@Zoltan: You are referring to the Dodo Bird, and it is a Rune Sword. See comment 32.

If you want a harder version of SotN, see comment 2. That’s as hard as it gets.

Thus ends the playthough! Congrats to all those who finished! And to all those who did not, you are each a miserable pile of secrets.

Some things I like to do: the first time you go to the library, kill the skeletons holding their own head over and over until they drop a rapier. Do a hadouken motion to do a sweet multi-thrust. That will last you for a really long time and completely wreck the next few bosses.

Hold up for two seconds then do a half circle to the right for up to down and press the attack button to do the tetra spirits spell. It’s useful throughout. I also love the hellfire spell for narcissistic flare.

In the inverted Marble Gallery is a room with a guy riding on a big dragon skeleton bouncing across the floor. There’s also a little bird walking around. When the bird sees you it runs so you have to be quick but kill that thing until it drops the Rune Sword. At least I think it’s called the Rune Sword. It launches out a really long distance and you don’t have to stop moving to attack with it.

When you find the Sword of the Dawn start throwing hadoukens like crazy to summon tons of light warriors to your aid. To s of fun to have there. They aren’t powerful though.

It needs to be HARDER!

Equipping all the Alucart Items gives you a large Luck Boost and changes your status to ‘alucart’. :)

Good luck!

Subweapons – I completely agree about axes. They hit a large portion of enemies outside of melee range, and are dirt cheap to fire.

Inventory screen – Thanks for the explanation. I had been going into each slot expecting to be able to auto sort there; doing so only allows you to move items about manually.

Familiars – I forgot about the sword. I haven’t found it just yet, but I’m sure to come across it pretty soon. The level bonuses sound pretty useful. I used the fairy for a little while, it did point me towards a couple secret passages that I would have overlooked otherwise, and helped me in the inverted clock tower, healing me from the petrification inflicted by the Medusa heads that are just everywhere. The bat does some minor damage that can useful against low hp enemies that stay out of melee range like imps, gremlins, and fleas. Basically all the little enemies that impede navigation and are generally a pain in the ass to have around.

Weapons – I actually found the Alucart sword some time ago and found it surprisingly lacking at that point, much less as a viable endgame weapon……kidding, kidding. :) All of those sound useful, hopefully I’ll run into a few more of those playing on luck mode than I would otherwise. I’ll try out whatever I come across and post if I find more that seem particularly effective.

I’m going to hopefully have the game cleared tonight, then will go back for whatever I need for 200.6% throughout the rest of the week here and there.

There are some great weapons that drop from enemies, but near the end of the game the Alucard Sword is easy to find, guaranteed, and excellent. My personal favourite until that is the Runesword, which drops from the Dodo Bird in the Inverse Foyer. It is a sword that is thrown forward in a huge arc, and then swoops back. It’s a great weapon. There is also a samurai blade which creates a whirl of damage in front of Alucard–also useful, obviously!

The beams from the center of the Catacombs boss can be predicted–they have an animation which shows they are about to deploy, and they fire in predictable places.

(This reminds me that the best subweapon in the game is the Axe, and it is really teh only thing that anyone should ever use.)

There is a way to autosort the inventory. If you press Square or Triangle when you are on the slot you want to sort, it will bring up a sort menu. You can also reorder the categories on that menu. I always do this to put short swords at the top, then swords, clubs, fist weapons, two handed swords, thrown items, food, and medicine last of all. Then, to resort after you have the list the way you want, hit triangle x or square x. I cannot remember exactly, but you’ll figure it out.

Unfortunately weapons and such cannot be sold. Only gems.

Best familiar is the sword because, at L.50, you can use it as a weapon. It gains new skills and, at L.70, becomes very useful indeed as it starts attacking with very straight, direct attacks. Otherwise, I’d stick with the fairy. The sword power increases with sword level, by the bye.

