It’s not the first time I write about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for a Boss Rush. It probably won’t be the last but I can’t help it. It’s my favourite game of all time. Last time I wrote about the fight in the prologue with Dracula but now I’ll write about another one that I enjoy. Mostly because of the dramatic potential it carries. The fight with the Succubus in the Underground Caverns.
And apart from that, if you want to reach the best ending you can’t skip this fight.
“What kind of demon are you?!”
The Succubus is a fight that only Alucard faces (if you play as Richter or Maria they never face her). The fight begins when we get to this room. It looks like a Save Room but there’s something strange. Mostly the thing that turns into a coffin is a different colour. So after activating the screen fades to black, and we find ourselves in a Nightmare.
This nightmare is not particularly nice for Alucard, as he’s reliving his mother’s death in a witch trial. In the canon of the original series, Lisa was Dracula’s second wife and her death is one of the reasons why he turns against humanity.
Alucard seems upset, until he realizes that there’s something off with the picture. His mother tells him to hate humans for what they’ve done to her, which is not what happened in reality (her real final words are revealed in the final battle against Dracula). So, after Alucard breaks free of her spell, she gets her real form and a fight begins.
“Demon, death is too good for you”
The Succubus flies around the stage and has three different attacks. She can throw flower petals at you, if they hit you apart from getting damage you will get cursed, so you won’t be able to attack in a while (unless you cure that status). She can also make the wings in her bones stick out too much to attack you, but dodging that is as simple as standing within the gaps they make.
And then there’s her final type of attack, and the one that can get the most annoying. She can create replicas of herself. These replicas can shoot two projectiles that follow you around and the main way of getting rid of these is attacking all the bodies, until you find the real one.
Since the Succubus has a natural strength for the Dark element you can damage her with Holy weapons. Like the Bible subweapon or the Holy Rod. These are generally my weapons of choice when fighting her and they really do the trick, as the fight lasts only a few minutes.
“Darkling, I smell your blood”
When the fight is over we get an oddly satisfying scene. The Succubus realises that Alucard is a vampire, and just after that she realises that he’s also the son of Dracula, which probably makes her think “I fucked up.”
Alucard then kills her in cold blood, which we don’t see because the scene fades to white. And after that we’re back to the fake save room. Although this time there’s an item there waiting for us. A Gold Ring, which is one of the items that we need in order to get the best ending of the game.
If you want to see the fight, there’s this video here. The person who uploaded the video does things I don’t do in the game (he has a familiar and uses the Shield Rod, I never use those things because I’m stubborn) but still he does a great job with this fight.
And now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to charge my PSP. I now feel like playing some more SOTN for the millionth time.
Angry Spaniard, adoptive Irishman. Writer, reader, tea drinker and video game player/designer.
