14:06 It might be possible to hit Graham and switch souls afterwards in a frame-perfect timing right as the game checks, but I tried it several times and couldn't reproduce what the TASes did.
Honestly, you beat that boss once already without souls. I don't think doing it with souls for the purpose of the "True" ending is cheating at that point. It's not like you couldn't, or didn't, do it after all.
Honestly, you only need the three "ancient" souls for the very last hit of the human form. You can just whittle him down until one more hit will trigger the final phase, pop the three souls on for a second, hit him, skip the line where he asks how you got those powers, then take the souls off again.
"Can You Beat Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Naked?" Yes you can! The game isnt aactually any harder than usual. The only Cons I met when i did this challenge were my parents telling me to please stop playing games and put some pants on
@@lordquaz7154 unfortunately, boxers are divided by their own weight. So even if realistically Soma can beat the sh*t out of the best boxers in the world, he'd still only be eligible for lightweight
I have the feeling that Soma is talking to Alucard during that. Soma: So yeah I punched Death to death. Alucard: Big deal. I did it first. Soma: Well...I have the cooler weapons! Alucard: I got the Alucard shield. Top that. Soma: Well...at least I’m a reincarnation of Dracula! Alucard: I’m his son. Soma: GOD DAMNIT!
If you want to be technical, the three souls you have to "use" to progress to the true ending are mandatory, so you could technically not count that as a failure, as the rule is "using" souls to unlock new areas. And technically "using" those three souls is technically unlocking the final areas of the game en route to the true ending. So, if you want to be technical and follow the rules to the levels of r/maliciouscompliance, then the challenge is fully possible for all 3 endings.
he mistook the condition, the 3 souls is to open the gate to fight julius belmont, he can go further only after defeat julius then graham. the souls are not needed to be equiped
@@Enacht1811 Exactly, he mistook it and he counted it as a failure when it's entirely possible to do the full game (all endings) without using the souls.
The issue is that beyond all that he has to trigger the Succubus soul's passive effect when attacking Graham. Yeah you can say that still "shouldn't" count since it's unavoidable (within the context of a glitchless run), but this is an arbitrary challenge anyways. That's just where he decided to draw the line. Also I don't quite understand what @KashAr1988 is saying. If you're saying you can fight Julius before Graham then that isn't true. The black door is only unlocked by Soma being in his "Dracula" state after beating Graham with the three special souls. Those three souls themselves do not open the gate to Julius. Or are you saying that you only have to collect the needed souls and not equip them? Because you very much need to put them on for the Graham fight if you want to avoid the abrupt ending.
Pretty sure Nyarly had proven with his pistol only challenge you just need to equip them during the beginning and before the phase shift of the fight. Comes down to timing but still doesn't have to use them so long as he unequips them.
@@Kylesico912x The three souls need to be equipped before the last hit on Graham's Super Hellfire Spiral sub-phase. It doesn't matter if they're equipped before or after that. Just right before that last hit before the transformation.
Yeah, like his videos of creepy bad endings for AoS and DoS, and that one video of the Galamoth boss battle in SotN (i think it was one of The Most Powerful Characters In Gaming Ever). Also that one video of the Sky Fish ability from AoS.
Reminds of when I tried this same challenge for Symphony of the Night (which was much easier overall if I remember correctly). I even had a silly head-cannon for it that Alucard was possessed by the spirit of a Nordic berserker. xD
Yeah Alucard is the most OP metroidvania protagonist ever, naked SOTN isn't even a challenge and naked Thief mode isn't much of it either. You have to go pacifist run and not kill anything that you don't absolutely have to in order to make it kinda hard.
i loved using the fists and devil soul in Dawn i also did a level 1 of sotn with restrictions (no sustained mist, life/heart ups or alucard shield rod shenanigans) and it was actually kinda hard... dracula...can go screw himself. technically i cheated by hacking crissaegrim into my inventory after failing to grind it and even with that i failed a few times
Julius motherfuckin’ Belmont, arguably the most powerful Belmont of them all, defeated by left and right hooks. I knew he’d be an ordeal as soon as I saw the title of this video. Well done, man!
Well, he did beat Dracula for good, unlike the others, and if Soma falls, he defeats the new dark lord for good, too. Julius is a legend, and I would have loved to get a game where you played as him. But without Iga in the team, I'm not sure if I want Konami to do it.
2:30 We have surpassed Crosscode levels of low damage. 3:15 I joke sometimes, but holy crap, Mask, you must have the most patience out of any challenge player _ever._ This is just insane. 14:10 Luckily, if you could beat him no-damage, the soul's effect wouldn't be in play even if it constantly triggered as a passive while at full health. It wouldn't truly count as you using the soul because its power isn't used to change gameplay to your advantage. 15:10 _Maybe so, but I believe in you, Little Mac-Soma Cruz hybrid!_
I reckon that after this, Soma had a hard time handling things with delicate measure. Things like cracking eggs, opening pickle jars, opening doors without breaking them became a chore.
