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aka: Symphony Of The Night

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"This castle is a creature of Chaos. With each rebirth, it takes a new form."
Alucard

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Devil Castle Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight in Japan), a PlayStation game released in 1997 (and later re-released in Japan with extra content on the Sega Saturn), has since become regarded by critics and fans alike as one of, if not the absolute best game in the Castlevania series. Symphony helped coin the term "Metroidvania", provided the earliest known entry in the series to avert the Excuse Plot trope (well, first released outside of Japan), and contained a number of oft-repeated lines about the nature of mankind that helped seal its place in gaming history.

The game begins in 1792 with Richter Belmont banishing Dracula back to Hell. Four years later, Richter disappears — and a year after that, he summons Castlevania in an attempt to resurrect the Dark Lord. The reappearance of Dracula's home causes Alucard, Dracula's half-vampire son, to awaken from a three-hundred-year slumber and enter Castlevania to figure out what drove Richter's actions. During his exploration of Castlevania, Alucard finds Maria Renard, a distant relative of the Belmont clan, who joins up with Alucard to figure out what the hell happened to Richter.

Since Metroid was on hiatus at the time, Symphony introduced a generation of new gamers to an innovative gameplay style: Alucard could wander to any point on the map that he wished, but he had to find specific relics to explore new areas. Most of these relics had bosses guarding them, which forced players to level up to increase Alucard's stats. Alucard could also find equipment to change his attacks or cast spells. Anyone who's played any Castlevania game after this one will likely find this formula familiar — back in 1997, however, this game became a Killer App for the PlayStation (whether Sony liked it or not) and it was this title that cemented Castlevania's place in the zeitgeist for an entire generation of gamers.

Symphony of the Night had two major Updated Rereleases:

  • The Sega Saturn version (released only in Japan) added a number of exclusive areas, new music, two new bosses, and three playable characters available at the start.
  • The PSP game Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles included Symphony to round out the Rondo saga. The Chronicles version included its own additions such as a new Secret Character, and redone script and voice acting. This updated version of Symphony and the original version of Rondo were re-released for the PlayStation 4 as Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood, featuring HD and 4K support, added vibration feedback, optional background borders, and full trophies support. The PSP version of Symphony was also released for iOS and Android devices on March 4, 2020, one day prior to the Netflix animated series' Season 3 premiere. In addition to the PSP's changes, the mobile port introduces onscreen virtual controls and a "continue" feature which allows players to quickly load the last room they entered.

Gamers seeking the original PlayStation version of Symphony can find it on Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and on PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3, PSP and PlayStation Vita.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow duology acts as a pseudo-direct sequel to Symphony, with Alucard making an appearance in both games. However, it's impossible to go into it further without spoiling the entire plot of the games.


What is a trope? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough descriptions, have some examples!

