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Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is the story of Trevor Belmont's battle against Dracula from the times before Simon's battle in Castlevania. In this complex and difficult game, there are three playable allies whom Trevor can recruit: Alucard (Dracula's son), Grant DaNasty (a pirate captain), and Sypha Belnades (a mystic warlord).
Unlike those other runs, which are played by recruiting Grant, Alucard or Sypha, this run has been completed with only Ralph Belmont. The methods of passing Stage 1, Stage 3 and the battle of Dracula are the same as the Samhain-Grim version.
feos: The previous submission was rejected for suboptimal play and for poor goal choice. This movie has better optimization, but it still has issues highlighted by scrimpeh.
Most importantly, this category/goal still doesn't offer enough unique entertaining gameplay to become yet another branch of Castlevania 3. It technically does have some differences from other branches, but not enough viewer support, which is a basic requirement for extra branches not acceptable for the Standard class.
Rejecting for goal choice and not up-to-date optimization.
DancemaniaLover, new movies of this branch will also be rejected! Try improving an existing published branch, but also keep in mind the techniques mentioned by scrimpeh in the thread.

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Posted: 10/2/2021 3:36 AM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7221: DancemaniaLover's NES Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse "Ralph Belmont only" in 28:10.07
Posted: 10/3/2021 4:31 PM
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scrimpeh
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...Why are subweapons never used in the second phase death fight anyway? Alright, the movie generally looks much better now. Most of the sections now look quite smoothly executed, and the boss fights looked good. However, there are still mistakes. Since the run seems to be based of Sanhaim-Grim's old run, it does not display updated knowledge for stage 1. In particular, you should pick up the holy water to kill the boss in the stage faster. Check out the current Grant U WIP for the fastest known approach to Stage 1. You can also manipulate zombies to not spawn in your way with RNG. There's also some other minor mistakes. In BLK-4-0B (around frame 26845), you could throw a cross while landing on the ground to kill the red skeleton, so you don't have to jump over it. In the final room of 5-0B, you could take the damage boost differently, which by my calculations should save around 50 frames. You also don't need to whip the armor knight in the autoscroller room, instead you can just use a second cross. Overall, the run is much more polished, but there's still work to be done. Do keep it up.
Posted: 10/17/2021 3:36 PM
(Edited: 1/24/2022 10:45 PM)
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feos
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The previous run was rejected for being sub-optimal and using a route similar to existing branches, but since there's a new submission with the same route, probably we need to give it another chance? Here's the encode of this submission: Link to video Here's a route comparison table across all CV3 branches: While this movie uses the same route as in the Sypha branch, it uses a unique character for it, so it's probably a decent addition to Sypha and Grant that use this route too? Also this route is the opposite of the existing Trevor only branch, which might also be a plus? What does everyone feel about how this movie compares to existing branches in terms of entertainment and unique content?
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Posted: 10/17/2021 3:59 PM
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Samsara
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I maintain what I said in my judgement of the previous run: A second Trevor only branch is redundant, given that the published one takes as much of a unique path as possible from the others. Grant, Sypha and Alucard have the added bonuses of being unique characters with unique playstyles, but Trevor doesn't really have that since he's already in every route by default. The most this run has to offer then is, effectively, 100% content overlap with the other published branches, since it uses a character that appears in every branch (one of which is already a branch that only uses that character) and takes the exact same route that appears in two other branches.
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Posted: 10/18/2021 12:54 AM
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£e_Nécroyeur
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Per my vote, absolutely yes!
Posted: 10/18/2021 10:18 AM
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Submission text should be looked at: Ralph Belmont is the Japanese name, Trevor Belmont is the international one. "Sypha Belnades (a mystic warlord)" should be warlock.
Posted: 10/18/2021 3:40 PM
(Edited: 1/4/2022 8:45 PM)
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scrimpeh
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For the record, I could see the category have some merit, since there's a few scroll glitches that would be unique to Trevor. On the other hand, that is because the other characters have faster methods to deal with those sections anyway. H8 to be harsh, but I'd be against publishing this movie for the category alone.
Posted: 10/24/2021 11:42 AM
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TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... sweet!