Alright, I just tried Chapter 10 with my new 8 Bit Belmont character and I got to Dracula, managed to defeat his first form then his second form I was kicking his ass till he like hit me with this charge attack and took my last 86 health off.
I should’ve healed XD but, this is pretty awesome playing as Belmont and I gotta say I love that there’s a ton of Mini Bosses in this stage as well.
Alright, I just tried Chapter 10 with my new 8 Bit Belmont character and I got to Dracula, managed to defeat his first form then his second form I was kicking his ass till he like hit me with this charge attack and took my last 86 health off.
I should’ve healed XD but, this is pretty awesome playing as Belmont and I gotta say I love that there’s a ton of Mini Bosses in this stage as well.
LOL Konami. There’s a Valmanway + 1 now. Let that sink in. A STRONGER Valmanway. Soma = God.
There’s also a Claimh Solais + 1 as well. Shanoa got her Cerberus arms as weapons, there’s a bunch of “Retro” souls for Soma (which all suck except for Retro Medusa, which is Medusa Head only with LESS MP cost), there’s Retro armor for the whip users that owns Simon’s armor, and some Retro subweapons.
8-bit Dracula owns the fuck out of Chapter 6 Dracula.
Actually, after watching a video of the fight, I don’t get hit by “The Count” anymore. Truth be told, Chapter 10’s real obstacle is the STAGE, not Pixeldrac.
And yes, even though I hate many of this game’s design decisions, Valmanway + 1 is pure comedy… until I realized I don’t yet have it. :sad:
Anyone who doesn’t yet have Berserker Mail or Death’s Robe: R. The Creature and R. Grim Reaper drop them… on EITHER difficulty. As they count as normal enemies, load up on Luck and farm Normal. That is if you’re missing either.
Berserker Mail is a HUGE no-no in Chapter 10 for now. Even Valmanway (+1 or otherwise) has to come off for the boss; repeated hits don’t register. I use Muramasa/Nebula for him, and if playing online with people, I circumvent the extra incoming damage with Ancient Armor and Impervious Helm.
EASY WAY TO DODGE PHASE 1 COUNT’S FIREBALL
Stand about 4-5 character lengths away when he ports in, then when he opens his cape, hop. Tiny hop. You’ll dodge the fire 99.6% of the time this way.
Other items I want: the Retro Armor/Helm/Boots, which apparently all drop from Normal Count. It’s all whip user gear, and apparently (though I can’t confirm) the boots let you move at Winged Boots speed. EDIT - apparently the speed boost is bogus. =(
Fuck, I both love and hate this game. Kinda like Dr. B, since with such a pinnacle of human achievement existing, how can I love anyone else?
I know what you mean, specs. I don’t even get hit by The Count anymore, once you figure out his trick he’s just as low-tier as chapter 6 Dracula.
I use BDC Muramasa to ruin his day. Through the level though it’s Valmanway all day every day, Succubus + that makes it impossible to die unless you really fuck it up. Valmanway/Muramasa is more than enough to murder anything you run into in that level.
Posted this on GameFAQs, posting it here because my ego is enormous. This game’s problems, basically.
THE GEAR GRIND: yes, there’s something about the grind I enjoy, or I wouldn’t do it. And there’s certainly something to be said for grinds that draw you in and engage you in more than just “repeat one task ad nauseum until you get results.” HD’s problem here is the grind is both tedious AND randomly not rewarding, with the odds in any given run against you.
It’s very clear that 5-star gear is supposed to be THE gear you want to get and want to use, by design. Proof: Yasutsuna nerf, the sudden giving out of Death’s Robe and Berserker Mail like candy (+1 versions are coming, mark my words). But the only way to get most of this system, and especially the highly prized weapons, is to a) play a stage on Hard, b) win the stage on Hard, and c) hope you win a lottery, one rigged against you.
Lots of people call the grind “work” and your rewards “earned.” Hogwash: at payday, in my real world job, at the end of the day I’m not paid based on a random number generator, I’m paid based on the time I’ve worked. Hell, even other gear-grindy games have adopted a more reasonable approach: in WoW, high end content gets me a special separate, non-trade-able currency I can spend on endgame gear. An MMO did this. Think about that.
Whether it’s an expanded shop where you can buy any item in your compendium and combine items to form better items, a WoW point system, or a tweaked drop system where you stop getting stuff after having a certain number of said stuff, a revised loot system would go a long way towards letting players make their builds and play C:HD on their terms, instead of constantly running unchanging content and hoping they roll a Natural 1000 on a 1d1000. All the current system does is reward some lucky individuals and penalize other unlucky ones, and that will bleed players WAY faster than just cutting the nonsense and letting players earn their way towards whatever they want.
All the above is especially true now that +1s have entered the picture.
Okay, talked about that a little long. Here’s the rest in a nutshell:
Buggy. Better since the update, but bugs abound, including the dreaded “page turning endlessly before the game saves ensuring you just lost your Val+1”
UI is sloppy. Again, better since the title update, but true drop-in/drop-out support, a must for this sort of game, is still missing (the manual “find more players” option is a bandaid fix, not a solution). And, as a tech/marketing writer by trade, grammar errors abound.