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  • 100% Completion: While the game doesn't track unique item collection (aside from the Relics menu), each save file tracks what percentage of the castle's rooms have been explored, up to 100%. This score can then be increased to 200.6% in the reverse castle. By exploiting bugs, you can more than double that.
  • Absurdly High Level Cap: The maximum level is 99, and a typical endgame level for the player is around 50. The hardest enemies in the game are level 60, and the experience you gain from them sharply drops with each level you gain until you only get one point of experience. It takes absurd amounts of grinding to reach level 99. After level 80, all enemies give 1 EXP, meaning that you are actually better off fighting numerous weak enemies such as bats or Spectral Swords (since each puppet item counts as a separate enemy).
  • Action Prologue: The opening level is a reproduction of the final boss fight from Rondo of Blood; Richter can't lose it.
  • Adaptational Context Change: Unlike how it's portrayed in Symphony of the Night, the aforementioned boss fight in Rondo of Blood did not actually open with any dialogue between Richter and Dracula; they both went on the attack immediately. It was only after Dracula's defeat that they actually debated their philosophies with each other before Dracula gracefully accepted his demise while promising that he'd return someday, a sharp contrast to his much quicker death in the Symphony of the Night opening where he simply spouts an anguished This Cannot Be!
  • Advanced Movement Technique: The Shield Dash technique is used to move faster than normal. It involves doing a backdash, then Lag Canceling it into holding out your shield, then cancelling the shield into another backdash, bypassing the brief cooldown that backdashing normally has.
  • After Boss Recovery: Rather than receiving an orb that ends the level as in previous games, Alucard receives an item that raises his max HP and heals him completely whenever a boss is defeated.
  • Agent Peacock: Alucard is a swishy, long-haired Bishōnen who absolutely kicks ass in his Combat Stilettos, Badass Longcoat, Classy Cravat and Waistcoat of Style. He's an extremely powerful half-vampire to boot. Zig-zagged in the original translation, which gives him a deep and commanding voice that somehow fits him like a glove despite his seemingly-delicate mien.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Dracula's defeat in the ending of the game. After Alucard defeats him, he expresses shock, and upon learning the reason for his defeat, he seems to have an epiphany about the cost of his soul (quoting the book of Matthew), and then asks Alucard what Lisa's (Dracula's second wife and Alucard's mother) last words were, and upon learning them, develops regret that his attempts at avenging her ended up meaning that he didn't fulfill her last wish.
  • All Swords Are the Same: Averted. Of the approximately 60 bladed weapons in the game, at least half of them have significant differences in animations, reach, status effects, or special moves than any other weapon in the game.
  • All There in the Manual: The command for the first of Alucard's spells, Dark Metamorphosis, is listed in the manual. Since it's a healing spell that makes Alucard replenish 8HP each time you draw blood from an enemy, aside from being a savant it is one of two reasonable options to defeat Doppleganger (the other is equipping the statistically weaker Red Rust and preying on his weakness to the Curse Status Effect).
  • All Your Powers Combined: The animation for the Alucard Shield's special move shows all the shields joining forces, even if you don't have them.
  • Alucard: Alucard is the main character of the game. His given name is Adrian, but he took the alias Alucard to express that he opposes Dracula, his father.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The background of the final battle is a vortex of swirly colors.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: The American cover uses a silhouette of the Abbey on top of Mont Saint-Michel (which looks absolutely nothing like the castle in game), probably because the publishers thought that the image of the Bishōnen Alucard that appears on the Japanese and European covers would be a turn off to macho American gamers.
  • Anachronism Stew:
    • Automated high-speed elevators didn't exist in 1797.
    • Neither did a lot of the food items found, like pizza in a delivery box with the item description "New York Style" when mass Italian immigration to New York was all but nonexistent, or the "US Grade A" hamburger when the US wouldn't even have a Department of Agriculture until the mid-19th Century.
    • Dracula quotes from Anti-Memoirs, a book by Andre Malraux ("What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.") that wasn't published until 1967.
    • The Bone Musket enemies are seen loading and unloading their "muskets" from the breech with self-contained metallic cartridges, an innovation that wouldn't come to be until almost 50 years after the game is set.
  • And I Must Scream: The fate of the Succubus upon Alucard killing her. "Death in the dream world will set your soul wandering for eternity, demon." Though she was asking for it, as Alucard said before the battle that she deserved a fate worse than death, her response being, more or less, "bring it on".
  • Animated Armor: The axe-flinging armors are back yet again. There also bigger ones that are swinging huge swords, and new varieties that throw bombs, rocks, or use a spinning disc.
  • Animorphism: One of the abilities Alucard can find during his adventure is to turn into a wolf; another is to turn into a bat.
  • Another Side, Another Story: Richter Mode and the additional Maria Mode in the PSP version let you play through castle as the side characters.
  • Anti-Grinding: The experience you gain depends on the difference between your level and the enemy's level. The EXP modifier is exponential, so the benefit of repeated grinding against low level enemies erodes very quickly. However, fighting high level enemies has the opposite effect; the level 60 Guardians near the final boss can yield a level for every two of them you kill (assuming you can kill them). This trope wins in the end, however. Once you reach the 70s, even Guardians give only one EXP per kill, and any further leveling is best done against Zombies, Mermen, and other constantly respawning enemies that pose no threat.
  • Arrange Mode:
    • There is a hidden Luck Mode that gives Alucard maxed-out luck at the expense of his other stats.
    • Beating the game allows you to play as Richter, who can explore the castle at will with his advanced movement and also has access to every sub-weapon and item crashes for each one. However, the game ends when he fights Shaft instead of going on to the final boss.
    • Both the Saturn port and Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles have a Maria Mode, though both play differently from each other. The Saturn version of Maria plays much like Richter, but with a triple-jump and several spells invoking The Four Gods, including one that makes her invincible for 40 seconds. The Dracula X Chronicles version plays more like her Rondo of Blood incarnation, with The Four Gods and Guardian Knuckle acting as her subweapons.
  • Artistic License – Paleontology: the enemy called Paranthropus in the English version is a huge skeleton with a hunched, gorilla-like posture and a human-like skull. The actual prehistoric genus Paranthropus was only about four feet tall, stood upright like a human, and had a heavy, gorilla-like skull. Later localizations would use the more straightforward name from the Japanese version: "Big Skeleton."
  • Art-Shifted Sequel: The game took the series in a completely new direction visually thanks to art and character design by Ayami Kojima, who brought an elegant, moody, and gothic aesthetic with lots of intricate detail and distinctly Bishōnen male characters. Kojima would return to provide the art and designs for most of the subsequent titles, but with intermittent exceptions that cause the series's overall style to seemingly turn on a dime.
  • As the Good Book Says...: Dracula quotes Matthew 16:26 upon his defeat:
    Alucard: You have been doomed ever since you lost the ability to love.
    Dracula: Ha—Ah...sarcasm. "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?" Matthew 16:26, I believe.
  • Ascended Extra: Alucard himself, who was merely one of Trevor's optional sidekicks in Castlevania III. This game not only promoted him to protagonist status, but also gave him his now-iconic character design and made him a recurring character in subsequent entries. Shaft and Death are also more prominent in the game's story, in contrast to Rondo of Blood, where they were merely bosses (Death himself was already a Recurring Boss since Castlevania by this point, but had no involvement in the series' storyline up to this game).
  • Ashes to Ashes: The Vibhuti sub-weapon allows the player to throw sacred ashes that damage enemies. Richter's Item Crash with said sub-weapon creates a huge cloud of ash that damages enemies above him.
  • As Long as There Is Evil: Dracula constantly gives this speech in every game he appears in; however, he implies he's tired of his role in this one. This weariness is what leads to his (as of yet undepicted) final defeat in 1999 (though there were a half-dozen more resurrections between this one and that one).
  • Attack Drone: Alucard's familiars float around him and attack enemies.
  • Attack of the Monster Appendage: Before fighting Scylla, you first fight one of her snake-tentacles in a separate boss room.
  • Attractive Bent Species: If the Bat familiar is active, a cartoon heart flies out of it and it starts to follow Alucard upon turning himself into one; at higher levels, more bats will join in and they all shoot out a fireball whenever Alucard does in bat form. When Alucard turns back into human form, a prominent "?" appears over the head of each bat.
  • Audio Adaptation: The radio drama Nocturne of Recollection is meant to be the sequel to Symphony of the Night. It's available on CD in Japanese, but has been fully translated by fans.
  • Autobots, Rock Out!:
    • The game opens with a subdued choral theme, and the title sequence features ominous, orchestral opening music. Then the game begins with a replay of the last battle between Richter and Dracula in Rondo of Blood. The music employs driving, wailing electric guitars. But only for a short time: Dracula's music is the epic orchestral music, remixed from Rondo.
    • Inverted with the rest of the game. There are two standard boss themes: a face-melting metal style one, and a more orchestrated one. The orchestrated one becomes more common throughout the game, and many of the later bosses have it, giving it a tone of "important boss music" (key characters like Death and Shaft have this theme). Dracula has another different orchestral theme altogether.
  • Auto-Revive: The Fairy familiars will automatically use a Life Apple to resurrect you if you have one in your inventory.
  • Award-Bait Song: The Solemn Ending Theme "I Am the Wind", which was excised from the PSP remake and the Xbox Live Arcade version (in a later update) due to copyright reasons. It was replaced with a new track by Michiru Yamane herself (Mournful Symphony/Nocturne) and the ending song from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (Admiration of the Clan), respectively.
  • Background Boss: The final fight against Dracula has him sitting on his dragonlike throne while various appendages from it attack you.
  • Back to Front: Played with; the first level is Richter's "final level" from when he originally confronted Dracula in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. To this effect, not only are you powered up by this point, but Dracula himself has a One-Winged Angel form in the fight. Of course, some time after Castlevania was destroyed, Shaft succeeded in his attempt to manipulate Richter and use him to resurrect both Castlevania and Dracula himself.
  • Back Tracking: Being a Metroidvania, there are plenty of unreachable places to force you to return to the past areas. The reverse castle mostly drops this, since you enter it with every navigation ability already unlocked.
  • Badass Cape: Capes are one of Alucard's equipment slots, and many of them are very flashy, especially the Twilight Cloak/Midnight Mantle.
  • Badass in Distress: Prior to the events of the game, Richter got captured and Brainwashed, motivating Maria Renard (whom he rescued previously) and Alucard to rescue him. Upon being so, even though he didn't come back into action again, he is later marked as the strongest Belmont, so much that even memories of him from the whip could give Jonathan Morris a good dose of schooling.
  • Badass Longcoat: Alucard wears his signature black-and-gold frock.
  • Bag of Spilling: A variation on this. In the very beginning of the game, Alucard starts with a supreme set of gear, mostly comprised of heirlooms that he inherited from his bloodline. When he runs into Death a couple of rooms later, however, he is chastised for defying his father's wishes, and the entire set of gear is confiscated. He can recover it by progressing to the endgame, but with the game's robust equipment system, it's not exactly necessary to complete the game.
  • Battle Theme Music: There is "Festival of Servants" for normal boss battles, "Death Ballad" for major boss battles like Death or Shaft, "Enchanted Banquet" for Medusa and Succubus, "Dance of Illusions" for Dracula in the intro, "Blood Relations" for Richter (and in the PSP version, Maria), and "Black Banquet" for the Final Boss fight against Dracula again.
  • The Beastmaster: Owl Knights are accompanied by their namesake companion, and become very pissed if you kill it first.
  • Beelzebub: Acts as a boss, appearing as a giant rotting corpse suspended by hooks and chains, aided by massive flies.
  • Berserk Button: Unless you want Alucard to give you a Fate Worse than Death, trying to lure him over to the dark side by playing with his memories of his mother is a terrible idea.
  • Big "WHAT?!": Alucard has this reaction if he's poisoned, cursed or turned into stone. And when he wears the Axe Armor. And in some cutscenes as well. Also, amusingly, if you shift back to Alucard's normal form in a space too small for him to stand. Clearly he wasn't expecting to get stuck in a crouch.
  • Bilingual Bonus: An example of the term "newhalf" (a Japanese slang word that means a transgender female) appearing in videogames is the Frozen Half, an ice witch described as such.
  • Bittersweet Ending: All of the four endings, two of which are particularly depressing. The two bad ones have the legendary Richter killed off tragically, without letting Alucard be able to see the true mastermind behind all the madness. The other two endings, which are good ones, have Alucard break the curse from Richter successfully, thus saving his life, and they also have Alucard confront the true mastermind, Shaft, as well as Dracula. However, even after preventing the disaster from further poisoning the rest of Europe, Alucard chooses to seal himself again, knowing his blood is cursed with darkness. In the Golden Ending, Maria goes after him.
  • Bizarrchitecture: The reverse castle, which is Dracula's Castle flipped upside-down with everything else staying the same, which leads to gravity-defying pools of water.
  • Black Blood: The Scarecrow enemies have green blood instead of red, the only such example in the entire game, in fact. Perhaps done as a minor concession to good taste, since the enemy — a male or half-naked female corpse, gorily impaled on a pole — is already rather gruesome even with green blood.
  • Blackout Basement: The Spikes of Doom-lined tunnel that must be crossed with the bat form. Said bat form needs to be upgraded with a sonar ability that will allow you to see in this dark passageway. Once you cross it and step on a lit-up platform at the end, the entire room lights up permanently.
  • Blade Spam: The Spam Attack from the Crissaegrim sword, which unleashes a flurry of four strikes every time you swing it. It's fast enough to be the most damaging weapon in the game despite having nowhere near the highest attack power.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Zig-zagged.
    • The prologue is called "Final Stage: Bloodlines", (incorrectly) referring to the Sega Genesis game, Castlevania: Bloodlines. However, instead of fixing it in later releases, the final stage of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood was changed to "Bloodlines" once the game was released in English, even though it was "Rondo of Blood" in the original Japanese, thus making the Bloodlines name retroactively correct.
