Daily Dracula X - Stage 1: Dinner of Flames (Alternate Path)

Back to the secret path in Stage 1. In Scene 4 you can smash out the entire left wall of the bottom area with your whip, opening up a new area.

Because you were clever enough to seek out a secret path, the game makes the assumption that you’re ready for something just a little bit more difficult than the first stage had to offer.

This short fork in the road puts Richter through some environments that can actually kill him if you aren’t careful, as well as a significantly tougher boss than the pushover dragon.

Scene 1

Walking into an abandoned house through the wall we kicked down, this area starts simply enough with a gooey, floating slime mass who’s easy to dispatch.

In the next room we face a common trick based on the unwritten language of video games at this time. Any experienced video game player of this era who sees a gap, a moving platform, and a pit below will expect to die if they fall down there. Mario established this rule, and the Castlevania games largely obey it.

So when you think of it from that point of view, this room looks like a dead end. But you can’t go back, either! So are you stuck?

Nope. You need to take a leap of faith and fall down the pit to progress.

Scene 2

Every so often this game will subtly guide you by using statues of men pointing in the direction you’re meant to go.

However, another finely honed gamer instinct is to ignore directions like these and proceed in the exact opposite direction, so as not to miss any secrets along the way.

So, if you go to the left you’ll fight an Audrey-esque killer plant. Keep a distance and swat its head and it shouldn’t even get a chance to hit you. Defeat the plant, and get nothing much; maybe a heart if you’re lucky.

Rondo of Blood understands player psychology, and like any great game, it toys with us a bit. It sets you up to ignore its instructions, and when you do, you end up fighting a pointless mid-boss for no reward. All those guys told you to go to the right.

Head to the right like you were told, and you’re led into an eerie hallway lit in red— note the way the game simulates lighting with a thin line of glowing red pixels— towards the boss.

Boss prep room

The prep room for this boss is perhaps the most dangerous room thus far. Ascend the well without falling in or hitting the spikes at the top. If you’re feeling adventurous, candles on side platforms hold hearts and weapons. Just be careful: if you grab a new weapon here, the old one will plunge down the well, never to be retrieved again.

For the upcoming boss, if you have a lot of hearts, go with the holy water or cross available in this room. If you don’t have a lot of hearts—  that is, if you died during this stage— stick with the axe.

As a general rule, if you get through the stage without dying, you’ll have a lot of hearts to spend on powerful attacks when you get to the boss. On the other hand, if you die repeatedly, you’ll have to tough it out with low ammo. 1

Boss: Serpent

This is a significantly tougher boss than we would have fought normally. This water serpent, guard of the bridge to Dracula’s castle, is fast and aggressive. His movement covers a large area, and due to the weird semi-3D perspective it’s hard to tell when he’s “behind” or “in front of you." He requires constant dodging (not that I do a great job of that in this run), and his vulnerable area, the head, is tiny and mobile. You can’t react to his moves and counter-attack: he’ll already be gone. Rather, you have to anticipate his movements and strike where he’s going to be.2

But you don’t have to do all that. The easy way to deal with this boss is to use an Item Crash with the holy water or cross. Either of these attacks— I use the “Jesus Christ Bomb”— continually damages the entire screen, eliminating the hard work of actually attacking the serpent. Simply staying out of the serpent’s way is enough to win.

But stay on your guard: bosses in this game like to take one last stab at you in their dying breath. The serpent will make one last dive up from the bottom of the screen, so keep moving until it happens. After this you’ll proceed to the alternate Stage 2, which is called Stage 2’.

Here is the “Boss Demo” video of the battle with the Serpent, played by a tester who doesn’t need little tricks like that and knows exactly what they are doing.3

Tomorrow we’ll move on to Stage 2, a homage to the original Castlevania that packs some bombastic surprises. See you later, vampire killers!