Big Baddies Breakdown: Dracula (Castlevania series)

In Big Baddies Breakdown, Wolfman Jew analyzes all sorts of boss fights across the games industry. The catch: one boss per game. Many of these are brilliant, some of them poor. Several show technical polish, while others tell stories through their fights. But all are worthy of discussion.

Thanks to AShadowLink for suggestions.

The games industry is resplendent with mythologies. Mario and Pikachu and Sonic aren’t just icons or brands; they’re modern heroes. Series like Yakuza, The Legend of Zelda, Halo, Street Fighter, Fallout, Metroid, and Civilization go even further to be outright pantheons. And they’re iconic down to the details. Some of these properties try to move away from their roots, and some try to hold dear to them, but they all know the power of their iconography. This is part of why their characters, enemies, songs, mechanics, and tropes always reappear. A Final Fantasy sequel may be set in a wild location, it may use mechanics that are alien to every other entry, but it’ll always have a Moogle—maybe not a real one, maybe just a collectible toy, but somewhere and somehow.

Of gaming’s most storied brands, Castlevania is arguably the one that takes the idea of iconography most to heart. Almost every Castlevania game retains most of the materials, the mechanics, the stuff from prior games. This isn’t to say that Castlevania is incapable of transformation or reimaginings, not at all. It has enjoyed several reboots; Symphony of the Night helped codify the franchise’s place in the “exploration action” genre, while several jumps into 3D had their individual successes and failures. And even in its home, that of a 2D, action horror game, it’s still been comfortable with adding and cutting ideas.

One of the very last new Castlevania entries, 2010’s Harmony of Despair, was a crossover that threw preexisting sprites, characters, and mechanics into a frenetic, online co-op mishmash.

Having said that, it would be absurd not to point out Castlevania’s sheer number of reused and remixed ideas. Its main line of protagonists, the sturdy Belmont family. Their main weapon, a slow but powerful whip. Their auxiliary “sub-weapons,” devices like crosses, axes, and holy water that always appear in some form. The central location of Dracula’s Castle itself, even though it takes a different shape in every game. The famous songs, which are regularly rearranged in sequels. The enemies. The exact sprites of those enemies, many of which have been reused since Rondo of Blood back in ‘93. The bosses. Oh, the bosses…

You can’t have a Castlevania game without at least a few of the classics getting in your way. The Mummy, Frankenstein’s Creature, Legion; not all of them need to show up as boss fights, but at least some do. Historically, the franchise has tried to balance retaining some (but not too much) old content, keeping each entry somewhat (but not too) fresh, and placing them in wild (but not too wild) new circumstances. Generally, the best games are the ones that can hold the best balance. Since they show up regularly, many of the franchise’s bosses each represent that balance in one way or another, but the final boss most of all.

Count Dracula is, in many respects, Castlevania in miniature. As literature’s greatest horror icon, he leads one of the franchise’s main selling points: a troupe of ghouls from Gothic literature, Universal Pictures, and cultural myths. His Wallachian keep is the setting of pretty much every series entry. His design always follows the art style of each game, be it gothic or anime-esque. His role as a failed father is central to the franchise’s interest in lineage and parental relationships. Befitting his fame, he’s even taken the lead in Castlevania spin-offs like Kid Dracula and the Lords of Shadow sub-series, where his vampiric powers are yours to control. Most of all, though, he’s consistent. Only about three entries lack Dracula in any conventional form, and all three feature either his reincarnation or predecessor. Any player of a Castlevania game can reasonably expect to fight him, always as the final boss at the castle’s tallest point.

This reliability comes through in his fighting style, too. When you fight Dracula, inevitably in his throne room, the initial fight always goes the same way. You jump to hit his head—the only vulnerable part of his body—while he lashes out with powerful attacks. The most prominent among them: a group of three fireballs (Hellfire), a transformation into a swarm of magical bats (Bat Moon), and giant meteoroids that float or revolve (Dark Inferno). You might also see pillars of fire, spectral wolves, and lasers, but those three are the standard. He’ll cast one, teleport to another part of the room, and repeat ad infinitum. Hellfire was the only one he had at first and remains his most important; the others were brought in through later games and added to the canon.

Inferno, Bat Moon, and Dark Inferno as seen in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Dracula draws from his moves and history more aggressively than almost every other Smash boss.

That’s the right word; these are truly canonized moves. The Count used them as a playable character in the fighting game Castlevania Judgment, he brought them into his role as a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate boss, and they’re famous enough to be copied and pastiched by other games (including Castlevania itself, which has given those moves to a few of its protagonists). Iconography is hard to get, especially for something like an enemy’s attack. But these ones have it. As time went on, it became harder for new Dracula moves to join the canon in their own right, just because they’re stuck competing against so much history.

Castlevania 1, back in 1986.

