get through quickly enough you might just have enough time to collect the 1UP at the far end of the stage.

Climbing to the next screen mercifully counts as reaching a new stage; despite the lack of hard demarcation, the second portion of the post-boss escape registers as Block 6-05, meaning you don’t have to run the full escape gauntlet again if you die. That being said, this area offers more of the same, albeit in a less nerve-wracking form.

And, at the end, you face off against the remains of the boss. He’s much easier here, as you can stick to the left quite safely. Even though the Dragon King reappears from the left, the same momentary invulnerability that keeps you from inflicting damage on him as he comes onto the screen also keeps him from hurting you if your sprites overlap while he comes forth. He sheds vertebrae as you attack him, meaning he’s become shorter and therefore easier to avoid over the course of your two battles. The real challenge here is dusting him before the water rises and covers the middle platforms where the Stage Crystal appears to mark your victory.

Your reward for victory is the satisfaction of being able to breath easily after one of the most devastatingly difficult levels in the game. From here, the two paths of the Alucard route converge, leading you into the lower castle and within sight of the final common gauntlet shared by all paths through the game.

Now that we’ve collected the whole Pokémon assortment of companion characters in Dracula’s Curse, we can take a moment to look at them — compare strengths, weaknesses, flaws, that sort of thing. Some of have more or one or the other than the rest.

Trevor Belmont: Not surprisingly, Trevor is ultimately the best and best-rounded character in the game. You’ll find few situations where he can’t at least hold his own, even if one of this allies might have a specific advantage. Trevor ties with Alucard for having the best endurance (by the end of the game, they lose 25% of their health meter per hit). The upgraded Vampire Killer whip is the second strongest attack available (and unlike the other is free to use). He possesses the broadest skill set, capable of wielding more subweapons than any other character.

Trevor represents the baseline against which the entire world design has been developed. His skills — his speed, range, arsenal, and weaknesses — determine the way every level works. The height of objects, the space of gaps, the length of staircases, and the frequency and patterns of foes all contrast Trevor’s ability to handle them. If Castlevania III is a jazz standard, Trevor provides the steady beat against which the other characters allow you to improvise.

Grant Danasty: Grant sacrifices Trevor’s durability, power, range, and versatility for agility. He’s the only character in the entire NES Castlevania trilogy who can alter the trajectory of his jump in mid-air. He jumps higher than Trevor, and since he stoops as he walks he can fit into smaller places. More importantly, though, he can stick to walls and ceilings. This allows him to access areas that no other character can — most significantly little alcoves specifically designed for Grant to climb to and collect a 1UP.

Downsides? Well, Grant is super-weak; his dagger has no range to speak of and is only as strong as Trevor’s default whip. It can’t be upgraded. In the Japanese version, Grant threw his dagger with each strike, but this feature was removed for the U.S. version. This had the effect of greatly reducing Grant’s moment-to-moment usefulness and presumably resulted from one of those weird re-balancing Japanese developers made to fight the deadly threat of rentals by making the American versions of their games impossible to beat in a weekend.

In Japan, Grant could only use the Axe subweapon, whereas he can also collect the Dagger in the U.S. This doesn’t work nearly as well as having the Dagger as a default skill, since it forces players to swap equipment in order to attack straight ahead or at an angle and means that you have to do the up + attack move to throw a knife.

So, while he’s not much for combat, Grant comes in handy as a means to maneuver players into battle safely, delivering Trevor into the thick of things with minimal damage.

Sypha Belnades: Sypha represents the opposite tradeoff to Grant. She, like him, is much physically weaker than Trevor, with a physical attack that lacks range and strength, and she takes more damage per hit. But where Grant makes up for it with speed, Sypha makes up for it with raw combat power. Sure, her staff attack sucks, but that’s not why you use Sypha. She’s all about magic.

Sypha knows three spells (and can tragically use the Stopwatch, which remains as rarely useful here as ever), each of which is incredibly useful. I’ve detailed them already, but to summarize: Fire has the range of the top-level Vampire Killer but is twice as strong; ice can completely immobilize any non-boss foe and render it destructible with a single blow; and lightning sends three enemy-seeking balls of energy into play, allowing you to focus on evasion against tough foes and not have to worry about aiming or tactics.

Basically, Sypha is kind of insanely overpowered.

Adrian “Alucard” Fahrenheit Tepes: The son of Dracula is surprisingly your weakest ally. He can’t use subweapons (save the stupid Stopwatch), his fireballs are the weakest attack in the entire game, and his one power — while versatile! — comes with a severe caveat. Alucard can transform into a bat and fly freely about the screen, but if anything strikes him he reverts to human form and plummets like a rock. So you really don’t want to bump into something while you’re bypassing, say, a pit. While his base attack has great range, it’s slow and weak and has very situational applications. And his alternate form is completely without offensive capabilities, making Alucard even more a character focused around evasion than Grant. No wonder he switched to swordplay for Symphony of the Night.

What’s great about Dracula’s Curse is that all the characters are viable for the entire game — some more so than others, and certain areas are better suited to a specific skill set, but you can play through the quest and all its different courses with every permutation of characters and have a great time.