Stage design is mixed, and few bosses take advantage of the stage like this sort of game is BEGGING for them to do (see my “Categorizing Bosses” topic). Stage 10 is an eyesore and tedious as opposed to truly challenging.
HARD ROCK ELECTRIC GUITAR YEEAAAAAAAH!!! Except electric guitar remixes can, poorly composed, ruin songs (e.g., Into the Dark Night).
Questionable character choices (PSP SotN had a brand new Maria sprite, but child Maria was chosen; 8-bit Simon vs. an awesome new sprite based on his art).
Base movement is far too slow. There’s a reason almost everyone who isn’t Richter uses Winged/Sonic Boots; the base movement feels sluggish and very un-superhuman vampire hunter-ish. Not to mention it makes all boots not called Retro/Sonic Boots useless (and the Retro Boots are on the fence). Up the base speed and now suddenly I have to make meaningful choices about what shoes to wear.
That’s it for now. You’ll notice I never once mentioned “Soma” or “balance.” Because a) I like Soma (and think he needs some sprite tweaks, actually) and b) any issues with Soma are merely symptoms of deeper problems.
Dr. B’s Mystic Arte 2 requires 500 playthroughs and two Edward Elrics alchemicizing Valmanways.
Soma’s sprite should have been modified to have his Aria of Sorrow outfit (fur-lined pimp coat, jeans with normal shoes instead of for some fucking reason wearing metal greaves in 2037). It was so much better.
I support more playable characters with fur-lined pimp coats, Soma or otherwise. And yeah his Dawn boots are ghetto.
Dr. B’s fur-lined pimp coat doubles as insulation. For the Earth. For when the Sun goes nova.
And now Soma can circumvent most of Chapter 10. Good. Stage is garbage.
[media=youtube]gJLt-_I1cRA[/media]
Is there anything Soma can’t do?
EDIT - Some practice and now I can do this with about 80% accuracy. I am farming the FUCK out of The Count until next Wednesday, when a patch is likely.
Dr. B can just teleport to Drac’s room but he was removed from the game for balance reasons.
I’m telling you guys, don’t call him “Soma”, call him “Super Soma”.
He deserves that title every time you mention him.
Also, if you put on straight up Fire Resistance on Shanoa, you only take 2 Damage per shot on Dracula’s first form.
haha i know im late to the party, but chapter 10 alone makes me wanna play it
jesus christ at all the dlc
which ones should i cop reading is hard for me
Richter or Julius or Simon for characters
Chapter 8-9-10 for Chapters, 9-10 best ones so far.
EDIT
I’ve been Super Soma-ing lately, it’s fun as hell being able to own everything. XD
FOUR KNIGHTS OF SOMA OWNING 8-BIT DRACULA SINCE 2011!
Watching that chapter 10 video kind of makes me wish I still had an Internet connection for my Xbox. I’ve always been a fan of the original Castlevania and the way the levels all fit together.
How much more content are they going to make? Have they said anything about their plans?
john runs like a moron
he looks like a feeble man running poor mans
NINJA EDIT - whoops, I wrote a huge wall of text after you said you didn’t want to read. 
If you’re interested in getting all the items and abilities the stock characters can get, buy all the stages. Don’t buy the characters unless you a) want to use them or b) don’t want to see the placeholder “Axe Armor” character in multiplayer games for characters you don’t already have.
Stages:
Chapter 7 is a pyramid level based on a similar set of stages from Portrait of Ruin. The boss is Ashtarte, a mummy chick who charms the male characters. Unique stuff from Chapter 7 includes the Mummy soul (Soma), Ashtarte soul (Soma), Delta Spark (Charlotte), and the Miser Ring (everyone) which is so good as to want 2. The Miser Ring drops from Ashtarte on Hard, as do Winged Boots and Valmanways (an easier source for either item than from Chapter 6).
Chapter 8 is an underground level based on the caves/mines/catacombs from Symphony of the Night. The boss is Legion (aka, Granfaloon), the “giant ball of corpses” boss. Unique stuff: four new enemy souls for Soma (including Legion, which is useful), the Simon’s Cloak and Javelin for whip users, and a powerful new skill for Shanoa (Globus).
Chapter 9 is based on Symphony of the Night’s first three areas (entrance, alchemy lab, marble gallery). The boss is Beelzebub, the decomposing giant from Symphony’s upside down castle. He shoots giant flies at you. Unique stuff: yet four more souls for Soma, yet another powerful new skill for Shanoa (Acerbatus), Alucard Sword +1 (Alucard), Kaiser Knuckle +1 (Soma/Alucard), and the Sonic Boots, which are slightly faster than Winged Boots and have stats.