    • Also, Dracula's full name in-game being "Dracula Vlad Tepes" may appear at first glance to be an overly literal translation, failing to take Japanese name order (family name first) into account, and also considering that in real life, "Tepes" was a Red Baron-style nickname for Vlad Dracula ("Vlad son of [Vlad] Dracul") meaning "impaler". But it appears this was always the intention, as Belmonts are consistently named in Western order even in Japanese, and "Tepes" is made Alucard's surname, and thus Dracula's, in the supplementary material.
  • Blown Across the Room: Some attacks will cause intense knockback to Alucard, especially if his defense is too low. This is required to skip the cutscene in which Death steals Alucard's equipment. Knockback strength is based on the percentage of your maximum health lost per attack. The skip glitch works because Luck Mode Alucard has a tiny amount of HP, and the enemy used deals enough damage to wipe out all but 1-4 HP, which results in massive knockback (if done in the opposite direction, it'll carry you all the way back out to the castle gate).
  • Boisterous Bruiser: The Sword and Devil familiars tend to yell with gusto as they tear through enemies. "SLICE!" "DIE!"
  • Bonus Dungeon: The Floating Catacombs, which is home to Galamoth. It's completely optional, since there are no Vlad relics up there, but you'll likely stumble across it in the course of hunting down Death, since it's just beyond him.
  • Bookcase Passage: A room is hidden behind a rotating bookcase in the Long Library. It identifiable by the fact that it is the only bookcase directly in your way (and made with 3D graphics), whereas the others reside in the background.
  • Books That Bite: There are two varieties of book enemy in the Long Library. The first type merely flies at you and tries to slam into you. The second type opens up and tries to skewer you with an array of magically summoned weapons.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • The game can be beaten with any weapon and set up, but for speedrunners, the best weapons to use early on fall squarely into this. It's your unarmed attack or the various dagger/knuckle weapons you can get. They don't do very much damage compared to your other weapons (especially not your unarmed attack), but the rate of fire is so fast that this is seen less as being underpowered and more as being balanced, as they still outdamage other setups through sheer damage per second. Bosses get absolutely shredded in record time. This does take some skill to do effectively however.
    • Shield Rod combos are frequently seen as awesome and practical, being very powerful moves with flashy effects and prominent, stylish animations. But the best Shield Rod combo and one of the best set ups in the game is Shield Rod + Alucard Shield, which simply makes your shield damaging with a drain effect. Sure, the absolutely insane damage both on a single hit and per second is amazing, but you're still just holding your shield up until something dies.
  • Boss-Altering Consequence:
    • Inverted with the opening boss: if Richter can beat Dracula without taking any damage, then Alucard will start the game off with higher stats than normal.
    • You can beat the game if you reach Dracula's Castle Keep and fight its new master, Richter Belmont, netting you one of its endings. However, if Alucard meets Maria in a certain location, he will be given the Holy Glasses, which are useful against Richter, since they reveal a dark green orb floating nearby, which is the real target of this boss battle. Doing so opens up the second half of the game: the Inverted Castle.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Many of the tougher enemies in the game show up in early areas to act as boss-like enemies, becoming more standard later on when Alucard is sufficiently leveled up, such as the Armor Lord in the Outer Wall and the Ctulhu in the Marble Gallery. The biggest example is the Guardian; only four exist in the game, two each in the rooms surrounding the center of the Reverse Castle, and they're unfeasible to fight until you have endgame equipment and levels due to their high defense and strength.
  • Boss Remix: The boss fight against Brainwashed and Crazy Richter Belmont is derived from his benign form's theme from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
  • Bragging Rights Reward:
    • The Gas Cloud relic. Being able to damage enemies while in the invincible mist form is very powerful, but it's guarded by Galamoth, the toughest boss in the game and one of the last you'll face due to him being at the top of the Reverse Castle. By the time you can defeat him, there won't be much left other than the final bosses and some cleanup, although the Gas Cloud does at least make it fairly easy to kill Guardians.
    • The Ruby Circlet, which converts fire damage into HP. It would have come in very handy throughout Alucard's quest since the vast majority of enemy magic attacks are fire-based, but you've already had to conquer most of the game before you can actually obtain it in the Floating Catacombs (in the same room where you find the Gas Cloud relic, no less), and by that point in a normal playthrough there's very little that can still pose a threat to you.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Happens to Richter Belmont, courtesy of Shaft.
  • Burn the Witch!: It is revealed through the Succubus-induced nightmare that Alucard's mother Lisa was burnt at the stake, which inspired Dracula to destroy humanity.
  • But Now I Must Go: After saving the day, Alucard bids farewell and simply leaves in the good endings.
  • Call-Back: Two location-based ones to Rondo of Blood:
    • The Clock Tower, at its base, is an expanded recreation of its counterpart, down to both the room where Annette was kept five years prior, to the balcony where Richter got the key to said room. The room where you fought Shaft's Ghost is also where you fight Karasuman, and the corridor before that still has goodies hidden in the walls.
    • In both the Final Stage and the normal campaign, the Castle Keep has a hidden switch which drops an extendable staircase to a hidden attic, a call-back to the hidden room in Rondo of Blood that you could use to farm points and hearts. In Symphony, Alucard finds some elemental resistance and the Platinum Mail.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Done by the Devil familiar when it uses its elemental attacks. Some of Alucard's spells get in on the action, as well, which makes it all the more rewarding when you pull them off.
  • The Cameo: Konami Man sometimes appears in the File Select screen as a icon.
  • Cannot Cross Running Water: Without the right upgrade, Alucard takes damage from any water over knee height.
  • Cape Swish: The sprite animation for Alucard's cape is quite fluid, especially when turning around quickly.
  • Cape Wings: Doing a double jump briefly flips Alucard's cape up in the back; with the trailing animation that activates when he jumps, this looks like wingtips.
  • Cartography Sidequest: The power of the Walk Armor increases by how much of the map you have explored, becoming the strongest armor in the game when both maps are completely filled. Percentage of the map explored also affects which of the Multiple Endings you receive.
  • Catching Some Z's: Leave Alucard sitting on a chair long enough, and he'll doze off to sleep, complete with "Z"s floating above him.
  • Cave Behind the Falls: There's a secret room behind a waterfall in the caverns under the castle.
  • Central Theme: Bloodlines. How do our bloodlines affect who we are and the choices we make? What do we do when we come in conflict with it?
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: All equipment can be changed in the pause menu instantaneously. Consumable items, however, require you to equip them and use them outside of it.
  • Chaos Architecture: This is the first game in the series to offer an explanation as to why the castle changes stucture each time Dracula is revived, with Alucard explaining that its chaotic nature causes it to shift.
  • Character Portrait: Portrait artwork is used for the characters in the dialogue scenes, which became a series staple afterwards.
  • Cherry Tapping:
    • There's a move for Alucard, the Drop Kick, which essentially mimics Mario's "jump on something's head to kill it" trick. And it lets you repeat said move infinitely.
    • The fist weapons, or just plain ol' punching unarmed. They can hit literally as fast as you can mash the attack key (with the exception of the Blue Knuckle, which is kind of crap) and have an insane crit chance, offsetting their very short range. So you can, quite literally, Punch Out Cthulhu. Or, you know, Death. Or even The Big Man Himself!
  • Cherubic Choir: The theme of the Royal Chapel, "Requiem of the Gods," consists of this trope, bells, and organ music.
  • Chest Monster: The fake Save Point. In one room is a real save point and, just across the hall, is another room that looks like a different-colored save point, but will in fact trigger a "nightmare" cutscene and a battle with a succubus.
  • Chewing the Scenery: Dracula is always acting the hell out of his lines, but he goes above and beyond for the final boss fight.
    Dracula: Behold my true form, and DESPAAAAAAAAIR!
  • Choice of Two Weapons: The game lets Alucard equip a weapon in each hand, with a separate button assigned to each. Handy for areas where enemies have varying weaknesses as it keeps the player from having to constantly hit up the subscreen.
  • Classical Mythology: Various Public Domain Characters from Greek mythology make appearances, including Scylla, the Minotaur, and Medusa.
  • Clockworks Area: The ever-present Clock Tower level, which takes most of its structure from the corresponding penultimate level of Rondo of Blood.
  • Collector of Forms: Alucard has suffered from a Bag of Spilling during his centuries-long sleep and has to relearn his old skills — including the ability to transform into a bat — by gathering artefacts from across the castle. Along the way, he also learns the ability to transform into a wolf and a cloud of mist by collecting other relics, while all three forms can gain additional powers from even more artefacts in the later areas of the game.
  • Collision Damage: Simply touching an enemy sends Alucard reeling back. If his defense is high enough, he'll simply flinch.
  • Combat Stilettos: Alucard wears high-heeled boots. While unequipped, you can press down and attack while falling and he'll do a kick.
  • Combination Attack: In their boss fights, Gaibon picks up Slogra to create new attacks, and Werewolf and Minotaur sync up their final attacks from Rondo of Blood when both are alive.
  • The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The original PS1 translation tells that you must use the Gold and Silver Rings at the Clock Tower, but the right room to use them is the central clock room in the Marble Gallery. The port included in The Dracula X Chronicles changes the hint to be more accurate.
  • Confessional: There's a confessional in the Royal Chapel, where Alucard can take a seat on either side.
    • Sitting in the chair on the left side causes the ghost of a priest to appear; if he is wearing blue, he will nod his head as though listening to confession, cross himself, and disappear, dropping the grape juice item. Alternately, if he is wearing gray, he'll laugh, pull the curtain closed, and try to impale Alucard with a half-dozen pointy objects through the screen.
    • Sitting on the right makes a ghostly woman appear and sit on the left. She will mime a tearful confession and disappear when Alucard gets up. Or laugh, pull the curtain closed, and try to impale Alucard with a spear through the screen. Confessional ghosts are weird like that.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • The entire second half of the game. Aside from the villains of Rondo of Blood, Alucard fights the original five bosses of Castlevania (to claim the five body parts from Simon's Quest), copies of the other protagonists from Dracula's Curse, and a more imposing version of the final boss from Kid Dracula.
    • Combined with Mythology Gag when Maria mentions the name Belmont and Alucard thinks of Trevor, complete with an 8-bit sprite taken from Castlevania III.
    • The name needed to begin a Luck Mode file in this game is the same code that, if entered as the name when making a new file in Rondo, unlocked all stages in the Stage Select from the start: X-X!V''Q.
  • Cool Chair:
    • Dracula's monster form at the end of the game is a monstrous throne with wings, arms and shapes such as skulls and bats growing out of it, of all things. And yes, he does sit with crossed legs while driving the thing.
    • In a case of Like Father, Like Son, Alucard can sit in chairs through the game and this became a recurring thing through the series. As part of the developers' high attention to detail, he'll fall asleep if left there for long enough and the Fairy familiar will sit on his shoulder if she's active. His posture also changes when confessing to a ghost priest in a booth.
  • Cool Sword: Most of Alucard's available weapons are swords, with many having cool effects and appearances: the Sword of Dawn allows you to summon weak minions, the Mourneblade returns health to you every time you hit something, the Marsil generates a small firestorm, the Masamune lets you teleport forward and spam a storm of blades, and much more.
  • Corrupted Character Copy: Grotesque parodies of The Wizard of Oz characters appear in the Forbidden Library: the Tin Man is a heartless robot, the Scarecrow is a zombie on a stake looking for a brain, and the Cowardly Lion is a Beast Man that tries to avoid Alucard.
  • Costume Porn: Ayami Kojima's art features some very detailed clothing. For example, the inside of Alucard's coat has an extreme amount of detail.
  • Cowardly Lion: The Lion enemy would rather slide away from Alucard than fight him.
  • Cranium Chase: There's an enemy called Yorick, which is a skeleton chasing his own head... and continually stumbling into it and kicking it like a soccer ball.
  • Critical Hit: The game stole many RPG statistical features. Critical hits are a part of this, and rates of making them are dependent on the equipped weapon as well as the character's Luck stat. However, critical hits are usually so rare that the developers did not think of the effects they would have on the demo sequences. There is a place where Alucard can view demos showing how to defeat bosses, and some of these bosses have multiple parts. If a critical hit causes a boss to transform earlier than expected, the recorded controls will no longer match the boss's movements. This usually causes the demo Alucard to die, and if he dies, you die.
  • Cthulhumanoid: Malachi, a flying demon with an octopus-head. It seems that it was supposed to be named Cthulu outright (a similar demon enemy is named "Ctulhu", who was renamed to "Devil" for later games, suggesting a name-swapping issue), but the Malachi name stuck for the rest of the series.
  • Cut and Paste Environments: The reverse castle uses most of the same graphics as the initial areas (though many areas did get a slightly different paint job), but its positioning gives the environments a new spin.
  • Cute Witch: The cat-slinging Salomes in the Floating Catacombs.
  • Cycle of Hurting: The Spikes of Doom are not immediately lethal, but some spike pits are arranged so that you can end up bouncing from one spike to another until reduced to Ludicrous Gibs. This becomes less of a problem later in the game, as you can simply turn to mist, or pause the game and equip the Spike Breaker armor.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
    • In the Xbox LIVE Arcade re-release of the game, due to being an emulated port of the game, it changes some of the menu-related buttons around on the Xbox 360 controller despite using a similar formfactor to a DualShock 2. The game's title screen requires pressing Start to get into the File Select screen, but during gameplay it functions as Pause button for the emulation rather than bringing up the sub-menu in the PlayStation version which is instead mapped to Back, leaving the previously unmapped L2 button in the original release now serving as the map button on Left Trigger.
    • Playing as Richter or Maria immediately after playing as Alucard will take a lot of getting used to (expect to accidentally waste Hearts performing an Item Crash when you were wanting to do a back-dash). This is even worse in The Dracula X Chronicles and Requiem, as the controls for Richter and Maria aren't even the same across their respective versions of Rondo and Symphony of the Night.
  • Dance Battler: Ghost Dancers are skeletons that leap all over the place.
  • Dark Reprise: A dark version of Richter's theme plays when you battle him. It is, of course, a clue that he's being controlled.
