I think the on-screen action works perfectly (and best of all, with no dialogue) if you interpret it as:Mortificator wrote:I've heard that idea before, and the cloaked figure does look similar to the concept art of Drolta. It doesn't jive with what happens on-screen, though. It's not like Dracula chills on the sidelines for a while as another individual steps in and fights. You see Dracula transform from a blue dude to a cloaked figure, and you see him transform again from a cloaked figure into a demon.
1) Dracula's humanoid incarnation is destroyed. "I need mah full power! Bwahhh!" He opens some kind of dimensional rift, retreating to the "dark netherworld" the opening cinema informed us his spirit dwells in.
2) Drolta steps in as Dracula retreats. Gets beaten, makes the most of things by dying in a conspicuously ceremonial fashion. Looks almost like she sacrifices herself, opening a gate to the netherworld and allowing Dracula's spirit to possess her corpse in the process.
3) Holy shit, we're in some dark realm where Dracula's spirit has manifested in stronger, monstrous form! Protagonist destroys this body too, and he's left to stew in the void as usual.
I don't really buy Dracula transforming into a diminutive witch figure between his usual hulking vampire and even more hulking monster forms. It makes sense the developers fit the diminutive witch Drolta in there. She's in the characters section of the Japanese manual just like Dracula and Bartley, after all, and is supposed to have kicked off the game's plot in the first place. She's pretty much that storyline's Shaft.