Chapter 10 is based on the Castlevania 1 castle for NES, which unfortunately is presented at or close to its native resolution, making it tiny compared to the giant playable characters. It’s tedious and annoying, though Soma has a shortcut he can take (likely to be patched out soon). Every boss from the original game is a sub-boss here, and two of the sub-bosses drop items, on either difficulty, that were a pain to get before (Berserker Mail and Death’s Robe). The boss is “The Count,” the NES version of Drac who is initially really hard but has a learnable pattern. Unique stuff: countless new souls for Soma (Retro enemies), the Retro gear for whip users (mostly better than Simon’s gear, mostly drops from Hard but apparently some can drop from Normal), three new spells for Charlotte (Retro Fireball, Retro Deathscythe, and Retro Summon Skeleton), Valmanway +1 (Alucard/Soma), Claimh Solais +1 (Soma), the Cerburus (Custos) weapons for Shanoa, and the Retro subweapons for whip users (two from the shop, two from the stage).
Music Packs:
Contain music that only works in the game. Don’t waste a single penny on this nonsense.
Characters:
Julius Belmont: from Dawn of Sorrow. He actually got new animations for running and whipping. He plays like Simon from Super Castlevania 4, with 8-way whipping and the ability to grapple and swing from Shanoa’s Magnes points. Equips the standard whip user gear, and gets all the subweapons EXCEPT Jonathan’s unique ones (which are Kunai, Shuriken, Wrecking Ball, Grenade, Paper Airplane, and Boomerang). Julius’s whip is the longest of the whip users and the second strongest (third behind Simon?) when powered up. He also recovers really fast and can get Omnia Vanitas, which is basically Akuma’s teleport on steroids. He’s not the best character in the game or even the best whip user, but he’s versatile, has ways out of bad situations, and is a great candidate for Berserker Mail.
Richter Belmont: from Rondo of Blood, though he plays more like his Portrait of Ruin counterpart on crack. Has very offensively oriented Martial Arts compared to Julius and Jonathan, and most are free. Benefits from Spiked Boots (+ kick damage) more than other characters, and can move faster than Sonic Boots on straightaways using Slide Kick (though his horizontal movement when jumping doesn’t improve without faster boots). I think his whip is the strongest when powered up. Has the exact same subweapons as Julius.
Simon Belmont: ripped from the NES at or close to native resolution, making him the shortest character in the game. Whip powers up as you build his subweapons. Smaller hitbox making him a tad more maneuverable than the rest of the cast. Has the exact same subweapons as Richter and Julius EXCEPT for the Ricochet Rock. IMO: not worth the purchase, and I kinda regret buying him.
Yoko Belnades: from Dawn of Sorrow. Julius got new animations, but Yoko didn’t, making her look like shit. She’s STRONG though, even without her spells powered all the way up, and can make short work of just about anything. As there isn’t too much gear for her to wear and she comes with all her spells, she’s good to use if you want a rare item everyone can equip (i.e., Miser Ring, Sonic Boots) since her drop pool consists of fewer items. She can’t jump kick, which is sometimes a problem. Her spells: Holy Flames (Fire/Holy damage, short range, cheap, strong), Holy Lightning (Lightning/Holy damage, homing electric BALLS, multi-hit, good on big targets), and Blue Splash (Water damage, shoots ice in a fan shape to the sides and up, good when she’s in-between the legs of big people, yes hetero).
Maria Renard: from Rondo of Blood, but plays more like her Portrait of Ruin version. Loli Maria. Has an awesome English voice, and her “Hi!” is quite possibly the funniest thing in this game. Has a color I call “Mango Maria.” She has a dive kick inexplicably, and a smaller hitbox than most (but not as small as Simon). She’s okay. Has her Chinese beasts subweapons. Too lazy to list them all.
All we know for now is there’s a Chapter 11 coming based on Getsu Fuma Den (sp?), a JP-only NES game, along with the main character from said game.
When Dr. B smangs girls they don’t look nearly as uninterested.
i think they should add nathan graves so that they can have card drops
also tanks specs, sadly i already picked up simon the nostalgia bug got me, do i ahve to beat the game before i can use downloaded dudes
No prob, and you’re not the only one who’d love Nathan Graves.
You don’t have to beat the game; just pick the character and go nuts. If it isn’t appearing after you downloaded it, restart.
Still looking for that DSS combination that summons Dr. B. I have a deck of Norwegian Fatty Porn Star playing cards: going to try combining those with my collection of penis pictures.
Ahh, my xbawx was bein dumb, I just had to redownload the dlcs for the game to realize it was there
at least going through at first simon is like easy mode, also the only one worth playing chapter 10 with since he doesnt have to duck to kill freakin everything </rehashing shit everyone knows>
is a fun game, wtf with having to navigate back to the chest to end the stage, when i kill damn puppet boss just make the chest appear next to me stupid game, its kinda like watching degrassi, it’s painful and there doesn’t seem to be a good amount of payoff for playing and it almost seems like the creators don’t care but I just keep slogging away and havin a decent time.
also for lols i recommend anyone going back and reading the thread from the beginning, where there was much deserved vitriol spewed onto this game
I am really getting sick and tired of running the same levels and getting nothing. We need a trade in shop to allow anyone to trade in high end stuff for the best stuff. I have done more than 50 runs of level 7 to try and get ONE meiser ring. and nothing. 50 Runs.
God I hate a lot about this game.