Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

Replaying this again after years.
I first played this not long after Chaos Legion and was instantly drawn to the ID (Innocent Devil) mechanics.

I'll try give a brief description of the various mechanics.

Combat is similar to Lament Of Innocence but there's no heavy attack button here. You can still do combo enders though by pressing Circle.

There are more weapons. Leon only had a whip. In CoD you have sword, axe, knuckle, spear and special. Special are the weird weapons. There are many types with various properties and appearance, though they largely have the same combo if within the same class. So for short swords, S,S,C is going to do two slashes then a sword throw that returns.

There is a basic crafting system. Simply have the items required and combine them. You can make weapons and armor.

IDs have a base form, and can evolve when you collect enough Evo Crystals which are dropped by enemies. There are different colored crystals and each weapon causes a certain color to drop. For example, defeating enemies with the sword makes red crystals appear.

Each ID needs a certain amount of a certain color. You'll require multiple colors as you travel the evolution path, meaning you'll need to use various weapons.
I just leveled up my fairy to its final form. Infant Fairy (starter) will evolve into a Herbest by collecting 40 Axe/Spear/or Special Evo Crystals. Higher forms usually only want one type.

IDs will sometimes drop an egg that houses a starter version, and some of the stats will carry over. Not going into that system right now.

There are different types of ID, like battle or fairy, with unique abilities. You can only have one on the field at once. They can be set to auto, where they'll do as they please, or command, where they'll use their special move (which consumes hearts) only when directed.

There are lots of similarities to CL. Some things better, some not. Like to summon, you actually have to open the pause menu and select the ID. You do the same to send it back. This is dumb and these games were released around the same time so I don't see you can't summon/disband at the tap of a button.

There are level ups. You can get Hector and your IDs to level 99. Lots of places to come back to with new IDs to access new areas. I know there's also 2 battle towers, and a boss rush mode. Sadly, crazy mode difficulty can only be unlocked after beating the game. Not the worst thing for new players but annoying for me because I've done it all before years ago.

That's it for basics. I'd like to add in depth stuff on the weapons and IDs but we'll see. I'll probably alternate between this and MHW.

Took a day off from work (fractured a toe on the weekend) and played this all day. My first post was rushed so I want to elaborate a bit.

regarding weapon combos
Stronger versions within a class will have more hits than weaker ones. For example, the short sword (starting weapon) has 4 hits, while a better one has 5 which is the final hit. The final hit of the short sword is the 4th hit of the better short sword.

Something interesting, the 4 hit weaker one's ender causes a hard knock back sending enemies rolling back at high speed. But in the 5 hit one, it's just a normal hit before the ender. Makes sense but it also means the weaker weapon is unique. You get to the knock back faster.

Sadly, it will remain the weakest sword. I wish there were versions of the 4 hit one that were stronger.

There are other types of sword. I got this slow, two handed one but it's still classed under 'sword' along with short swords so I consider it a separate class.

Innocent Devil eggs
The two I have now are only level 13 and have dropped eggs a few times but these are not worth using. You want to wait until level 99.

Stealing
I can't believe I forgot to mention this. In addition to common and rare drops, enemies also have 1 item you can steal.

To steal, you have to be locked on and when it turns purple, that's your window. What makes this really interesting is that not every enemy's steal window is the same. You have to do all kinds of things to open it. It could be guard/perfect guard a certain move, steal during a certain move or action like while they're running or dodging or during a knockback. There's this fire demon that will try to grab you and explode once it's down to around 100 life. You have to let it grab you, then wiggle the left stick to shake it off. That's when you can steal.

There's a guide, but one day I want to make my own with far more detail. This kind of examination is why I have a backlog but I can't help myself.

Perfect Guard
The same as Lament. Block just before an attack connects and you'll perfect guard. You cannot be guard broken or sent sliding with this, and it can open up enemies to attacks because they bounce off, some getting knocked down. Generates hearts for your ID too.

Dodging
You can dodge twice like in Lament. The 2nd dodge will have a slight recovery to prevent spamming. Can be used to cancel attack recovery, as can jumping.

Will post some stuff about air attacks in my next update. They're kind of weird.

So jump attacks are quite different from Lament.

In Lament, you have the dive kick and heel kick, both bring you to the ground fast (with low to ground option). If you do a single air whip attack, you'll descend with it, allowing for jump-in attacks, but you can press it multiple times you'll trigger the air combo string.

In CoD, whenever Hector connects with the first hit of any jumping attack, he will go into the floating air combo state. You don't have to have launched an enemy, so you can do air strings on grounded ones. Works better on large enemies.

Another thing you can do is jump cancel the string, which resets your air string allowing you to do it again, so long as you cancelled out before the final strike which knocks the enemy down. This will use your double jump though. There's also the possibility of descending before the enemy and starting the string a third time though you'll be quite close to the ground at this point.

What I don't like in CoD is how it forces you to start the air string. Since there are so many different weapons, there are a lot of initial attacks that would make great jump-ins. It's nice being able to air combo twice though.

I've messed with low to ground air attacks, and a few times I've succeeded in hitting and not going into the air string and stay floating. Need to test this more.