  • Dash Attack: For Richter, inputting Up, Down, Down-Forward, Forward + Attack will allow him to perform a Blade Attack, which causes him to dash forward while brandishing his whip, dealing damage to his enemies and giving him i-frames during the attack. This maneuver can also be used in mid-air in succession, allowing him to glide over hazards if the player can successfully repeat the input command. Alucard can unlock a dash attack in the form of Wing Smash, which requires the ability to transform into a bat. While in bat form, holding down Jump, performing a 3/4 circle motion forward starting from Up, then releasing Jump on Forward will cause Alucard to dash through at high velocity and damaging enemies on contact, then reverting back to normal form afterwards. This special attack can also be extended by inputting the command in succession in certain versions of the game, but can quickly drain his MP. In the Sega Saturn version of the game, Maria can perform a flying Drop Kick by pressing Forward, Forward + Attack (this was move replaced by a Rolling Attack reminiscent to her Rondo of Blood incarnation in the PSP/Requiem port).
  • Deadly Disc: The Disc Armour enemy uses a disc on a tether to attack.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Richter's Knife item crash. What one knife can't do, a stream of hundreds can, and it lasts until manually cancelled.
  • Decoy Protagonist: The game starts with you playing as Richter Belmont in a re-enactment of the final battle of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. After you defeat Dracula, a plot dump happens and the view switches over to the real protagonist, Alucard.
  • Degraded Boss: Several bosses, like Slogra, Gaibon, and Karusuman, appear as common enemies in the inverted castle.
  • Dem Bones: The series' traditional skeletons show up everywhere throughout the game, with many new varieties. The Saturn version even has one as a boss, called the Skeleton Leader.
  • Demonic Dummy: Floating female dummies are enemies in the Marble Gallery.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • The Peeping Eye is one of the few enemies from Rondo who does not appear during the game as a fightable enemy, but it sometimes appears as a icon in the File Select screen. However, it does appear in the background, watching you as you trek through the hallway between the Marble Gallery and Outer Wall.
    • The Behemoth which chased Richter in Castlevania: Dracula X is now laying dead in the background in the coliseum.
  • Dhampyr: Alucard, son to a vampire lord and a human mother.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: In Rondo of Blood, Richter killed Shaft twice, once in his human form and once as a ghost. And yet, five years later he's alive and well, and easily takes control of a Belmont (which raises the question of why he didn't do so the first time), something not even Dracula seemed capable of doing! All because they wanted to have Alucard as the hero of the game. Then again, he may still be a ghost. If you look closely during the dialogue before you fight him, you can see that he's translucent.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Alucard gets to destroy many powerful monsters of myth throughout the castle, including ones based on Cthulhu named "Malachi" (and one other generic-looking demon is actually named "Ctulhu").
  • Difficulty Levels: Sort of. Luck Mode offers huge bonuses to luck at the cost of all of your other stats. It's unlocked by entering a cryptic series of characters for your name.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: Alucard's final foe appears to be Richter Belmont, but if he is defeated properly, the first half of the game is over and a whole new area to be explored opens.
  • Disc-One Final Dungeon: The game "ends" in the throne room. Which is where all the other Castlevanias ended, so this must be it, right? The game does end there and then if you don't figure out what you must actually do when confronting Richter, however (and you need certain gear to actually be able to do it).
  • Disc-One Nuke:
    • The Combat Knife, which is a modern, vicious-looking knife that can be found a little more than halfway through the castle, depending on the order areas are visited in. At the cost of short range, it has an attack power of almost twice what you would probably have at that point in the game, and you can attack with it much more rapidly than with most of the other weapons. It stays a viable weapon well into the inverted castle.
    • The Jewel Knuckles, which you can pick up early in the game with the aid of a hidden elevator, as long as you can get past an early Armor Lord. They have short range, but tremendous attack speed and power.
    • The Holy Sword can be found early enough, has decent power, and more importantly deals holy damage which so many enemies are owned by. However, in later versions of the game, it's only available as a drop from Vandal Swords in the Clock Tower (the initial US and EU versions had it in a hidden area in place of a familiar card), making it harder to nab.
    • The Holy Rod. It is found fairly early in the first castle, does Holy-Type damage that most late-game monsters are weak to, but it also does blunt damage that most skeletons are weak against. Only a handful of enemies are strong against blunt. Also, the rod itself has a small area of effect around the rod tip itself, especially if you do a turn attack, which makes sure that you will almost always hit your target, which is a lot more forgiving than most swords tend to be. It is a very nice weapon until you get the Sword of Dawn, Terminus Est, Crissaegrim, or Alucard Sword back. And Richter is immune to it, and it is very easy to hit Shaft's sphere with it, so you don't have to worry about accidentally killing Richter, or wounding him, causing him to Turn Red.
    • The Shield Rod/Iron Shield combo is one of the most powerful in the game. It summons a pair of swords that go forth in a straight line and destroy anything in the first castle, even bosses, in one shot. The Shield Rod is available early on, and the Iron Shield can be bought from the librarian for a manageable amount of cash.
  • Dispense with the Pleasantries: Dracula responds to Richter's Shut Up, Hannibal! with this:
    Dracula: What is a man?! A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!
  • Distressed Dude: Richter has disappeared, and Maria is looking for him.
  • Ditto Fighter: Alucard fights a duplicate of his twice: Once in the standard castle (leveled 10) and again in the inverted one (leveled 40).
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The end of the Succubus fight, at least in the original version. The Dracula X Chronicles port made her final cry sound a lot more like a death cry than a... you know.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Most of the weapons stop Alucard dead on his tracks for an attack. Some blades, like Crissaegrim and Holbein Dagger, avert it.
  • Door to Before: Many early areas are connected to later areas by shortcuts that can be opened up by reaching the other side and triggering an event, such as blowing up a wall with a cannon. Library Cards later serve this purpose as well, as they are the easiest way to return to the original castle.
  • Doppelgänger Spin: The Succubus does this as part of her attack chain, filling up the top of the screen with duplicates.
  • Double Jump: The Leap Stone gives Alucard an extra jump for mobility.
  • Downer Ending: The bad ending triggered by simply killing Richter, since he's actually innocent. There are two variations of this, depending on whether or not Alucard met up with Maria at the center of the castle. Had he done so, what results is Maria appearing quite heartbroken after learning of Richter's fate, with Alucard filled with self-doubt about what he had to do. If he did not, however, Maria is left completely absent, with Alucard reflecting and lamenting on what little he knew about Richter, even going so far as to compare the Belmont's apparent behavior to that of Dracula.
  • Down the Drain: The Underground Caverns, being filled with deep water pits and rushing waterfalls.
  • The Dragon: Shaft, who is pulling the strings behind the scenes and is the second-to-last boss in the game.
  • Dramatic Shattering: After Dracula rhetorically asks about the nature of a man and before answering his own question, he throws his goblet dramatically on the floor.
  • Dream Weaver: The circumstances of the Succubus fight. She tries to mess up Alucard's memories through dreams.
  • Dual Boss: Three of them. Slogra and Gaibon from Super Castlevania IV team up early, and Werewolf and Minotaur from Rondo of Blood try it again later. And then there's the Dracula's Curse impersonators, which up the ante into a trio Boss.
  • Dual Wielding: Alucard can equip any weapon in either hand (save two-handed weapons, obviously). Though his swing speed doesn't pick up any, it can be convenient to not have to go into the sub menu if you're using elementally aligned weapons.
  • Dub Name Change: Towards several enemy names and food items via Japanese-to-English; the former names stick on in later games as of this series.
    • One item in particular is the "Green Tea"; it was named that way out of censorship since the original name for it was "Sake/Osake" (the alcoholic drink).
    • The many swords to pick up and collect in the game have rather notable names in Japanese via various nods to mythology in general, only to be swapped out for Tolkien lore-based names (such as Icebrand, Thunderbrand, Sword of Hador, and so forth); one example is the Crissaegrim, where its actual name is the Valmanway (again, the original name stays in later titles), while another is the Vorpal Blade's original name being the Sonic Blade (the weaker version of the aforementioned weapon).
    • The giant corpse ball boss is known as Legion in the Japanese version, and Granfaloon in the English; the latter is a roundabout reference to a Kurt Vonnegut neologism. Later games would retain the Legion name in English.
  • Dungeon Shop: The Master Librarian also apparently keeps quite the stockpile of items, weapons, and equipment. Despite the Librarian serving Dracula, Alucard can persuade him to part with some of his wares, for the right price. However, the Librarian only extends this service to Alucard; estranged or not, he is still Dracula's son. He won't interact with Richter or Maria at all, since dealing with the Belmonts would be outright treason.
  • Dying as Yourself: The Werewolf boss in the Colosseum, and the mook version in the Reverse Colosseum both revert to a more human form before fading when defeated.
  • Dynamic Loading: Different areas of the castle are connected by dark hallways that are exactly one screen long. By the time the player walks from one side of the hall to the other, the next level has finished loading.
  • Early Game Hell: The period right after losing A Taste of Power leaves Alucard basically crippled, and even fairly weak enemies can take large chunks off your health bar. Alucard's power curve isn't so much a curve as it is a cliffside, but until then, it's easily the trickiest part of the game. Knowledge of the game's magic can alleviate this, though. Luck Mode takes this up to eleven (if the player doesn't exploit a glitch to keep the powerful equipment), as it takes many levels for Alucard to catch up to the stats he has at the beginning of a regular game, and this makes a big difference at that point (even spells can't be cast as often, because he starts with 1 MP instead of 30).
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: As the first full-fledged metroidvania title of the series, the game has a few differences from later installments with the same formula.
    • While most of Alucard's equipment slots are normal, he has two "hand" slots instead of one weapon slot. Each hand can be equipped with a weapon, a shield, a throwing item, or a consumable, and pressing either attack button uses what is in that hand, and food items are thrown on the ground for Alucard to heal with. There were also two-handed weapons that took up both slots. The system was simplified for later games, which only had a single weapon slot (except for Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia), no shields and throwing items (most would be supplanted by various magic attacks), and had consumables directly used from the pause menu.
    • Alucard is the only protagonist with a spell system based on directional inputs, and the only one with an extensive familiar system where each helper levels up on its own (familiars are infrequent in later metroidvanias and typically don't level up nearly as much).
    • Many enemies and items were localized very differently from how they are later in the series, such as recurring corpse ball Legion being known as "Granfaloon", and the rapid-striking wind sword being named Crissaegrim instead of Valmanway.
    • Alucard has to grab an early relic in order to enable candles to drop items, while every later game has candles drop items by default.
    • Boss rooms did not have a special sliding door denoting their entrance, meaning you could wander into one without warning (and in the Lesser Demon's case, there wasn't even a room transition). The shutters that sealed you in said boss rooms were also different depending on the room instead of just using the game's boss door design.
  • Easter Egg:
    • Try returning to the room where Death stole Alucard's equipment right after you enter the first room of the Alchemy Laboratory. You will meet Slogra and Gaibon. There are many other little secrets as well.
    • A notable one added to the Japanese "The Best" and "PSOne Books" rereleases, as well as the Saturn, PSP and Requiem versions, is the ability to have the Fairy/Sprite sing to you in the Library (which requires a song lyrics card item in the Saturn version). This is actually a Dummied Out Japanese song in the original release. If the language is set to English in the PSP version, it'll even be fully translated!
    • Playing this game in a CD player yields a secret message from Alucard, who tells you not to play it like a regular CD; although he acknowledges the player probably won't listen to him anyway.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Alucard specifically says the castle is a creature of chaos and may take many forms. There's also some of the bosses, like Granfaloon (Legion).
  • Eldritch Location: The inverted castle, which turns the laws of physics on its head. There's a reason why all the outdoor levels have ceilings to walk on.
  • Embedded Precursor: The game has the final boss fight from the preceding game as the opening level. Furthermore, the player's performance in the flashback level determines Alucard's starting stats and items.
  • Empathic Weapon: The Sword Familiar is a proud talking sword, fighting either by flying around and swinging or by being wielded by Alucard.
  • Empty Room Psych: The Lesser Demon and the Succubus have no counterparts in the Inverted Castle, leaving their boss rooms empty.
  • Escape Rope: The Library Card warps Alucard back to the Master Librarian's room at any time, even during the final boss fights (which is needed for the game to record you've visited the final boss room and fought it for the bestiary).
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Dracula loved Lisa dearly, and he expresses remorse upon finding out that his actions go against her last words. He is also implied to have some feelings towards his son Alucard, even though Alucard is his enemy.
  • Evil Elevator: The elevator in the Outer Wall is more of a fast-moving cage that slams into walls as it moves up at down. Alucard sounds terrified while riding it.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Dracula in every version of the game, clearly hamming it up despite his limited screentime.
  • Evil Laugh: An ominous one is heard on the Game Over screen, and the villains also have deep laughs.
  • Evolving Weapon:
    • The Muramasa becomes stronger as Alucard absorbs blood from his enemies. It takes a lot of time, but its attack power can reach the 999 value. After its attack power has been increased by ten, it also adds a Blade Spam effect which still only hits enemies once per attack, but greatly increases the size of the weapon's hitbox.
    • The Sword Familiar levels up as Alucard kills enemies. At level 50, it will change form and lets Alucard wield it. At level 70, it changes its attack pattern, and at 90-99, it starts glowing and is able to do the Sword Brothers spell on its own.
    • While not a weapon, the Walk Armor's defense power increases as you explore more map regions. It eventually becomes more powerful than any other armor.
  • Extended Gameplay: Most of the areas in the endgame, since only five bosses are required to be beaten to reach Dracula.