Speaking of the catacombs, I really like the shadows cast in the background of Alucard and the enemies through the fiery tunnels. The while game makes nice usage of foreground and background scenery, but I liked this in particular. I also noticed your color in bat form depends on
what color your cape is.

While progressing through the inverted chapel, one of the archer enemies on the mechanized stair lifts dropped a Vorpal Blade, my new favorite weapon. It’s faster, slightly stronger, and has better range than the jewel knuckles, and can also hit enemies slightly above your horizontal plane, which can really come in handy. I will most likely be using it throughout the rest of the game. Not sure if it’s a low drop rate that I just happened to get incredibly lucky on, but if it’s not then it’s well worth farming for it.

Minor complaint – I wish there were a means to autosort the inventory. I’d experiment with different weapons more often if it want such a pain to relocate my original equipment when switching back. I don’t like having to sift through a bunch of food and disposable weapons to look for a specific sword. Selling or just dropping unwanted weapons and armor would be nice too.

By the time the inverted castle is reached, all of the needed navigation skills and forms are acquired, so progression is much more straightforward, even if the enemies are somewhat tougher.

Any favorite familiars? I tend to stick with the bat.

In the royal chapel, basically it is down to the colour of the clothes the lady is wearing. One lady stabs you, the other cries for a bit and leaves you some grapes. If you see the wrong lady approach, hop out of the chair. The same thing is true with the two priests. I forget what iitems they all drop, but none of them are particular noteworthy.

You’re quite right about difficulty. The one major thing is that in luck mode it is good to stack luck and go for enemies which drop useful items. This requires some knowledge of enemy drops of course, or a list telling you what to go for. It’s clearly nonessential. For the most part, the struggle does come from low hp totals and low defence to attacks/ Galamoth is difficult on hard mode for this reason–he has so much hp, you will do even less damage, and he will do even more.

The Shaft/Richter fight ix really, really easy. The difficulty comes in going to the inverse castle where there is a sudden jump in enemy strength. This is what you should be most aware of when you cross over–hurry to the save point in the castle keep and remember that if you go into the clock tower you’ll be walking directly into a boss fight (there are bosses in all the usual places).

Apologies for typos, I am typing this without glasses so I cannot see what I am writing.

I should be on to the inverted castle tonight.

Once you have the Sword familiar, you can do the sword brothers spell. (Look up on the internet how to do Alucard’s spells, since I don’t want to try and work out how to type the button directions here.)

You will need at least one salable ring. Go to the Librarian and sell all but one of your most valuable ring. Then exit the librarian menu and move a bit to the right, but in the same room.

Now, perform the sword brothers spell. As soon as you do that, go talk to the Librarian whilst the sword brothers spell animation is still going on. Go to the sell gem menu. Now, press start. You can now go to the game menu despite being in the librarian menu, which is not normally possible.

Equip the one gem that you had left. Now, exit the game menu, but do not exit the Librarian’s sell gem menu. You’ll note that the gem is still up for sale on the Librarian’s sell gem menu, even although you have it equipped. Sell the gem. Exit out of the librarian’s menu and go back in. You now have 255 of that gem, and can sell as many as you need to hit the money cap of 999,999. Always leave yourself one gem so that you can repeat this process as necessary.

This is a really easy glitch to do, as you see. It also means you can get the 500K Duplicator without running in and out of that room in the coliseum where the 1K gold bag is.

One more thing: this doesn’t work on any non-PS1 version of the game. So, it will work on the PSOne classics version on PSN, but it will not work on the DXC version for PSP. Enjoy!

Some things: first, I had forgotten just how short this game is. It is really short. I completed each castle in a single sitting during an evening’s play.

A complaint, albeit a very minor complaint: the music in the inverted castle is (in general) less well-written than that in the normal castle. And there’s less of it, oddly. In the normal castle, every area has its own music. But in the inverted castle, several areas each share the same music. I expect that, like the menu, this was down to a matter of time. The inverse music is not bad by any measure, but the tracks in the normal castle feel more polished.

