Submission Text Full Submission Page
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.

Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: As pointed out in this post, this run loses time all throughout when compared to the Sypha run, which is the most comparable to this route. On top of that, we already have a published Trevor only run that uses an alternate path not seen in any of our other runs, making a second Trevor only publication redundant. I highly recommend studying our published CV3 runs and trying to improve the Sunken City path run if you are still interested in TASing Trevor only.
This is still a good attempt, but unfortunately I have to reject it for suboptimal play.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15583
Location: 127.0.0.1
Editor, Skilled player (1439)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2108
Alright, more Castlevania 3. *rubs hands* For a first attempt, the run wasn't all that bad. The heart and health management was pretty apparent. However, there was a lot of visibly sloppy play, such as whipping too late when falling to the ground, causing Trevor to be stuck in his whipping animation for a few frames, or walking too far when interacting with stairs. This causes the run to needlessly bleed frames constantly. A lot of sections were also not approached optimally, such as the axe knight in BLK 5-0C: It would have saved more time to duck under his axe, rather than jump over him, which would allow you to land closer to the stairs when taking damage. Another instance is BLK 7-0A, where you jump when killing the bone pillar, which again causes you to overshoot the stairs. It would've been much better to just wait a frame. Instances like this are numerous throughout the TAS. Overall, it doesn't seem like a lot of planning or revision went into the movement. The amount of lag in the final stage's autoscroller room was also obscene. I recommend comparing against other runs of this game and trying to beat them. The route is identical to that of the current Sypha publication, but loses 108 frames up to Sypha (22269 vs 22377) due to bad optimization. You should be able to at least match that time. I also happen to know that you can handily beat it. Finally, I'm not keen on the category choice for the purposes of the site. Compared to all other characters, Trevor has by far the least to offer in terms of tricks, and as mentioned, the route is the same as with the Sypha run. Compare that to 2753M, which also uses Trevor, but shows off a part of the game that no other route reaches. Making a Trevor-only TAS is absolutely a valid goal, but I don't think it has enough to set itself apart to be published on the site. Overall, the run is quite rough, but I'm seeing a lot of potential here. Do keep it up, you're bound to improve.
Toms
He/Him
Joined: 5/14/2021
Posts: 11
Location: Argentina
It's a good one, I vote YES
TASVideosGrue
They/Them
Joined: 10/1/2008
Posts: 2785
Location: The dark corners of the TASVideos server
om, nom, nom... blech!