7. The Inverted Castle (Castlevania Symphony of the Night)

(Originally posted July 17, 2023)

A collection of simple thoughts on last levels, final dungeons, and endgame zones.
Spoilers for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Table of Contents

Context: Richter Belmont - the player character of the previous game - appears to be the dark lord of Castlevania and the final boss. However, if Alucard scours the entire castle from top to bottom, he can uncover the evil wizard controlling Richter. Defeating it allows passage to Dracula's true lair, hidden within a dark mirror of the castle floating in the sky.

The Inverted Castle is one of those things that's a really cool idea in theory, but is just kind of dull in practice.

Like, holy shit, the map is twice as big as you thought! Whoa!! Except... you've already unlocked every mobility option just to get here. There's none of that Metroidvania exploration with keys and locks because you have the entire key ring. Add that all the meticulously placed platforms are all on the ceiling now, and you're basically just using Bat Form to fly everywhere anyway. Bit of a slog just to get around.

The "Classicvania" games usually have a boss rush against the original Castlevania bosses (Giant Bat, Mummy, Medusa, Business Frankenstein, and Death) in the penultimate or final level, and these are indeed mandatory boss fights to open the way to Dracula. Each one drops one of the relics from Simon's Quest, which is a decent reference and also a way to ensure some stat boosts, since the level up pace has probably slowed down a lot by this point.

Notable optional bosses include big honkin' crocodile man Galamoth, who is either super tough or comically easy depending on how hard you're willing to cheese the game; a second doppelganger Alucard who inflicts some uncommon status effects; and a group battle against zombie clones of Alucard's buddies from Dracula's Curse: Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and the oft-ignored Grant Danasty. It took almost ten years for Grant to re-appear (again as a zombie boss) in Portrait of Ruin, we simply don't talk about Judgement, and he's conspicuously absent from the Netflix animated series. Grant erasure is real.

The worst part about the Inverted Castle isn't doing a boring lap to hit all the bosses, though. Symphony of the Night tracks your map percentage; that is, how many of the "rooms" you've directly entered. If you want the best ending, you need 196% map completion, with each castle giving approximately 100% (the maximum possible is 200.6%). It only proffers a minor change to the final cutscene, but if you're a habitual completionist, prepare to suffer.

_{(I find the most easily missed tiles are in the inverted catacombs, where you have to use the wolf form to swim up into the nooks and crannies of the ceiling pools. Just for the record.)}