Decided to try this again, played it a bit years ago. Downloaded a crazy mode save and that makes the game much more enjoyable. That first troll with the skeletons was a little tricky. Also got the moai statue too hopefully reduce the need to grind for money. Does this game have any really hidden items like SOTN? Or is it all floating items on the ground, that are easy easy to spot. Also i noticed the weak sword has the knock down ender on 1,2, as well as 1,1,1,1

Also got the moai statue too
It's only worth 5000.

A good early way to get money is to fight those skeletons near the start where I train my IDs. They drop iron, the most basic item in the game. Be exiting and respawning the skeletons, it won't be long until you have 99 which you can sell for around 2000.

Does this game have any really hidden items like SOTN?
There are many hidden areas that require an ID's special abilities to unlock. Some of these places are pretty obvious, but I remember a few that were quite hard to spot.

Also i noticed the weak sword has the knock down ender on 1,2, as well as 1,1,1,1
I'll be making notes of these as I go along, though I'll probably focus on them more once I've found every weapon type because there are a few that have unique moves even though they are of an existing type from what I remember.

Edit: 99 iron sells for just over 2700.

I like your notations for combo inputs. I think I'll use this from now on.

Messing with the spear a little more, its 1,2 is good if you dodge cancel before the third hit comes out. So you get the wide, horizontal sweep, then for the 2 he twirls it around which is similar. He then brings it up around his head to prepare for the third hit which comes down and isn't useful for groups, so cancel before then.

This is good for groups of small enemies, but not if some can shoot something like these fishmen in Mortvia Aqueduct. If they're all close it's fine, but the will always be a few shooting you from a distance, and you can't cancel a move itself, only on the recovery so it's best to stick with dodge cancelled 1 in that case.

Oh dear.

I never really looked that deeply into the stats of each ID and their evolution. The stat system is similar to Dragon's Dogma.

For example, some forms get more of a certain stat per level. Like Iytei gets the most magic (+3) per level of any battle ID type. You could fight the no exp skeletons and pick up the required Evo crystals to get to this form without leveling up, then go to 99 getting the highest possible magic.

I'm wondering how to go about leveling them. I have a few build ideas but need to test some stuff.

Look at fairy types. They can't be hit, and any attacks they do, which are few, are so absurdly weak that even if I leveled up to 99 as a Hornet, (which has the highest attack growth of any fairy) it would not result in anything worthwhile from what I've seen, but I might still be willing to give it a try for the sake of pushing the mechanics.

It might be more beneficial to level as a fairy that gets more hearts per level. Hearts power your special moves and fairies are mostly healing and removing ailments, so with no need for defense, they could potentially maintain you forever especially if you were on generation 4. This is how I understand it anyway.

But then what about magic? I thought magic would be better for a fairy but the wiki says that the various healing spells heal fixed amounts, so I'm assuming magic plays no part in that. One fairy can poison enemies, and another can put them to sleep, but I have no idea if the magic stat has anything to do with this.

When your Lv.99 ID drops a Lv.99 shard, which is that ID's baby form, with the bonus carry over, you could even switch types and have an ID with high magic that wouldn't normally.

This is pretty much like class switching in DD, only you can't do it any time and you can carry over into future generations of IDs when they drop a shard.

Seems there are some speedrunners for the main game and boss rush still somewhat active. There was a guide posted on speedrun.com only 3 months ago detailing this kind of stuff, so I'm going to contact them and see if I can clarify some things.

Had a good chat with one of the boss rush speedrunners. Got all the info I needed on how the stats work over generations.

One thing that doesn't seem to be fully known is the full potential of poison or sleep. Speedrunners don't care for these things, but I can't get enough of mechanics like this.

I've confirmed that poison is a magical attack, so the magic stat is what powers it, but you also have to take into account enemy resistances.

A little about the actual poison attack itself. It's learned by Leaffle, which is one of the second tier forms immediately available after the starting Infant Fairy. It isn't a command move, meaning the ID will do it when it wants. I can't see any pattern to it. It seems to do it reasonably often, but it varies.

When it infects the enemy, they start taking tick damage and will have the green poison aura around them. Each tick will cause hit stun, and can stop the enemy if it ticks mid-attack. If the enemy tries an attack that involves them jumping, it will put them into a down state.

If the the enemy has super armor, and doesn't normally take hit-stun from your attacks, it won't with poison either. If poison fails to trigger, it will still do one damage and cause a hit-stun. Also, it only affects one target per cast.

I evolved to Honey Bee, which has the highest mag per level, so I'll keep leveling and see if poison gets any better. Not sure what magic will do for it. Could up the cast rate, or just make it stronger. None of this is known.

Sleep is quite good so far, though I'm not that far in the game. I forget which fairy learns this, but when they cast it, they start singing and a ring of musical notes and dust effects surround them. Anything near this falls asleep. When you hit a sleeping enemy, they don't wake up, they're stuck like that for whatever the duration is. Like poison, it's not a command move, so you have to hope the fairy uses it. It can hit multiple enemies at once though.

Those healing spells I mentioned are fixed, so a high magic stat is useless for those it seems.

Wish I had done more with SotN (and that it had been remade to have more going on, really). Never could make myself get beyond the boring opening of LoS (screw the sequel in particular). Seemed like if I could just do that, there is an okay game to give a go. Don't think any of the originals would have been much to my liking (maybe Super Castlevania 4 or whatever). I'd only played very little of them (and some N64 game *beat the final boss for my father, but otherwise didn't play it*).