    F - J 
  • Fairy Companion: Two (one in the western PlayStation release) of the Familiars is a summonable fairy that can use items to heal you and cure status changes.
  • Fairy Sexy: The fairy familiar that Alucard summons has this outfit.
  • Fake Special Attack: Alucard can combine his personal shield with the Shield Rod to perform a spell that makes him invincible and able to drain HP from touching enemies. If you try that with the Alucart Shield, however, nothing happens and that same ? pops over Alucard's head.
  • Fake Ultimate Mook: Wargs look menacing, but die in a single hit just like other early-game enemies. The Reverse Entrance features Warg Riders/Fire Wargs that are substantially more threatening.
  • Fastball Special:
    • Alucard's first boss battle against Slogra and Gaibon. Much of the battle consists of Gaibon (a flying gargoyle monster) picking up Slogra (a skeltal mutant armed with a spear) and attempting to drop Slogra on Alucard. Getting hit by this combo attack naturally deals the most amount of damage.
    • Later in the game, Alucard have to fight another dual boss, the Minotaur and the Werewolf. Every now and then, the Werewolf will unleash a Rolling Attack, where the Minotaur will use its axe to swat the Werewolf across the arena towards Alucard.
  • The Ferryman: A ferryman appears in the Underground Caverns, rowing Alucard over bodies of water before he can jump in them without getting hurt. A certain relic is needed to get him to move from one location to the next.
  • Fighting Your Friend: There's no animosity between Alucard and Maria, but she still fights him in the PSP version to test his strength.
  • Final Boss, New Dimension: While he doesn't have any second form in the Final Boss battle, Dracula transports himself and Alucard into a strange pocket dimension deep within the Inverted Castle.
  • Final Boss Preview: Happens twice: The first opponent in the game is a reenactment of the ending of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, where you fight Dracula (who returns as the baddie of SotN) as Richter. Once you're Alucard, the first major character you encounter is Death in a cutscene, who proceeds to end your little power trip by stealing all of Alucard's awesome endgame equipment, showing off just how much work you have left to do.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: Upon entering the underground area of the castle, you pass through a room with a flaming background and fight Cerberus as a miniboss. The rest of the area resembles caves and features lava lakes and contains many fire-based enemies. Inverted in the inverted castle, where the same area is frozen over, although in that one it's technically at the top.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Three elemental "-brand" swords are available for Alucard, sold by the Librarian or found elsewhere. There's also three elemental mailshirts that resist the elements.
  • Fish People: The firebreathing Merman enemies appear in one of the early areas.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: After the player has explored most of the castle and discovered some optional items, they can then enter a secret chamber underneath the marble gallery's giant clock. The chamber in question is quite clearly upside down, the first oblique hint at the existence of the reverse castle, which can be discovered immediately after visiting this chamber.
  • Flaming Skulls: Large flaming skulls serve as mid-level enemies.
  • Flaming Sword: There's a pair of flaming swords, the Firebrand and Marsil. Not only do both swords have a fire aura, but with a command input, both can generate a wave of flame, with Marsil's long enough to hit a fifth of the screen away.
  • Flash of Pain: Most of the characters flash as they take damage. In Alucard's case, the entire screen flashes red with him when he dies.
  • Flash Step: The Alucard Sword has a special attack that allows Alucard to teleport across the screen, turn around, slash twice, and return, all in about a second or less. There's also at least one katana that allows similar attacks.
  • Flying Books: A few appear in the Long Library to attack you.
  • Flying Weapon: The Spectral Sword and Poltergeist enemies, where a larger central sword seems to control a host of lesser weapons and armor that attack the player. Also the Cloaked Knight, who has two blades which circle him and strike, and of course the sword familiar.
  • Fog of Doom: Alucard can actually change into a playable Fog of Doom once you've found the right items: with the "Form of Mist" and "Gas Cloud" relics, his mist form is invincible and causes damage to any enemies within it, while constantly draining a small amount of MP.
  • Food Porn: The game includes dozens of different inexplicably preserved healing food items to find on top of the standard Pot Roast, ranging from fresh fruit all the way up to modern dishes that shouldn't even exist in the depicted time period, each one with a well-drawn sprite and a brief description.
  • Forced to Watch: The instruction booklet for the game explains that Alucard's mother, Lisa, was a doctor who was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. The nightmare Alucard has when he uses the fake save point in the Underground Caverns reveals that he was there, but Lisa begged him not to save her, saying in no uncertain terms that it was too late for her.
  • For Doom the Bell Tolls: "Requiem for the Gods," the theme of Dracula's Royal Chapel, combines this trope with a positively eerie Cherubic Choir plus Ominous Pipe Organ.
  • Foregone Victory: The fight against Dracula in the prologue is impossible to lose; if Richter runs out of health, Maria will come in and cast a spell that makes him invincible.
  • Foreshadowing: Even way before you reach the core area of the castle, you might notice that some things in certain rooms' backgrounds are clearly upside-down. One example is a "RIP" sign in the ceiling of Legion's room. They're meant to be displayed rightside-up in the reverse castle. There's also the Cat-Eye Circlet, gotten in the Catacombs, which absorbs "cat"-elemental damage, which doesn't seem to be anywhere until a few show up very late into the reverse castle.
  • Formula with a Twist: The game put its own unique spin on the Metroidvania genre it would help define by adding RPG-like elements, such as weapons, magic, and leveling.
  • Fragile Speedster:
    • Richter has special moves that allow him to move extremely quickly and Sequence Break like a mofo; a dextrous Richter player can beat the game in less than ten minutes, and this is without glitches. However, he has as little health and defense as a classical Castlevania character (i.e. Simon, Trevor, and his Rondo of Blood self). His max health can be increased with Life Up potions, but there's never anything that boosts his defense.
    • Maria in the PSP version. She's much faster than Alucard and Richter, retains her double jump from Rondo of Blood and has special moves of her own, but she has as little health as she had in Rondo, being able to take a lot less hits before dying. Like Richter, Life Up potions boost her HP, but not her defense. And her special moves don't make her invincible during them, so she can't use them to attack bosses at all like Richter can.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: One of the bosses is a version of him with a huge hammer and a Rolling Attack. This is the first game in the series where it is called "The Creature" rather than some variant on Frankenstein.
  • Frothy Mugs of Water: In the Royal Chapel, you can go to the Confession Room and sit at a chair, and at one time a blue-robed ghostly figure will hear your confession and give you... sparkling grape juice! Grape juice in a confession booth? This was the result of the drink being modified from wine in the Japanese version. Also, the Green Tea was originally sake, and the Barley Tea was beer.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: The Succubus. The official art for her has exposed breasts with defined nipples.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: By using the Sword Brothers spell in a save room to enable them to open the menu mid-save and rapidly change their equipment around, the player is able to completely screw up the game's save file. Depending on your timing, you might end up screwing up your map and end up with random squares explored and unexplored, respawning items you find lying around and thus being able to collect them twice, or just corrupt your save.
  • Gemstone Assault: One of the morningstar weapons ends on a gemstone, and there are also the flashy Jewel Knuckles and Jewel Sword.
  • Giant Eye of Doom: In the Marble Gallery, there is a long hallway that leads to the outer wall of the castle. There are windows in the background of the long hallway. A giant eyeball is always behind those windows. The eyeball has no purpose other than to stare at Alucard.
  • Giant Mook: Alucard faces wargs right off the bat as he enters the castle. Later on there are gigantic suits of armours, the Cthulu monster, the Alura Une monster, and several enemy varieties a lot larger than Alucard.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • The Nova Skeleton enemy will die to a single knife, but has a laser attack that can easily hit you for 200+ damage. In fact, a lot of late-game enemies follow this pattern, though the Nova Skeleton is perhaps the most notorious.
    • The Ring of Ares will turn Alucard into this, as it both increases STR and weapon damage and lowers defense by 24.
    • Richter and Maria take damage horribly in comparison to Alucard. Not helped by the fact that they don't level up, and their only way of healing is through save points and HP Max Ups.
    • Playing the game on "Luck Mode" will also do this to Alucard. His HP and DEF stats will get absolutely trashed, making him vulnerable to even the weakest enemies, but because his chance to land critical hits is much higher, his damage potential skyrockets as soon as you start to pick up decent weapons. And because your luck is hugely inflated, getting said weapons tends to be much easier than on normal mode, further upping your offensive ability while your defense lags behind till much, much later in the game when you start to get really good armor and accessories.
  • A Glass in the Hand: Dracula angrily throws the glass of wine he had in hand to the floor when he expresses his distaste for humanity to Richter.
  • A Glass of Chianti: Dracula dramatically tosses aside a wine glass while expressing his distaste for humanity before Throwing Down the Gauntlet and fighting Richter.
  • Golden Ending: If you clear the game after exploring more than 195% of the Castles, Maria decides to go after Alucard in the end.
  • Gravity Screw: The Inverted Castle, where Alucard walks on the ceiling of every area.
  • Great Big Library of Everything: There's a level called Long Library. It contains numerous books, especially ones that attack the protagonist, Alucard. There is a shop belonging to the Master Librarian, the head of Long Library. He sells items — such as healing potions — to Alucard.
  • Grimy Water: The water is perfectly clear, clean, and pure, and at times looks kind of pretty. It still hurts Alucard upon touching it though, without a special relic. Despite the relic looking like a snorkel, this ISN'T Super Drowning Skills, but apparently has to do with a myth about vampires not crossing running water. Richter, a human, has no problem with it.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • Getting past the Disc-One Final Boss to access the rest of the game can be confusing. You can reach the bad ending of the game as soon as you have a method of flight, but the rest of the castle needs to be explored thoroughly to continue on. It doesn't help that the clue provided once you have a lead is worded inaccurately in the original versions: There is an entire Clock Tower area and a literal clock tower found there, but the place you're supposed to wear the rings is in the clock room centered in the Marble Gallery. Thankfully, that room stands out enough (no music, prominent ticking noise, and a visible seam in and open space beneath the floor) that most players can figure out where it's meant to be used easily enough.
    • Two very useful items, the Jewel Sword (easy access to sellable jewelry) and the Beryl Circlet (useful for the Superboss), are found in hidden rooms that can only be opened by passing through the tunnel in the Entrance/Reverse Entrance once in each of Alucard's four forms. Nothing indicates that these rooms exist or that fiddling with the tunnel will affect them.
    • Using the Gravity Boots relic requires a directional input that isn't listed in its description. This is also an input needed for Richter's high jump, which can leave him stuck in a few places until you figure it out.
    • A double-whammy: Alucard's Wolf form has the [totally unadvertised] ability to slowly swim by holding/tapping the backdash button while in water. This ability is also mostly useless, save for one thing:It's the only way to fill in several spots on the map in the Reverse Caverns, which are unreachable in Alucard's regular form.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Subverted with the skeletal Bone Musket enemy. They appear in groups of three and stagger while they're reloading to lay down about one shot every two seconds, but they send you reeling back like any other attack. About the only advantage you have is that most of the time you're above or below them, and they can only shoot straight ahead.
  • Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Richter Mode is a fairly extreme example. Even the easiest mooks can kill you if you aren't careful, and some of the more challenging mooks can kill you in one or two hits. On the other hand, bosses can usually be kept at a distance and killed without too much difficulty (and if you use Hydro Storm on them, most die as fast as your average mook). The only real exception is Galamoth — using the Hydro Storm on him will simply result in him shrugging off the damage and then killing Richter while he's stuck in the attack animation.
  • Ham-to-Ham Combat: The legendary pre-fight debate between Richter and Dracula qualifies, whatever translation you look at.
  • Happy Ending Override: Castlevania: Rondo of Blood ended with Richter defeating Dracula and saving Maria, Annette, and other maidens in the best ending, only for this game to have Shaft brainwash Richter into resurrecting Dracula, forcing Alucard to save the world.
  • Have a Nice Death:
    • Normally the game over screen features an ominous voice (presumed to be Death in the original, actually Death in the redubbed versions) speaking "GAME OVER", but dying at certain points (such as losing to Richter) causes special voice clips to play over it.
    • The game in general goes above and beyond most of the other games in the series with this unique finishing touch; there are actually special effects available that depend on the elemental attributes of the attack that killed the playable characters. There's the normal bloody disintegration that Rondo of Blood introduced, true, but then there's also the following:
      • Being killed by a Fire attack results in the character literally burning away into nothingness.
      • Being killed by an Ice attack results in the character melting away in mid-air.
      • Being killed by a Lightning attack results in sparks of lightning eventually burning the character into non-existence.
      • If Alucard's cause of death is from exposure to water without having the proper relic on hand, he literally melts into water droplets.
      • There's even a unique death animation for if Alucard's HP falls to 0 while petrified; his statuesque form crumples apart, the bits and pieces falling to the ground as this happens.
      • Most of the above applies for boss fight versions of the playable characters, even. Want to add a twist to how the Doppelganger bosses die? Kill them with an attack that possesses one of the above elements. Even Richter is affected by this... although do keep in mind the fact that the ending one will get won't exactly be fulfilling.
  • A Head at Each End: Diplocephalus is a crocodile-like beast with the upper body of a fireball-slinging human woman attached to its tail.
  • Healing Potion: Potions are introduced into the series with this game, and they're the most common healing items.
  • Heart Container: There are items that boost your max HP and Hearts. An equivalent item for MP wouldn't exist until the following metroidvania, though MP still increases from leveling up.
  • Heartbeat Soundtrack: Featured in the save rooms. The lower your health, the fainter the beating in the backround.
  • Heavily Armored Mook: Some areas feature Fleamen wearing armor and an axe, and who are just spry like their regular counterparts. "Killing" a Flea Armor causes the equipment to break and makes it turn into a regular Fleaman.
  • Hellfire: Alucard can pull off his father's "teleport and fireballs" attack from earlier titles.
  • Helpful Mook:
    • The Ouroboros becomes golden and helps Alucard for a while if its rider is killed but it isn't.
    • Salome is the accidental type if you equip the otherwise-useless Cat-Eye Circlet. Both the the black cats she throws and the cat she turns into when defeated will provide a massive HP boost if they touch Alucard.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: The game implies that this is why Richter Belmont has sided with evil and is lord of the titular castle; he wants to continue fighting monsters. According to him when encountered in Dracula's Throne Room, a Belmont has a single fight against Dracula and then must surrender their job to the next descendant, so Richter decides to circumvent this by resurrecting Dracula to fight for eternity and maintain his status. It's later revealed to be a subversion, because Richter is being possessed by Shaft.
  • Hidden Track: If you put the original PlayStation disc on an audio CD player, the hidden track "Alucard's Vengeance" can be heard.
  • Highly Specific Counterplay: The Cat-Eye Circlet absorbs "cat" elemental damage. Only one enemy in the game deals such damage.
  • High-Pressure Blood: The aptly named Bloody Zombies release a fountain of blood as their death scream echoes in the castle's hallways.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: If you defeat Richter properly, the rest of the game is spent hunting down Dracula, who, starting the tradition here, is behind it all. (Well, technically Shaft is behind the scheme, but he's working for Dracula.)
  • Holy Burns Evil: Some weapons are imbued with the Holy element, making them useful against most of the enemies.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: The Holy Water and Holy Ash subweapons, along with the Holy Sword and Holy Rod.
  • Homing Projectile: One of Alucard's spells has him summoning one enemy-seeking orb. For more MP, he can cast an upgraded spell that summons a whole bunch of them.
  • Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: The Rebound Stone subweapon. In an open space, it's essentially a slower knife weapon that fires at an unusual angle, but it can clear a tight hallway of weaker enemies with one shot.
  • I Am X, Son of Y: In the Dracula X Chronicles version of the opening, Dracula refers to Richter as "Belmont, son of Belmont". Most likely, every member of the Belmont clan is just an interchangeable thorn in his side to him.
  • Idle Animation: Alucard's idle animation is him standing in a relaxed, yet regal pose. It works with his fairy familiar: she lands on his shoulder and if he moves even an inch, she falls off, complete with "Oof!"
  • Impossible Item Drop: One sword is dropped by Shmoo monster, which is basically just a bloody, flying burlap sack with a face.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Many. Symphony of the Night is full of broken (but fun!) weaponry.
    • The Crissaegrim, a wind-based sword dropped by the Schmoo enemies found in the Forbidden Library. This obscene weapon makes everything else in the game obsolete. It can be used while moving, does four slashes in quick succession, has high damage output, sweeps a large arc in front of you (unlike other swords which only execute a narrow and miss-prone "stabbing" attack), and being able to attack as fast as you can press the button, with little lag. Once you get it, you can button mash through most enemies, especially if you equip two.
    • The Shield Rod in the Colosseum (which can cast unique spells depending on which shield is equipped alongside it) is pretty useful for most of the game, but it becomes an example of this after getting the late-game Alucard Shield. With the Alucard Shield's spell, you can shield bash enemies for a ludicrous amount of damage while healing yourself and turning invincible. You can literally walk through any boss if its weakpoint is exposed. The one downside is that the Shield Rod itself is somewhat weak, but later in the game it can be replaced with a random-dropped Mablung Sword that is stronger while still being able to cast shield spells.
    • The Muramasa starts off weak, but becomes more powerful every time you hit an enemy and draw blood with it equipped. Through grinding, it can become obscenely powerful.
    • Alucard's namesake sword is a "weaker" infinity plus one weapon, but has a fast attack speed, is relatively easy to find, and has a special attack that lets you teleport behind an enemy and strike twice rapidly while invulnerable before moving back to your previous position. You can also exploit a bug to keep it at the start of the game.
    • The Badelaire gets stronger the more time you play, one attack point per hour. Leave the game running overnight a couple times and when the clock maxes out at 99 hours, you'll have a very strong sword with high single hit power with very little effort involved.
    • The Dainslef has a rather high attack power, and inputting down, down-forward, and forward before attacking gives an even stronger blow... and its attack strength is doubled with Dark Metamorphosis active. Get ready to see some huge numbers!
    • The Sword Familiar. It's one of the strongest familiars at any rate, but at level 50, you can wield it with its attack power equal to its level, making it deadly at level 99. At level 75, it gets a new, more accurate attack animation.
    • The Ring of Varda, a very powerful stat-boosting ring that won't drop unless your memory card has a completed save on it.
    • Another item available only on a cleared file is the Duplicator, an accessory which slightly drains your stats but lets you use items without losing them. It's obscenely expensive to purchase, but combining it with a Power of Sire will result in you just casually strolling around the castle, killing everything without lifting a finger by using a painting to summon a hologram of Vlad the Impaler shooting exploding stars from his eyes.
    • Richter's item crashes, particularly Thousand Daggers and Hydro Storm, can take out bosses with no effort at all.
  • Informed Equipment: Played straight with most equipment that isn't a weapon or shield (which appear when you use them), but averted with capes, which actually change the color of the cape on Alucard's sprite, and the Secret Boots, which make his sprite a bit taller.
  • Inn Security: One of the save points is a trap, and triggers a boss fight against a succubus posing as Alucard's dead human mother, Lisa. This is glaringly obvious, because this save point is not the same color as the others in the game, and yet you have to use it to proceed through the game... at least if you want to get the good ending.
  • Instant 180-Degree Turn: Averted. Alucard takes a few frames to turn around.
  • Interface Spoiler:
    • Averted with regards to castle map completion. Exploring the entirety of the normal Castle will get you a map percentage of 100%, which means anyone who was not spoiled about the Inverted Castle will think the game ends once Richter is defeated one way or another.
    • Played straight with the Librarian's bestiary, which will show dozens of empty entries after you have combed through the entirety of the first castle.
  • In-Universe Game Clock: The game clock in the menu and the Marble Gallery is actually a 24-hour clock; the game starts at midnight and continues from there. Relevant in that the status buffs of the Moonstone and Sunstone are affected by the time on the clock. In the Saturn version, the current time is instead taken from its system clock, since it had one while the PS1 doesn't.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: The floating giant skulls have the standard "not phased by anything" invincibility, although you can use Soul Steal on them to heal yourself.
  • Invisible Monsters: Bitterflies, which phase in and out of visibility in large, seemingly empty rooms.
  • Invisible to Normals: The Flavor Text of Bitterflies states that they are only visible to magicians.
  • Joke Character: One of the armors Alucard can equip turns him into a Axe Armor from Rondo. He runs fast and has a strong melee swing, but he can't jump high in this form and thus can't explore much. Oddly, he can't even throw his axe as you'd expect. What's amusing about it is his idle animation, in which he raises the axe and shouts "Hah! Hah! Hah! Ho!".
  • Joke Item: The Alucart equipment, not to be confused with the Alucard equipment. Even the shield has the "honor" of being the only shield in the game to have absolutely no effect when equipped with the Shield Rod (a nod to the item crash of the Key subweapon in Rondo of Blood). The sword at least has the reach and fast attack speed of the real deal, but that doesn't really make up for the lack of power. A complete set of Alucart equipment does have a use, though: it dramatically increases your LCK. It's still not enough to make it qualify as a Lethal Joke Item, though. There's also Tyrfing, a cursed sword that passes through enemies and does no damage due to reducing your attack to 0 unless you equip enough stat-boosting items and level up enough to compensate for it, and the Saturn version has Sain Irishitajiki, a useless, goofy picture of Alucard, which the game (for some reason) treats as a medicine.
  • Jump Physics: For the first time in the series, the game allows the player full jump control and Double Jump capabilities, as well as a special high jump manuever.
  • Justified Save Point: It's a coffin because Alucard is a dhampyr, and he needs to sleep in those too. It's not as justified when playing as the human Richter and Maria, however.