It’s not as though every Dracula fight is exactly the same, though. One you get his health bar down to zero, he instantly gets a new bar and a new form (the only time he doesn’t is in Castlevania II, where he’s still smarting from his defeat in the previous game). These are allowed much more freedom. Chances are good he’ll be a horned demon who lacks any invulnerability but is larger and meaner. His fire attacks cover more of the stage, as does his body; he’ll often be the largest boss in that game by this point. Of those versions, the ripped beast from Rondo of Blood—which does keep the invulnerability—is the most famous, and it’s the one a Castlevania sequel or homage will most likely copy.

But that demon is far from the only model, and it’s just as likely that Dracula’s second form will be completely different. Bloodlines’ version is skinnier, with a stomach mouth, and it dynamically takes battle damage throughout the fight. Symphony of the Night reused the Rondo form for its prologue only to have Dracula become a hideous Eldritch mass in the finale. In Castlevania III, it’s two separate forms: an almost indescribable collection of faces and a much more describable demonic idol. And then you’ve got the Castlevania I remake Super Castlevania IV, which simply makes his face uglier for his second round. Order of Ecclesia does a similar thing, where Dracula’s model stays the same but simply adopts wildly new moves. Even if the first phase is consistent, the second (and theoretical third) phase isn’t.

Many of the forms Dracula has taken over the years. While there are several major motifs—wings, cloaks, eyes—they are wildly unique. And this doesn’t even include his wildest change, in Portrait of Ruin.

All of these versions have different powers, skills, and weaknesses. They almost universally involve fire attacks, Dracula’s stock in trade in this series even more than “darkness” magic or bloodsucking, but what form that takes is distinct. Many give up on the teleporting to move freely; sometimes that gives them stomp attacks. In general, the standard is that they’re a bit more mobile to compliment the first form’s stability, but again, that comes in different ways. The most consistent detail is that they’re all tough—very tough. Castlevania, especially in its early years, was both praised and criticized for its sheer level of difficulty, and its punishing boss fights were a big part of that. Even the more modern, balanced iterations tend to be quite tough with their late game bosses, Dracula especially.

Funnily enough, the form changes all got started a bit by accident; the second “form” in the very first Castlevania wasn’t even meant to be Drac. In the game, his head flies off, his body is destroyed, and the second form that comes in was supposed to be an all new enemy. But that’s not how players saw it, and that seems to not have been how most Konami programmers saw it, because the transformations became the standard. In keeping with the cultural inspirations for the series, these second forms are as a rule big, imposing, and a bit cinematic. They can be unexpected, even if anyone with any familiarity with Castlevania bosses knows they’ll appear.

And yet, he still has that first form. That slow, staid, and (by broader standards) unchanging first form. It’s a bit odd to see that in a video game, a boss—one whose appearance is expected, at that—who is so relatively static. If you look at Drac’s contemporaries, other villains from that era of gaming who went on to be long-lived icons, it’s notable how unique he is in this. Bowser always has the jumps and the fire breath, but how he uses them varies from game to game (the modern 2D platformers, in which he’s most iterative by far, try to give him more unique second phases as well). Ganon has wildly different forms and powers in pretty much every appearance. Dr. Wily has robots and laser attacks, but he changes them up regularly. And again, Dracula has that too with his second form, but his first is so aggressively consistent. Why, then?

I think I have an answer, but to explain it’s worth mentioning first that the other Castlevania bosses go through this, too, if not quite so far. The Creature will always be slow—well, slower, everyone in Castlevania is slow—though he incorporated miniguns, hammers, and Frankenstein-themed electric attacks over time. Camilla will always have some kind of mask or skull motif, from wearing one to being one. The “bat” boss may be the Giant Bat or the “Bat Company” swarm, but it’ll always have size on you. And Dracula’s number two, Death, has gone through so many reimaginings and redesigns but always has that annoying little sickle he summons. Again, these are fixtures in the video game canon, so going too far off-brand is a bit of a risk.

Clockwise from top-left: Carmilla (Castlevania II), Medusa (Super Castlevania IV), Mummy Man (Rondo of Blood), Death (Order of Ecclesia), the Creature (Portrait of Ruin), Bat Company (Dawn of Sorrow).

And I think that’s it: branding. These moves are part of their identity, just like how teleporting and chucking fireballs is part of Dracula’s. I suppose you can think of these reliable opponents as a kind of nice comfort food. As much as horror stories try to spook you (and Castlevania is horror, if not survival horror), most of them try to be familiar and comforting. Like a Lifetime Original Movie, directed by David DeCoteau and starring Eric Roberts as Drac, the game tries to be just a bit unnerving and not an iota more. Because as difficult and as labyrinthine as the series can be, Castlevania doesn’t want to put you off. It wants you to have anchors. Has doing that so thoroughly with its bosses and enemies make the series formulaic, something to which its various commercial struggles have been attributed? Perhaps. But that’s also turned its tunes, world, and villains into true icons.

…Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a movie to pitch to Konami and the Lifetime Movie Network.