A balance issue: Galamoth has far more HP than the final boss and (assuming you don’t know tricks for either boss) is harder than the last boss as well. Dracula only having one form is, also, a bit of a sadness (although you do get to fight him twice at the very beginning, I suppose, but you cannot lose that fight).

Now some tricks: Galamoth is super-easy if you have found the Beryl Circlet, which restores HP on lightning damage. If you know where to stand when fighting him, Galamoth will just do his lightning storm (not the circular bolts) attack over and over again, which will restore your HP. Basically, if you are standing somewhere and he starts doing lightning storm, continue to stand there. You should be able to hit him with your sword as he uses lightning storm and because that is all he will do, and it heals you, you’ll be invincible. Otherwise, this is an annoying fight because Galamoth has a lot of hp (12,000 in fact), and so it takes a lot of hits to kill him, in which time you’ll be taking damage from his attacks.

Dracula is ridiculously easy. You can just sit in the left hand corner of the screen and hit him with your sword over and over again. He’ll die before you do unless you are very underlevelled and underequipped.

One final note: the music that plays during the credits (“I Am the Wind”) is genuinely terrible. This is not a perception which has arisen over time–it was terrible in 1997 as well. Remember to stick through it and get back to the title screen by pressing Start so that your file will be noted CLEAR.

Having a clear file means that you can play through the game as Richter by creating a file named RICHTER. You can also start with the Axe Armor by creating an AXEARMOR file. Richter mode is quite difficult by comparison with Alucard, although it is easier in a few other respects.

Having a clear file allows some other things: all cutscenes and dialogue can now be skipped by pressing Start. Time attack becomes available, showing you how long it took you to kill bosses. The sound test becomes available at the Librarian. And the Librarian’s entire inventory is available for sale at once. The Librarian will also now sell the Duplicator, which allows infinite use of items without their consumption (opening up still other ways to play through the game). In the DXC version (and other such releases) of the game, Maria will become playable by creating a file called MARIA.

I recommend giving Richter mode a try (and Maria mode if you’re playing a version of the game where you can use her).

This game is too, too short! It is a wonderful game, but there needs to be more of it. Much more. Thank God for Bloodstained!

The controller pattern for it is a bit wonky but, with practise, you should be able to pull it off consistently. I use it instead of potions.

Another secret!: In the clock tower, there are gears along the walls which, when struck, make a clank noise. However, they occasionally make a click noise. Hit them until they click and then do not hit them again. If you do this to all of them (there are 4 or 5 spread across two, tall rooms), they will open a secret passage at the bottom left of one of the tall rooms.

This works in the inverted castle, as well. If you accidentally hit one and move it from click to clank, keep hitting it over and over again until it clicks once more.

Also, I love the amount of customization this game affords you. It’s so forward thinking in that regard. Even the powerups, banal as some might be, can be toggled on or off for… no reason. Preference. Challenge. Any reason. But importantly to me, the controls can be changed. I think the defaults are nice, but I’ve found it works best for me when I map Right Hand to R1 and Left Hand (shield) to L1. Otherwise I find it difficult to swap quickly between a shield and by sword. Admittedly I don’t use the shield very much, but it’s nice to have it more accessible than not.

I went into the Gaibon/Slogra fight at level 4. I died a couple times due to careless mistakes – not much margin for error on hard mode. I won by using the environment to my advantage, fighting Gaibon on the left platforms, moving about as needed but staying off the floor. Once he’s gone, Slogra is easy – duck, swipe, move in, repeat.

The score is wonderful and plays no small part in setting the tone in each area. Definitely one of my favorite soundtracks, love the boss music.

Unfortunately, there are still a handful of PS1 classics that won’t work on the Vita. Silent Hill is right next to SotN on my download list, and it doesn’t give me an option to download it on the Vita.

Also, obligatory reiteration about FF7 remake, etc., etc.