    K - O 
  • Kamehame Hadoken: The Fist Of Tulkas, a rare drop weapon in the Reverse Library, has two special moves: one is a flurry of blows that is activated by a fighting game-type combo, and the other is a blue fireball that is utilized the same way as entering a Hadoken.
  • Kukris Are Kool: There's an enemy called Gurkha, who wields what is supposed to be a very stylized giant kukri.
  • Lag Cancel: Slow attacks and such can be cancelled with the backdash. The slowdown from the backdash can be cancelled by throwing up your shield. With fast enough fingers, you can shield and backdash repeatedly, allowing you to travel at a consistent, high speed.
  • Last Lousy Point: Many hard-to-reach map squares frustrate completionists, particularly some of the water areas in the Inverted Castle. The secret: swim up to them using the wolf form.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In certain corridors in the castle, the player will see an ornate crest on the wall with the initials "CD". This is a reference to the fact that these are loading corridors, where the game is reading the next area from the disc. However, the initials could also stand for "Castle Dracula" or simply "Count Dracula", avoiding an outright fourth wall break, as long as one ignores the circle with a tiny hole in the center, in the middle of the crest right under the letters.
  • Lethal Joke Item:
    • Alucard gets a Luck boost when he wears all Alucart equipment at once — this effect is often used to up the chances of obtaining the rarely-dropped Crissaegrim. Also, the "effect" of the Alucart Shield is a nod to the Key Subweapon from Rondo, which was the strongest, yet almost useless subweapon from that game. Using the Alucart equipment while playing in Luck Mode (gives 99 Luck but sets all other stats to 1 or 0, with 35 HP and 5 MP, far below usual starting stats) will allow him to attack extremely fast and do crit damage high enough to kill many bosses in a few hits.
    • The Cat-Eye Circlet, which protects you from... cat damage. Even so, it comes in surprisingly handy in one of the game's hardest areas.
    • The Red Rust, a two-handed sword which deals less damage than the first shortsword you pick up at the same time that randomly causes Alucard to freeze in place when he tries to swing it, but which can be invaluable against both Doppelganger bosses since it curses them on hit, basically making them helpless and unable to attack.
    • The Basilard can be found and obtained shortly after entering the Alchemy Laboratory, where the player is likely to take one look at its lower attack power and ignore it in favor of continuing to use the Short Sword. If you do equip it, however, you'll find that its lower damage stat and slightly shorter reach are more than compensated for by it being able to strike nearly as fast as you can hit the attack button, making it punch well above its weight for a good portion of the early game, and holding the button causes Alucard to hoist it out at the ready and do passive damage to enemies.
  • Lethal Lava Land: The Catacombs area takes you so far below the ground that at one point you go through a lava cavern. However, the lava is just part of the scenery. And then, in the Inverted Catacombs, there's a part with molten ice in the background.
  • Level in Reverse: The Inverted Castle, naturally. In both direction traveled, and the flipped geometry.
  • Light Is Not Good: The divine-looking Amalaric (or Goth Sniper), a minor enemy that looks like a white torso with wings and a bow and is described as a fallen angel.
  • Lightning Gun: The rare Agunea subweapon lets Alucard/Richter fire a bullet that zaps an enemy with electricity when it hits them; continuing the attack causes continuous lightning strikes. Richter can use it in an item crash that causes a full-blown thunderstorm.
  • Living Weapon: Spectral Swords, which surround themselves with other weapons while flying around.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: Dracula, as usual. Both castles vanish after his defeat.
  • Loading Screen: The game lets you play with the loading text, making it swirl and spin all over, or see if you can get it perfectly still before the game finishes loading.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: The game uses hallways to mitigate this, and didn't try to disguise them either; it even includes the letters "CD," with a little picture of one underneath. The game also includes some interaction for the black loading screens: you can use the controller to create graphical effects on the "loading" text. Not a big deal, but certainly miles better than a typical static version of the same thing.
  • Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Alucard and Richter both, but Alcuard especially.
  • Long Song, Short Scene: The most notable example is Prologue, only played during the intro stage, which has no enemies aside from Dracula and consists of a walk up a staircase and down a hallway, and when you fight Dracula, his own theme plays. Another example is The Door to the Abyss, which only plays in the centre of the castle which again, features no enemies except for Shaft and Dracula in the inverted castle version (and Maria, on Saturn and PSP's first castle) and is extremely short.
  • Looks Like Orlok: One mid-game boss is Orlok himself, with translation issues causing him to be called Olrox. Olrox starts as a magician vampire before turning into a reptilian monster for his second phase.
  • Lost in Translation: The Opening Crawl is in English; in every version. Similar to the opening of Rondo of Blood, which was in German, but the specialness is lost on the English-speaking audience.
  • Luck Stat: It determines the item drops and critical hits.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Alucard can use various shields — activating them blocks missile attacks, and some of them can be used for magic attacks with the Shield Rod or Mablung Sword weapons
  • Magikarp Power:
    • Familiars are, at first, completely useless and watch idly as you get smacked around by monsters. However, if you suffer them long enough, they will eventually level up and become able to kill most enemies before you can (this is especially true of the Sword familiar, which you can even wield as a weapon once its level gets high enough).
    • After beating the game once, the player unlocks a code that, when used in a new game, unlocks Luck Mode. Alucard's stats are pathetic in this mode, but his luck stat is astronomically high to compensate. Not only does it result in him getting a lot of drops that are usually too rare to farm in normal mode, by the end game, Alucard will also be dishing out so much damage thanks to his high crit chance that he'll frequently end up outpacing his damage output in normal mode.
  • Male Frontal Nudity: There are nude statues for both sexes.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Richter struts around the castle and makes himself look like the Big Bad until it's revealed that he's being mind controlled by Shaft, who is, of course, Dracula's servant.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Dracula is the page image of this trope, with most of his castle being kept pretty regal despite sustained damages.
  • Mercy Invincibility: Alucard has a split-second of hit invulnerability, which sometimes makes it difficult to escape if you get surrounded by hazards.
  • Metal Slime: The Dodo Bird is found in just one area of the castle and runs away as soon as he sees Alucard. He drops the Runesword and the Heart Broach.
  • Metroidvania: Not the first Castlevania game in this genre (that would be Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, though its structure was more akin to that of contemporary action-adventure games), but the one that standardized the formula for the series. Naturally, Symphony of the Night serves as both a Trope Namer and Trope Codifier for the Metroidvania genre as a whole, alongside Super Metroid.
  • Might Makes Right: In the Prologue's pre-fight cutscene (and by proxy the ending to Castlevania: Rondo of Blood), Dracula believes mankind uses the church and religious creed to enforce this. Richter believes the opposite.
  • Mind Screw: In the Reverse Catacombs, instead of lava there is molten ice. Not water, molten ice.
  • Mini-Boss: The first Armor Lord in the Outer Wall, who doesn't respawn normally after defeat (instead reappearing if the whole area is reloaded).
  • Minus World: Familiar spells can be abused to warp through walls into areas outside the normal castle map, adding to map percentage
  • Mirror Boss: You fight two doppleganger-type bosses, which use your subweapons and abilities.
  • Mirror Monster: The doppelganger boss makes its debut coming out of a sealed mirror to attack Alucard, and upon defeat it disintegrates into particles before re-entering the mirror whence it came.
  • Mirror World: The inverted castle, a mirrored version of Dracula's castle that Shaft spawns during his resurrection of Dracula.
  • Monster Compendium: You can check the info on the monsters you've defeated in the shop at the library.
  • Morphic Resonance: When Alucard transforms into his wolf form, he still keeps a number of features, including a sword tied at his waist. The bat form goes one step further, and keeps the color of the currently equipped cloak as the color of its wings. The former becomes increasingly odd if you're completing a "naked" challenge run, where equipping things like swords are not allowed.
  • Mummy: Akmodan II, one of the bosses from Super Castlevania IV, makes a return as a required encounter in the endgame areas. He's meant to take after the mummy from the first Castlevania game, as with the other bosses that hold the Vlad relics.
  • Musical Gag: If you put the PS1 disc in a CD player, Alucard informs you that this disc only has game data. It then plays some music before going into the game data and being annoying static.
    "Track one contains computer data, so please don't play it. But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you?"
  • Musical Spoiler: You know you've walked into a boss room when the music stops.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Richter Belmont screams this (in the redubbed version, as the original is much quieter) once he's freed from being Brainwashed and Crazy, since he's inadvertently helped resurrect Dracula once again.
  • Near-Villain Victory: Dracula can almost beat you in the prologue, but then Maria runs in and casts a crap-load of buff spells, turning the fight into a Foregone Victory.
  • Newbie Immunity: The opening of the game has Richter face off against Dracula. Even if Richter loses all his health during the fight, he'll just be revived by Maria and be made invincible, but if you manage to win the battle without taking damage, then Alucard will have higher stat bonuses when you switch over to him.
  • New Game Plus: The game has two powerful items only available in a second playthrough, the Duplicator and the Ring of Varda. The Duplicator, at the cost of a prohibitively expensive price tag and reduced stats, gives you unlimited usage of usable items and effectively ends all semblance of difficulty once you find a Pentagram. The Ring (and yes, it's that Ring) is an uncommon but not prohibitively rare drop that gives an absurd boost to all your stats (It boosts your overall attack higher than all except a few of the strongest weapons in the game), and you can equip two of them at once or combine one with the Duplicator to negate its stat penalty.
  • New World Tease: The game teases you with the Clock Tower, Colosseum, and Olrox's Quarters should you choose to enter them, but you need abilities to get through them fully.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Two of the four possible endings involve an underinformed Alucard eliminating the Belmont bloodline by beating the stuffing out of one extremely possessed Richter. Seeing as the Belmonts are humanity's best and perhaps only hope in the fight against Alucard's infamous father...
  • No Final Boss for You: The game will end abruptly if you don't lift Richter's curse and instead you kill him, meaning you won't get to fight Dracula later on.
  • No-Gear Level: Near the beginning of Symphony of the Night. You can actually continue doing this if you so desire. It's challenging but kinda hilarious when Alucard beats the shit out of the Grim Reaper with his bare hands.
  • No-Harm Requirement: The only way to access the second half of the game is to defeat the green orb controlling Richter Belmont without doing too much harm to Richter Belmont himself.
  • No Hero Discount: Justified. The Librarian is actually in the employ of Dracula, and only helps Alucard at all as he's a greedy bastard. While using any of the extra characters, he'll refuse to deal with them at all; Alucard is permissible because he's the Master's son, estranged or not, but dealing with the Belmonts would be outright treason.
  • Nostalgia Level: The Clock Tower and Castle Keep areas are almost the same as they were in Rondo of Blood, with new graphics and some new rooms.
  • Not Completely Useless:
    • The Red Rust is the more useless of the first two weapons you pick up, doing pitiful damage. However, it can inflict the cursed status on the doppelganger, rendering it helpless and making for an easy win against a Wake-Up Call Boss.
    • The Cat Eye Circlet offers "Big HP restore by cat damage". Only one enemy in the game does "cat damage", and that's Salome, a rather dangerous witch enemy found in parts of the castle that upon being killed turns into a pesky cat that can do additional damage to the player, making her a real pain in the ass. Unless you're wearing the Cat Eye Circlet, in which case you get healed for most or all of your HP by touching the cute kitty. Everywhere else, the item is likely useless compared to other available equipment.
  • Not the Intended Use: The backwards sliding manuever is intended to be used for dodging enemy attacks; while most players may use this once or twice, more often than not most people end up utilizing it for moving a bit faster, especially when it comes to backtracking.
  • Nothing but Skulls: There are two rooms in which the floor is made entirely of skulls, and there are huge piles of them in the background. The boss fought in this room is a giant floating ball of corpses that was hiding in said skulls before you entered, and the alternate version of that room, you face Galamoth.
  • Notice This: The Devil familiar suddenly takes interest in two pushable buttons that open secret rooms; the hundreds of other secrets in the castle don't seem to catch his interest. The Faerie also points out some breakable walls if she's near them.
  • Number of the Beast: Death is level 66, the vampire Olrox and the Succubus have 666 HP, and the Malachi and the Fire Demon give 666 experience points.
  • Of Corsets Sexy: The Succubus wears a corset, albeit one that only covers her waist and leaves her breasts exposed.
  • Offscreen Start Bonus: It isn't intentional, but if you immediately slide left when the game starts with Alucard, you can access a secret deleted area and increase your map percentage.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: Maria does this a lot, always managing to get past monsters and reach areas before Alucard can. She even gets through a spike-lined hallway!
  • Oh, Crap!: When Alucard enters the Coliseum, and the Lord of the Castle makes an appearance:
    Alucard: Your blood... The scent of your blood... YOU'RE A BELMONT!
  • Ominous Obsidian Ooze: One minor enemy is the black panther, which appears only in the Anti-Chapel and seems almost identical to the one encountered in Castlevania Chronicles. However, unlike the other black panthers that have appeared in the series so far, this one isn't a big cat at all, but a blob of oozing black fluid that has shapeshifted into the form of a panther. In combat with you, it will periodically revert to liquid form and slide out of range so it can attack again — and worse still, it's indestructible in liquid form.
  • Ominous Pipe Organ: Chaconne C Moll. No choir, no percussion, no guitar or other modern instruments, nothing but pure, multi-layered organ music.
  • One-Winged Angel:
    • Dracula has the same one as he did in Rondo of Blood during the intro. "Behold my true form and DESPAIR!" For the final boss fight, Dracula doesn't even bother with the first form and changes to a new final form.
    • Death gets a significant form change, turning from his cloaked magic-using base form into a monster that throws boomerang scythes.
    • Olrox goes from humanoid into some weird green dinosaur thing. He is more dangerous in this form, as you'd expect.
    • When petrified, Alucard can rarely be frozen into an invincible gargoyle form similar to his father's traditional demonic form. This suggests he does have the ability, even if it's never put to use in the entire series.
  • One-Woman Wail: The "Enchanted Banquet" boss music, appropriately enough used only when fighting female bosses.
  • Opening Boss Battle: The game opens where the previous game ended: Richter climbing the stairs to the throne room ready to face off against Dracula. Since it's a Foregone Conclusion that Richter defeats Dracula, it's rigged so that if you are about to die, Maria will appear and give a major power boost to make Richter invincible.
  • Opening Scroll: The game puts its scrolling intro text at the end of the Action Prologue.
  • Opening the Sandbox: The game follows a linear progression through Dracula's castle. Once you get to the Inverted Castle, you have enough mobility that you can do the bosses and get the Plot Coupons needed to unlock the Final Bosses in any order you want.
  • Order Is Not Good: Implied and defied. Dracula claims that his actions were no different with the actions of the order humans call 'religion'. However, Richter tells him that he's full of crap about it, because in this verse, the religious order is actually good.
    Richter: You steal men's souls and make them your slaves!
    Dracula: Perhaps the same could said of all religions.
    Richter: Your words are as empty as your soul!
  • Our Fairies Are Different: The Faerie and Fairy familiars. They don't attack enemies, but they cure Alucard's status effects (including petrification with Hammer items), use potions and reviving items automatically, and point out breakable walls.
  • Our Gargoyles Rock: One of the unique enemies added to the Saturn version of the game are Gargoyles, which are desribed as the "automatic crime prevention system" of the castle. Comes in marble, granite and terracotta.
  • Our Gryphons Are Different: A Hippogryff that breathes fire is one of early bosses.
  • Our Minotaurs Are Different: Minotaur is a Dual Boss with Werewolf in the Colosseum, then reappears as a Degraded Boss in the inverted castle.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: One of the enemies is a traditional bipedal wolf-man, and Alucard can turn himself into a regular wolf (as per old vampire myths).
  • Out-of-Character Alert: Someone Alucard thinks is his mother appears to be executed and attempts to trick him into committing murder against some humans via his mom's supposed final wish. Alucard remembers the event of Lisa's death far too well for him to fall for it, realizing that was something she would never tell him to do, and immediately deduces that "Lisa" was an imposter. She also addresses him as Alucard, a name that he didn't start using until his mother was long dead.
  • Over 100% Completion: The maximum map completion is 200.6%. The first 200% is to hide the fact that the Inverted Castle exists until you get there, and the last 0.6% is due to hidden rooms.

