Gergoth, again

Ok, I've put Gergoth out his misery. This goes fairly quickly with a constant flood of Axe Armors and the occasional High Potion or High Mindup — make sure your HP is high enough to survive the plunge through the tower floors. I think I was above level 30 at the time.

Progress is slow after that. Find the tower key, then use it in the locked corridor just below the warp point Gergoth was guarding. That's straightforward, but then you reach the clock tower floors. Mistakes here cost you dearly, there are no convenient save points. Usually a good sign you need to be focussing on something else...

These virtual battles are always intense, focussed and technical. There is no emotional flood of relief, no emotion at all, usually — not reaction to adversary's taunts, or fear, or rage or even satisfaction. It's fascinating that a game can invoke a state of mind that martial arts seek to develop. You wind up as stunted as Gergoth. I can see why a samurai's karma is so bad he can only be reincarnated as a samurai. No one would do this to themselves unless it were in service to a greater cause.

[Update 10 jun — Dawn of Sorrow is tedious, frankly. The game lasts too long, and things that could seem humorous (like Killer Clowns) just seem redolently strange. Plus you must collect every soul in order to advance. Uh. Huh. Sure. The Game Boy Advance version, Aria of Sorrow, was way more playable and loads more fun.]

If evil is your game...

Ok, I draw the line at Gergoth. I can't sic the SPCAA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animated Animals) on Konami, but still...! All the other creatures, beasts and animals in Castlevania seem to be participating in their own personal hells, but not Gergoth. This is like watching a bull elephant chained between iron posts and driven mad by deliberate torture.

Considering the immediacy and the immersion of these small format games, the violence and the affront become personal. Of course, Castlevania's not the worst. No pixels were harmed. Sigmund Freud even took a few notes ("the great mindless beast bowed down rather flaccidly, then suddenly half-rose and expelled a purple cloud of poisonous gas... Sometimes a truncated hadrosaurian is just a truncated hadrosaurian."). Gergoth is not Bambi's mother, though. Just as the dreamer wakes, sweating, the player puts down his Nintendo DS, pours himself a lemonade and mows the lawn.

Allow me to imagine a different catharsis. Soma Cruz enters the beast's cramped cell. Aghast at what he sees, he lowers his weapons and calls Yoko Belnades on a cell phone. Yoko and the team rush in at the last minute, and send the rampaging horror to sleep with four or five tranquilizer darts. In the confusion, Hammer takes a stray dart and topples over. Yoko facepalms. Jules remarks that this is why Dracula must die.

Soma Cruz advances and dispatches Gergoth's comatose bulk with a single 9mm slug through the braincase. There is no red ball reward. Gergoth keeps his own soul. The party leaves, and all including Soma find themselves, shaken, back in the Lost Village.

The doors to Gergoth's prison shut, a Magical Seal of simple beauty locks the chamber away from this continuum for all time, apparently leaving only an empty stone bower with a single alura une.

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[Update 12 June ] Yeah, Konami pushed my button.