Sadly, you're not gonna get much challenge out of 90% of SOTN bosses. Maybe Dracula's endgame form - his claw/bite attacks are quick and launched at proximity, though once you know their rhythm/tracking characteristics, they won't hit you.
Shaft puts a lot of shit onscreen, but he's weak and frail enough that brute blunderbussing will suffice. You can dodge everything legit (indeed
you can dodge absolutely anything in SOTN - KCET quality
), but beyond the tight quarters and flashy visuals, they don't amount to much. Not a patch on the riveting Rondo duel (particularly as Richter has to shred his way through the entire CV1 underboss quartet beforehand), let alone the necromantic rematch with its masterful groove-based triple threat (backflip good, or get a Dead Behemoth horn up yer arse!)
Galamoth is the big frightener, but he's 95% endurance. All but one of his patterns are self-explanatorily dodged. The one that isn't - RAITONING SHOWWAAA - creates a massive safespot even my elderly dog could suss out. Mist through and obliterate his nutsack with your bloodiest attacks, mist out as the gap closes, repeat.
Death... looks
fuckin cool, but is lame and disgraces his OG sickle dragnet + body ram game. Granfalloon... looks
AMAZIN, and possesses what should've been the game's final attack, if you strip him down to the rotten core. Flawlessly evading those green homing lasers while landing counter-strikes is massively cathartic, in a classic scrolling action way that SOTN rarely makes mandatory. I like to deliberately destroy his outer layers, while leaving the core untouched, so we can have a reasonably protracted duel (Christ, this is going sexual
) - though since I'm wearing my brand new Ring of Ares, one of us is gonna die after a few good hits. Nothing like botching a jump, eating a laser, then watching Al's bloody, disintegrating body juggled offscreen in a spearing hail of followups.
JP death scream rocks.
OWAAAAAAAAA
Doppy2 can be frisky but will fall to similar air-to-ground overheads as his Normal Castle counterpart. I find it more fun to screw him over with Topaz Circlet and Mirror Cuirass, tbh - his Terminus Est and Stone Sword will be nullified, forcing him to alternate between Diamond snipes and Wing Smashes, not dangerous but certainly lively. Minotaurus and Wolfman get some cred for at least having cool tag-team attacks, though they're every bit the frail minibosses
Festival Of Servants pegs them as.
Slogra & Gaibon (all these years, I only just now twigged why they're hanging around Death later on... that there be a
Room Of Close Associates, innit?!
), Lesser Demon, Scylla Wyrm, Scylla, Hippogriff, Cerberus, Darkwing Bat, Medusa, Creature and Akmodan are all trash. There just isn't much there, not even via Richter's glass cannon balance and more restrictive air control. I will say though - they all have the decency to die fast. A good chunk of HOD's boss roster is as bad, or WORSE, and massively padded. Peeping Big is among the most useless pieces of shit in the entire Dracula canon from 1986 to present. Crackin' name though! If you're gonna peep,
PEEP BIG
(WHEN PEEPING BIG GOES HORRIBLY WRONG)
Beelzebub is like a Granfalloon minus the killer last resort. Fun target for chained Wing Smash, meaty AF.
All this said, I always have a wonderful relaxing time with revisits (it's outrageous to describe videogames as anything
but relaxation, I know, but self-imposed arcade gauntlets are a different animal entirely, I barely consider them the same hobby
), and I particularly liked my current ruleset:
1) Don't get the early Jewel Knuckles. I'd never have figured out the secret on my own - saw it in an issue of GamePro, like a month before I got my copy. No JKs mean the very nice Basilard aka STAB MACHINE gets more screentime, and I actually use the swords found along the path to the Coliseum (Gladius post-Doppy10, Broadsword from Olrox's ground floor). Coliseum is full of CUT-resistant knights, which is fine, that's where the Shield Rod is. Bonk bonk!
No Beryl Circlet, for the same reason.
2) One save per area visit - no EZ health restores. This means I actually use potions/food (and DAAKO METAMOPHOSIS), which otherwise become totally superfluous. Got fucked up? No food/drugs? Scarper to adjacent area and save there, you
shamefur prick!
3) Permanently equip the Ring of Ares ("24" Ring), from the time it's found in the Abandoned Pit. Massive ATK boost + Brutal DEF penalty = ANTI EUROSHMUP TALISMAN. Never grind again ever, but hard hits gon hurt
As discussed in
my most recent travelogue, SOTN guarantees a pretty nice, diverse spread of weaponry and tools to enjoy. I've always loved the Combat Knife + Moon Rod combo. You could easily build a disciplined arcade game around the balance of short-ranged, moderately-powerful, but hellaciously quick stabs, and rangier, slower bonks, plus a finesse shotgun command, that's both an anti-pest room-clearer and a hard target demolisher, depending on inflection.
Between them, the subweapons, spells and Bat/Wolf/Mist tricks, plus that glorious chain-dropkick game, I get that classic SOTN toybox feel with absolutely zero Skinnerboxing. This aspect was the fly in the ointment for a long time, was impressed to see it vanish on this last revisit. Most of the exotic drops aren't that interesting, tbh. Only one I miss is Obsidian Sword, a badass Zweihander whose aerial command thrust has a superb balance of finesse and brute force.
Anyhoo, yeah, that's SOTN for you. EZ to cheese, but there isn't all that much to contend with even fairly. It's all about enjoying that super-smooth engine and sumptuous aesthetic, imo. Despite the near-total lack of hardcore, I'd have to give it a scrolling action Desert Island spot for sure.