    P - T 
  • Parenthetical Swearing: When Dracula insists that he "was called here, by humans" wishing to pay him tribute, he pauses slightly and hits "humans" with weighty contempt.
  • Peninsula of Power Leveling:
    • The game has a nearly unbeatable enemy located in the Royal Chapel called a Spiked Ball. Despite not being an enemy so much as a piece of weaponry perched on top of a Bone Pillar on top of a long set of stairs that just happens to be lying in one particular spot and which does massive amounts of Collision Damage, you can destroy it if you stand as close as possible to it, equip a fist weapon, and hold the attack button for a minute or two. It's a piece of cake to gain 10 levels in this room if you so desire.
    • Once you reach the inverted castle's Marble Corridor, you encounter the game's Boss in Mook Clothing, the Guardians. While ridiculously powerful, their attacks can be easily telegraphed and avoided. Since they are the highest-level non-boss enemies in the game, they fork over absurd amounts of experience when killed, and a drop chance for a decent two-handed sword as well as a rare chance for the best set-stat armor in the game (second only to the Walk Armor when all of both castles are explored).
    • In the first castle, actually the beginning of the first castle, in the Castle Keep. You stand right next to the stairs where the zombies won't reach you, and you can cut down unlimited amounts of zombies, risk free! But it is only 1 exp per zombie, so a controller with an auto option (or the Sword Familiar) is handy. The mermen are handy for this as well, allowing the most patient of gamers to gain 40 levels after a few days of waiting with the PSX on.
  • Penultimate Weapon:
    • Alucard's Sword. When you get it back, you may or may not have found a better sword (or a certain rod and shield combination). The real ultimate weapon is the rarely dropped Crissaegrim, which has lower attack power than the Alucard Sword but does more damage per swing anyway due to Death of a Thousand Cuts.
    • To make the Crissaegrim even more game-breaking, it's possible for two of them to be dropped. Since they're one-handed, you can dual wield them.
    • Additionally, all other primary weapons in the game require you to stop in place to swing them. The Crissaegrim has no such restriction, allowing you to continuously swing it while running.
  • Permanently Missable Content: A few bestiary entries are permanently missable:
    • The bestiary entry for the Mudman, if you kill the Lesser Demon (boss) without waiting for him to summon a Mudman. While the Lesser Demon becomes a Degraded Boss later on, those only summon more Lesser Demons and nothing else.
    • Richter's entry, if you save him without hitting him at least once.
    • On a lesser scale, the Wargs are only present at the start of the game, and vanish forever from the area later. They're extremely hard to miss, though.
  • Perverse Puppet: Marionettes, later known as killer dolls, debuted in this game. They also float and predominantly attack by body-slamming into their target.
  • Pinball Projectile: The Rebound Stone subweapon, which bounces around angularly before disappearing.
  • Player Nudge:
    • The Shield Rod is found guarded by a conspicuously large crowd of enemies, including skeletons with powerful firearms that'll dish out a ton of damage to Alucard if he doesn't quickly slay them. The Shield Rod's absurd capabilities and the inputs required to use them may not be immediately obvious, but this room conveys to players just how strong it must be.
    • If you happen to bring the Fairy familiar to the spiked Blackout Basement corridor, she'll say that "some animals can live in complete darkness". This hints at the Bat transformation's unlockable ability to cross that room by using a sonar.
  • Player Tic: Constant backdashing, especially by speedrunners, since it makes Alucard move slightly faster.
  • Plot Coupon: The parts of Dracula's body (for the second time) late in the game. The only guiding point of the reversed castle is that Alucard needs to find all five of these items to open up the final boss. Each of the body parts also has a bonus effect: four of them add a +10 bonus to certain stats, and the fifth grants permanent immunity to the "curse" status.
  • Poison Mushroom: Literally with the Toadstool, a consumable that inflicts poison status on you. Players might think to equip the circlet that gives HP restoration while poisoned and then try eating it, only to find the Toadstool heals a whopping 1 point.
  • Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: The opening has Richter barging into Dracula's castle and interrupting the Count's relaxed wine drinking, greeting him with "Die, monster!" He then insults Dracula, to which Dracula replies very calmly and philosophically. Richter continues insulting Dracula until he provokes a fight.
  • Poltergeist: The Spectral Sword causes this phenomenon, as well as the Ouija Table. Once you get the perk that lets you see the enemy's name, you'll occasionally find an actual Poltergeist in the game.
  • Portal Network: Five endpoints in each castle. You can go to the second upon finding the first (per castle), but the rest can only be accessed after you've reached them normally. There is one more in Saturn version, at an additional area.
  • Post-End Game Content: The Duplicator item and various cheats become available in a new game if you have a Clear or Replay save.
  • The Power of Love: Alucard brings this up to Dracula during the ending.
    "You have been doomed ever since you lost the ability to love."
  • Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Dracula's voice deepens as he turns into his demonic form in the prologue.
  • Power Up Letdown: Trying to use the Alucart Shield (if you weren't watching the last consonant or were just curious) in combo with the Shield Rod. Cue Alucard pulling his cloak around dramatically... and then going "?"
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang: Skelerangs throw two boomerangs at the player, and will continue to do so until defeated. Alucard can pick up some boomerang types to use as thrown weapons.
  • Pre-Final Boss: Defeating Shaft during the game's climax leads directly to the Final Boss fight against Dracula.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Alucard uses one after landing the killing blow on Dracula.
    "Go back whence you came! Trouble the soul of my mother no more!"
  • Prepare to Die: Richter's "Die, monster!" from the prologue.
  • Previous Player-Character Cameo: Both from Rondo of Blood; Richter as a Rogue Protagonist and Maria as a friendly NPC looking for him.
  • Previously on…: The prologue, which remakes the final battle of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
  • Progressively Prettier: In his previous appearance in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Alucard looked like a craggy middle aged man. Now he is a pretty boy with white-blond hair.
  • Promoted to Playable: Richter Belmont after you finish the game once, or at the start in the Saturn version. Maria Renard is also this in the Saturn and PSP versions.
  • Public Domain Artifact: The swords Joyeuse (Charlemagne's personal sword) and Cortana (aka "Sword of Mercy", English regalia sword), among others.
  • Purposely Overpowered: The Ring of Varda (the most powerful stat-boosting ring in the game, by far) cannot be obtained until you have cleared the game at least once.
  • Rage Helm: A scowling helmet known as Dragon Helm is described as frightening to enemies, and it halves their defense because of it.
  • Random Drop: Most of the items come from enemies dropping them.
  • Random Drop Booster:
    • The Ring of Arcana increases the likelihood of item drops.
    • Items that increase luck also increase drops. The Lapis Lazuli increases it by 20 points, the Alucart items increase it by 30 as a Set Bonus, and you can enter a cheat code to start the game with 99 luck (at the cost of other stats being reduced).
  • Rare Random Drop: Enjoy your grinding if you want the Crissaegrim. Even if you wear the Ring of Arcana, which boosts rare item drops from monsters, it's still only about a 1/50 chance of the monster in question dropping it, even though it's a fairly common enemy in that area.
  • Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Both Kaiser Knuckle and Fist of Tulkas have a blurry-punch-spam special attack.
  • Redemption Demotion:
    • Justifying this trope makes up the opening to the game. Alucard, having chosen to renounce Dracula's ways prior to the start of the game, storms the castle with a few extremely powerful weapons, obliterating every single one of the first enemies in a single hit. The moment he meets Death and it's revealed what's going on, Death steals all of his weapons and in the next room, the character who was mowing through giant beasts in a single sword swipe is now resorting to punching a slow, weak zombie to death just for a short sword.
    • Inverted with Richter, whose powers as a vampire hunter would seem to prove very useful against Alucard when he's under the control of Shaft, but Richter is not particularly powerful or difficult as the Disc-One Final Boss. When unlocked as a playable character, however, he becomes a Difficult, but Awesome Lightning Bruiser who has an array of extremely powerful moves that can be chained together at speeds much greater than he ever pulls off during the boss fight.
  • Reflecting Laser: The Crystal subweapon allows Alucard to attack with this type of projectile.
  • Remixed Level: The inverted castle has not only levels upside down and new enemies, the backgrounds on some of them are different.
  • Retcon: In the prologue, Richter and Dracula's conversation occurs before their battle, unlike in Rondo where it happened after Dracula is defeated. The Dracula X Chronicles remake maintains this while adding new post-battle dialogue.
  • Retraux: In the prologue, the HUD looks like Rondo of Blood's. It also appears when you play as Richter or Maria.
  • Reverse Shrapnel: Spectral Swords, evil sword ghosts/spirits that possess nearby weapons into a circle around themselves to attack you.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: Alucard requires a Relic to accomplish the same feat, but that does not seem to be a problem for other non-Belmont vampire hunters in the castle.
  • Rings of Death: The chakram item, which can be thrown to damage enemies.
  • RPG Elements: The game features stats, meters for HP and MP, experience points, and equipment coupled with 2D platforming.
  • Run, Don't Walk: Richter Belmont can start running by tapping left or right buttons twice. Alucard can do so too, but only with a powerup found in the Saturn version.
  • Rush Boss: Possessed Richter dies in relatively few hits compared to most of the game's bosses. He also moves fast and hits hard, including one attack that fills the entire screen. Of course, killing him only leads to the bad ending, since the real intended objective is to lift the curse cast by Shaft.
  • Saved by the Coffin: Joked about with the fact that you save your game by going to your coffin.
  • Save Point: Being a vampire, Alucard rests inside coffins to save his progress.
  • Scenery Porn: The game combines 3D graphics and 2D graphics to beautiful effect.
  • Schmuck Bait: Putting the game disc in a CD player will play a hidden track that starts with Alucard warning the listener that "cut number one contains computer data, so please do not play it" and notes that he doubts you'll listen to him anyways. CD players at the time of the game's release were already smart enough to skip the data track, so it was safe to take the bait. The joke is that back when CD players weren't smart enough, there was often a real audio warning at the start of track 1 explaining not to try to play it back.
  • Sealed Evil in a Duel: This is brainwashed Richter Belmont's motive for reviving Dracula:
    Richter Belmont: Count Dracula rises but once every century, and my role is over. If I can resurrect him, then the battle will last for eternity!
  • Secret Character: Richter (and Maria in the PSP version) can be unlocked after beating the game at least once with enough percentage of the map completed, and then starting a new game. In the Saturn version, they are playable from the start.
  • Sequence Breaking: Once you get the Soul of Wolf in the Outer Wall, you can use it to get across the crumbling platforms in the Clock Tower and and then traverse it normally, albeit in reverse, to get to what would normally be the final area of the castle. The timing is very strict, however, and likely takes multiple tries. You still, however, need to explore the rest of the castle to actually fight the boss, as the stairs are out.
  • Sequential Boss: Dracula in the prologue, Olrox, and Death.
  • Set Bonus: Equpping all Alucart items (not to be confused with the Alucard items); the Alucart Sword, Shield, and Mail. On their own, they have pitiful stats and no special properties. Put them together and they grant you +30 LCK, greatly increasing the chances of critical hits and rare drops.
  • Shape Shifter Mashup: Scylla, and potentially Dracula in his final form.
  • Shapeshifting Sound:
    • When transforming, Alucard produces a sound like dingling bells when he transforms into a wolf, a bat, or a cloud of mist — though the bat and mist transformations generally sound lower and more unearthly.
    • During the second half of his boss battle, Olrox goes One-Winged Angel with a loud series of cracking sound effects as he erupts into the form of a giant reptilian monster.
    • The black panther enemy is actually a Blob Monster, revealing its true nature by reverting to its liquid state with a slurping hiss.
  • Shaped Like Itself: The game features a sword named Gram, the description of which reads "The sword named Gram". It also features a sword named Harper. The description for it reads "The sword named Harper".
  • Shapeshifting: Alucard can take the shape of a bat, a wolf, and a cloud of mist with the right relics.
  • Shear Menace: The Underground Garden area in the Sega Saturn version of the game has gardeners wielding huge shears as enemies.
  • Shop Fodder: There's an array of different jewels, which have no use aside from selling them to the Librarian for cash.
  • Shoryuken:
    • A rising uppercut is one of Richter's moves when he becomes playable.
    • The Minotaur boss uses this move attempting to attack Alucard if Alucard happens to be above him. Yes, a minotaur.
  • Showgirl Skirt: The Faerie familiar's outfit.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Dracula brings up the evils of religion in the original version prologue, Richter says that his words are as empty as his soul.
  • Shut Up, Kirk!: Dracula's last line in the prologue is an "enough talk" to cut off Richter before fighting him. This and the preceding are incidentally the game's Signature Lines.
  • Significant Name Overlap: This arose because of a translation issue that went unnoticed by many fans for decades:
    • The the Icebrand is the Ice-elemental member of a trio of similar swords called the Firebrand and the Thunderbrand. They acquired their Theme Naming because of the original English localization. All of them, in the translated flavor text, were said to be crafted or used originally by mighty mythical beings: the Thunderbrand was the sword of the Hindu deity, Indranote  while the Firebrand was the sword of Oberon, King of the Fairies, putting a creative twist on an old English folkloric tradition.note  But the Icebrand, according to the flavor text, was the sword of Mim — which players took at the time to be a reference to the sorceress from Disney's The Sword in the Stone. To some this may have been a little obtuse, but given that Symphony of the Night, especially, and the franchise more generally, is a swirl of seemingly endless allusions to mythology, folklore, and fiction, and given that Mim was indeed presented as a mighty magic-user in her own right, it fit right in. The thing was, the "Mim" being referenced was not Mim but rather Mîm — note the accent over the i — a somewhat obscure character from Tolkien's Legendarium. This actually stands to reason, as the same English translation that originally appeared in North America was (as browsing this article will make abundantly clear) loaded with puzzlingly incongruous references to Tolkien's works. But because the in-game text could not process special characters (like î), for years many fans were led to believe the Icebrand was, indeed, supposed to have been once wielded, or at least crafted, by a half-forgotten Disney character whose existence was somehow deemed canon in the Castlevania universe.
  • A Sinister Clue: The official art for the game depicts cursed-by-Dracula Richter Belmont as a lefty; he is right-handed in the prior depictions of him.
  • Situational Sword: Badelaire, which powers up as the in-game clock counter increases.
  • Skippable Boss: In the first castle, there's Scylla, Granfaloon, Karasuman, and with the right knowledge and skill, Olrox. In the inverted castle, there's Beelzebub, Doppelganger40, and the Fake Hunters.
  • Slouch of Villainy:
    • Taken to new extremes in the true final battle, which Dracula spends sitting on a throne that turns into a dragonic Eldritch Abomination.
    • Richter displays the slouch in a piece of official art.
  • Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: Certain rooms in the Clock Tower features various spiked blocks on a chain.
  • Solemn Ending Theme: "I Am The Wind", a beautiful but melancholic song that plays during the credits of the game. They hit especially hard if you get the bad ending triggered by killing Richter instead of saving him so you can proceed normally in the game.
  • Some Dexterity Required: Making Alucard eat a peanut can be like this, since unlike other restoratives, they only work a specific way. Instead of dropping the food on the ground to be (re)collected, Alucard flicks a peanut up into the air, and you have to catch it in his mouth.
  • So What Do We Do Now?: Why did the titular castle reappear a mere five years after Richter Belmont banished Dracula? It seems like Richter couldn't go back to a normal life after saving the world from the Prince of Darkness and he wants Dracula back so he can be the hero again. Luckily, he's just been brainwashed into thinking this, although you can get a bad ending by killing him.
  • Space-Filling Path: Zigzagging corridors, long vertical shafts... generally a case of size for the sake of size.
  • Spam Attack: The Crissaegrim is a sword which acts like the Kaiser Knuckles above; this is also one of the best weapons in the game, as it kills most enemies in "one" blow.
  • Special Attack: Several weapons have alternate attacks, either activated with back-forward-attack or down-down/forward-forward attack, such as the Shield Rod's powers and the Fist of Tulkas' special moves. Sometimes they're simply more powerful, other times they have interesting or useful side effects.
  • Speed Echoes: Whatever the vampiric Alucard does, afterimages follow.
  • Spell My Name With An S: The game can't quite decide between American 's' and British 'c' spellings in some areas, leading to the spelling "Reverce" in some cases.
  • Spikes of Doom: A few rooms are coated with dangerous spikes. With the Spike Breaker armor, you can render them harmless by destroying any spikes you touch. This is necessary to get through a necessary hallway (aside from glitching).
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: There's a few polygon backgrounds or objects, most notably the save points, doors, book enemies, and the clock tower before Dracula.
  • Start X to Stop X: This is essentially Shaft's plan all along. Being tired of Vampire Hunters continuously hunting Dracula, he figured the best way to stop them is to mind control the strongest one ever, Richter, and use his own holy power against other hunters, thereby making sure Dracula would never be defeated again. Has shades of Xanatos Gambit; even if Richter Belmont is defeated, as Alucard does in the bad endings, the most troublesome hunting family, the Belmonts, is no more.
  • Stationary Boss: Beelzebub, a stationary, giant rotting corpse on hooks that attacks with flies and maggots.
  • Status Effects: Poison (character loses lots of strength and defense), Curse (character is unable to attack or defend, they just stagger), and Stone (character is petrified, highly vulnerable to all forms of damage, and they must wriggle free).
  • Summon Magic: The Power of Sire item summons an image of Vlad Tepes Dracula (the real Dracula) to damage enemies.
  • Superboss: Galamoth, the boss of the Floating Catacombs (itself a Bonus Dungeon), is so powerful that in the bestiary, the game doesn't show his HP. Defeating him nets you the Gas Cloud relic, which makes your mist form harm enemies.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Alucard, being half-vampire and all, until he obtains the Holy Symbol. Note that in this particular game, water doesn't kill you outright, even if you don't have the symbol — you will take a lot of damage, but it's still possible to jump out. One of the lesser used tropes of vampire weaknesses is their inability to cross running water under their own power, which this weakness is a reference to, though the Holy Symbol being a snorkel is a fun sight gag.
  • Super Not-Drowning Skills: Alucard takes damage simply from touching water from the beginning of the game until you grab the Holy Symbol, which looks suspiciously like a snorkel. After this, you can stay underwater as long as you want. Justified because Alucard is half-vampire and, as per traditional folklore, running water is hazardous to him. He takes the same damage from a puddle as he does when 30 feet underwater, and the lack of oxygen appears to be of no concern.
  • Super Smoke: A relic grants Alucard a skill to momentarily to turn into mist, which can be used to get through bars and avoid attacks. This is a nod to old legends which state that vampires can turn into mist.
  • Sweeping Laser Explosion: Orlox in his second form does a smaller version of the trope by creating a moderate wall of flames by firing a laser across the ground for a short while, though as the fight progresses he will use the laser multiple times in a row.
  • Sword Lines: Featured. One sword's line even has the word "verboten" (German for "forbidden") written on it.
  • Talking Weapon: Sword Familiar, when not equipped, shouts victoriously and taunts enemies (and Alucard himself, at lower levels).
  • A Taste of Power: At the beginning of the game, you have a ridiculously powerful suit of armor and a sword that makes short work of every enemy, along with strong accessories. However, when you run into Death, he uses his magic to make all of it go away... unless you deliberately glitch the cutscene to keep your equipment (which is possible on some platforms). Otherwise, Alucard can retrieve the items in the second half of the game.
  • This Cannot Be!: Said by Dracula himself, word for word.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: Alucard confronts a succubus who has been imitating his dead mother just to mess with his head, and conveys his intentions rather stoically before an inevitable boss fight:
    Alucard: Demon. Death is too good for you.
  • Throwing Down the Gauntlet: In the introductory battle, Richter throws down a challenge to Dracula, shouting out all the reasons why the vampire lord is unfit to rule the world. Dracula responds by throwing down his wine glass and a hearty "Have at you!" and the battle begins.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The Runesword and the Heaven Sword, two swords thrown forward instead of swung.
  • Time Keeps On Ticking: Alucard's initial stats depend on, among other things, how fast you beat the opening battle with Richter. However, the timer keeps going while Richter and Dracula are talking, and you cannot skip this conversation unless you have already beaten the game once. Hence, it is impossible to get the best initial stats unless you are doing a replay.
  • Time Skip: It has been five years since Rondo of Blood. It has mostly affected Maria Renard, who has become more mature.
  • Time Stands Still: The Stopwatch subweapon. It's oddly selective, though—some enemies will be frozen, some will merely slow down, and some (including most bosses) are entirely unaffected.
  • Too Awesome to Use: The game has many number of powerful, one-shot items that most players will hang onto "until the right time". But as the game is relatively easy compared to later Metroidvania-style games (and possesses what many consider the easiest Dracula fight in the series), that time will never come. On the second or later playthrough of the game, it is possible to obtain an item called the Duplicator, making those single-use items infinitely reusable.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Alucard in Dracula's Curse isn't exactly the most stellar playable character due to his huge hitbox, awkward method of combat and his greatest forte is becoming a bat and flying. Here, he's a master of almost every weapons to become a super powerful being, and also establishes himself as one of the most powerful characters in the Castlevania-verse.
  • Took a Shortcut: Most of the conversations with Maria take place in rooms she really should not have been able to access before you.
  • Tragic Bigot: Played straight and also defied. Dracula certainly winds up hating the humans for burning Lisa at the stake, but Alucard was there when they killed her, and her last words made sure that he at least would not go down the same path:
    Do not hate the humans. If you cannot live with them, at least do them no harm. For theirs is already a hard lot.
  • Trick Boss: In one room in the Underground Caverns, you fight a single snake-like creature. It goes down rather easily. In the next couple of rooms, you realise it is just one of several, all attached to Scylla, the actual boss.
  • True Final Boss: Dracula, who resides at the end of the Inverted Castle.
  • Turns Red: The zombie doppelgängers imitating Trevor, Grant, and Sypha from Dracula's Curse all gain new or stronger attacks when one of their allies fall in battle. Sypha even gains the ability to re-revive Trevor, albeit as a shambling, mostly-dead shell.

    U - Z 
  • Uncommon Time: "Final Toccata" (the baroque-tacular semi-theme-music for the inverted castle, and one of the first appearances of what would become Dracula's signature chord progression) is in 5/4 time.
  • Underground Level: Underground Caverns, Abandoned Mines, and Catacombs. The Saturn version also has the Underground Garden. These areas retain their settings in the Inverted Castle, even if they're technically not underground anymore there.
  • Ungrateful Townsfolk: As revealed in the backstory, just when Dracula appears to have redeemed himself from the whole Vlad the Impaler bit via The Power of Love, some jackasses from a nearby village burn his beautiful wife alive. For being a healer. A Despair Event Horizon crossing later, and an Omnicidal Maniac was born.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable:
    • If, for some reason, the player manages to max-out the in-game clock at 99 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds before obtaining the Echo of Bat relic, the pathway to said item – which only opens on every even minute of the clock – becomes completely inaccessible, making the place where it's useful nearly impossible to navigate without prior knowledge or an external map.note 
    • You can also make Richter slide out of the castle before the gate closes... with no way back inside.
  • Unique Enemy: Absolutely loads. Often more than one of them appear, just that they only ever appear in a single room in the entire game. There's the dodo that runs when you go into the room, the discus lord that only appears in a single room in the Catacombs, the giant blue hammer enemy (his kin appear again, he doesn't), the mudmen only appearing in the Lesser Demon boss fight, the Alura Une, the slimes (particularly the giant one), Yorick, and more. Some enemies appear to be this, but then later in the game they become more numerous as you become stronger to deal with them (notably the demon who is accidentally called "Ctulhu"). According to Yahtzee, the philosophy behind the enemy designs seems to be, "Every time you palette swap, A BABY DIES".
  • Unlucky Thirteen: When returning to the clock room after equipping the gold and silver rings, the clock hands spin around until they both point downwards. The clock ominously chimes thirteen times before the floor opens up. In the Inverted Castle, collect all five parts of Dracula's body and enter this room to make the clock strike thirteen and open the floor (now the ceiling), granting access to the final battle.
  • Useless Item:
    • The game has plenty of weapons with obscure bonuses, one of which (the Were-Bane) gives bonuses against Were-Beasts. Unfortunately there's only one Were-creature in the game (the Werewolf) and although a mini-boss originally, by the time you get this weapon is encountered as just as a random grunt in one specific area and is not much of a challenge as you're now a much higher level, and there's plenty of weapons with much higher base damage that eclipse the bonus you'd get anyway. On top of this, though, the sword is glitched, in that it does absolutely zero extra damage to them anyway! Mind you, the sword isn't /completely/ useless, as it's QCF+Attack move is a flurry of thrusts in the same vein as the Rapier's, and Were-Bane is stronger than the Rapier. It makes for a good off-hand weapon if you decide to forgo two-handed weapons and shields.
    • There are around a dozen one-handed swords which do not have any special bonuses and are just incrementally more powerful versions of previous one-handed swords you find. Since there are so many weapons that offer more than raw attack power, it's unlikely you'll ever want to use them in any practical situation.
    • Most throwing/bomb items that aren't Too Awesome to Use are this. Some like the javelin and bwaka knife can at least damage multiple enemies by traveling through them across the screen, but most aren't much of an improvement over the regular sub-weapons you find that run on easily-replenishable hearts.
  • Useless Useful Spell:
    • Dark Metamorphosis, which allows our hero to heal with the blood shed by enemies... of course, most things, exploding into flames on death and dying in one hit, or being animated armor or skeletons or whatever else, don't bleed; the most powerful early-game weapons (Jewel Knuckles and spells) won't draw blood from any enemy.
    • An early-acquired weapon, the Red Rust, will curse enemies (preventing them from attacking). Of course, it's slower and weaker than punching with fists, has a random chance of failing to swing on Alucard's part, and only affects the two Doppelganger boss enemies in the game.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Inverted Castle. The Clock Tower subverts this, as it certainly has all the hallmarks of being one with its tricky platforming, tough enemies, lack of save points and kickass music, but not only do you still have the Inverted Castle to go through once you've saved Richter, but the reversed Clock Tower is where you're likely to start your exploration.
  • Vicious Cycle: A unique situation regarding the cyclic resurrection of Dracula in relation to the series as a whole, because one of the major plot points of the game is that Castlevania's latest appearance is way ahead of schedule.
  • Victory Is Boring: Richter's reasoning for becoming lord of the castle was that he wanted to duel Dracula for all eternity. That's what Shaft told him to say.
  • Video Game Dashing:
    • The backdash is available from the start, letting Alucard quickly scoot backwards to dodge attacks.
    • Richter has a traditional double-tap running input.
  • Video Game Flight: True to his vampire heritage, Alucard can fly by transforming into a bat. This slowly uses mana, and you can only attack if you've collected the Fire of Bat powerup. The mist form can also be upgraded to grant infinite, invincible flight, but it uses mana much more quickly than the bat.
  • Video Game Sliding: Although Alucard lacks this ability, Richter Belmont has an extremely fast sliding maneuver. Maria Renard also has a slide, although she's only playable in the Sega Saturn version, and the Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles version on the Playstation Portable.
  • Villain Decay: Slogra and Gaibon were tough bosses in Super Castlevania IV, now they are the weak duo for the first boss battle.
  • Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Some early bosses, such as Slogra, Gaibon, Werewolf, and Minotaur, are encountered later in the game, but with the same stats as before, and are considered normal, respawning enemies. Of course, with your stronger weapons and abilities, they are not nearly as difficult. Even when you're fighting as many as four of them in the same room.
  • Villain Pedigree: When the player gets to the endgame levels and is vastly more powerful, many of the regular mobs are actually the bosses from the first castle.
  • Violation of Common Sense: Alucard's speedy backdash to get through the game. Would you backstep through an entire castle full of things trying to kill you?
  • Violence is the Only Option: What starts as a theological/philosophical debate in the prologue (this being more prominent in the Japanese version) ends in a fight to the death.
  • Visible Silence: Alucard often goes "........." in his dialogue. Either he's completely silent or takes a while to say something.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Alucard can turn into a bat, a wolf and mist. The Axe Armor transformation seems to be unexpected, though.
  • The War Sequence: The Granfaloon boss has a seemingly infinite number of animated corpses attack you (they do eventually run out) while a horrific monster, with a shell composed of said corpses, shoots beams at you.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: If Alucard can reach the high platform on the wall behind Galamoth quickly enough, he can easily punch him in the face until he dies.
  • Weird Moon: The moon appears crescent when viewed from the Clock Tower, full when viewed from the outer wall and Olrox's Quarters, and full with a blood red tint when viewed from the castle keep. In all but Olrox's Quarters, the moon is also terrifyingly huge. And yet, all of these locations are a short walk from each other, with the Outer Wall, Clock Tower, and Castle Keep all being right next door.
  • We Will Meet Again: Death says this to Alucard at the end of their confrontation at the castle entrance. Indeed they do, but only if you unlock the second half of the game by freeing Richter from his Brainwashed and Crazy state.
  • What Does This Button Do?: In one area of the castle there's a room with a switch that's out of reach. Once you obtain the Devil familiar, head back to that room. The Demon is curious:
    Devil: Hmmm... a switch! Why don't I press it and see...
  • When Trees Attack: Trees with creepily grinning faces appear in the Saturn version's Underground Garden level, which attack you with fruits, which also have faces.
  • Who Needs Their Whole Body?: When a Flying Zombie takes enough damage, they are cut in half horizontally and the separates start acting invidually.
  • Wind from Beneath My Wings: The Darkwing Bat attacks like this, flapping its wings to fling Alucard into walls.
  • With This Herring: Subverted. Your character starts out as a level 1 character, but is wearing some of the best equipment available in the game... until Death steals it all from you and scatters it around the game map. One wonders why he doesn't bother to do so again when they re-encounter one another later in the game...
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dracula is turned into one by this game, showing he wasn't always evil and even realizes how hopeless his life is.
  • World of Ham: There's maybe one scene in the entire game where the characters aren't taking a bite out of Castlevania. Richter is incapable of even thinking to himself without hamming it up. And then, there's Dracula. There's a reason he has an Evil Is Hammy entry to himself on this page, even when compared to everyone else.
  • X-Ray Sparks: Playable Maria will show her skeleton whenever she's electrocuted.
  • You Don't Look Like You:
    • Alucard, who bears no resemblance to the version of him that appears in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.
    • Richter's portrait, thanks to the Art Shift from anime-esque Rondo of Blood to more gothic Symphony.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: Alucard has to find the Cube of Zoe relic in order to... find items from destroyed candles.
  • You Shouldn't Know This Already: Averted. Even before you have officially learned any of Alucard's spells, inputing the button command will perform it and even add it to your technique menu for you instead of having to buy the respective spell scrolls from the Librarian.
  • Your Little Dismissive Diminutive: "What is a man", rhetorically asks Dracula. His answer is not just a little pile of secrets, but a miserable little pile of secrets.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: After Richter is defeated, Dracula has still to be found in the Inverted Castle. Notably, the game averts Interface Spoiler by having the normal castle's exploration percentage add up to 100%, tricking completionist players into thinking they're near the end of the game. Completing both castles yields a percentage of just a little over 200%.
  • Zero-Effort Boss: How to defeat Dracula as Richter Belmont: Take the Holy Water that you find right inside his room, and do an Item Crash. It hits the whole screen and does insane damage at very little cost, such that it'll most likely kill him the moment he's done transforming. Even if you haven't picked up the Holy Water or didn't read the manual, he'd still have to work out to be called a Warm-Up Boss; he doesn't do much damage and he's a gigantic target, and if your health does hit zero, Maria shows up to fill it back up on top of making you invincible for the rest of the fight. The Holy Water Item Crash is such a broken starting move that it's a major reason "Richter Mode" is considered to have Hard Levels, Easy Bosses. Note that the real purpose of this fight, not that the game tells you, is to tweak Alucard's base stats depending on how and what you do. Finishing quickly without "dying" gives Alucard higher stats, finishing without taking a hit and not using a special weapon starts you with 14 luck, and "dying" starts you with lower stats and a high potion.

No, This Cannot Be!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!! Impossible! Not this time! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!

 
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Slogra & Gaibon

Introduced in Super Castlevania IV, these two monsters are the first boss encounter for Alucard.

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