Imagine being a gigantic living armour with a giant sword and shield yet you die because some random naked guy punched you in the feet Thanks for 100 likes
@@Shyguymask It will probably be possible, but absolute hell, since str increases damage dependent on your weapon, unlike Castlevania Aria of Sorrow where str is a flat increase to your damage. This means that with no weapon, it takes multiple level ups to even do 1 more damage, But, at least punches have longer range and can attack faster, if that's any consolation.
Really liked this challenge, glad to see that you're jumping into other games too! As much as I love PvZ for example, doing challenges just for that game might feel stale after a while, I'd love to see one for my favourite Castlevania, Symphony of the night
Interestingly, the DS Castlevanias have some nice nods to Jojo. There's a Stone Mask as an equippable item and the boss 'Zephyr' is a walking Dio Brando reference.
Im pretty damn sure the challenge still counts as long as you perfect the graham fight. Have you ever heard of an "useless machine"? They are contraptions that tend to have a singular switch where once the switch is flipped the mechanism unflips it, therefore making it so nothing was gained and nothing was lost and making it truly useless since nothing would be diffrent if it never exsisted. In our succubus case the matter is that the succubus soul is used to gain hp when you hit enemies, but if you never lose hp and never get to use that power nothing will be gained and nothing will be lost and therefore it'll be truly useless and it will effect nothing like the flame demon and giant bat souls you avoided using.
There's a corrupted rom for this game called "Castlevania: Aria of Weakness", you deal 1 damage with any melee attack(leveling up doesn't increase it either, in fact I don't think it's possible to bring it up in any way) and you have to beat the game just with magic. The main challenge in that one comes when you have to wait for mana to regenerate during some boss fights in order to deal damage.
Thank you for making a video on the best game in the franchise. I'm not sure what other challenges there could be, but I'm interested in seeing more if you're willing.
Hey I dunno if this was ever done again but somewhat recently another youtuber found out you just need the souls equipped entering, going into the second phase so theoretically there would be one hit, that 'does' heal you but you can hand wave it aslong as you do not activly recover any HP and then go into the final fights.
I've played this game easily dozens of times. I've played (mostly) soulless runs, I've played no equipment runs, but I've never tried a naked run, and after seeing this video, I don't think I will. But congrats on getting through it, man.
While not possible in a vanilla game, if you enter "NOSOUL" in the name entrance, then every soul (except for progression souls) is disabled, meaning that succubus won't be able to heal you whatsoever. Thus, making the challenge 100% possible with the best ending.
First off: top 2 favorite Castlevania games, thanks for covering. Also, would it not be possible to claim that flawlessing Graham and thusly not using Succubus at all would count as not failing the challenge?
After watching this video, me and my brother decided to race with these handicaps. It sucked at first, but eventually it got to a point where it didn't matter all that much? I guess we just got so desensitized to how little damage we did. Chaos really showed what true pain was, but it was fine otherwise. We tried it with the other 2 GBA games, and Harmony of Dissonance isn't all that punishing in terms of how much damage you put out, but rather how much damage you take. It can be unreasonable at times. Circle of The Moon wasn't THAT bad either. Yes, many enemies hit very hard near the end, but learning their pattern makes things easier. Dracula was the only real trouble. We're currently racing on Magician Mode naked however, and it's definitely proven how much it can suck. 3/4 ATK + Half defense + Half Health + plus 5 DEF/5 HP/7 ATK per Level Up instead of the usual? Yeah....really bad so far, but I managed to beat the Zombie Dragons, so I don't have much left I guess?
As was said in other comments, I would argue that so long as you never USED the red/blue souls, and never took damage during the fight (so you never gained any benefit from succubus) then it should be counted as the same as using appropriate blue souls to progress: Just another key, and not breaking the run, since it was REQUIRED to progress and did not change anything (except for a number floating above your head) as it can not heal you if no damage is taken. If you want to stretch it to its limits, then count the damage and only equip them for the final hit of the second/third forms, so only the two hits even give the unused health regen. Then it is ONLY being used as a key for those two checks, while still giving you exactly ZERO benefit, just like using bat form to move to areas you cannot get to otherwise.
Oh crap that dude from the thumbnail's actually from Castlevania? The last (and only) time I saw that dude was years ago on Final Fantasy Sonic X on Newgrounds lol
oh cool, someone else did this challenge. I tried on hard mode too. didn't work out as planned. I ended up doing a silver gun only hard mode challenge instead, which was still fun.
As for the dilemma of "using the 3 specific souls" during Graham's fight to get the True Ending, just don't get hit. That way, Succubus soul doesn't heal you (it will come up with healing numbers but nothing changes.
Jesus son, hope you're ok after this. I did that challenge for Castlevania SoTN, but Alucard is more OP than Soma and is lees of a challenge, even in "luck mode". I don't think I can bear the grind in this one. Nice run
I've never played this game (this is my first time seeing footage of this game) but at 11:20, that thing reminds me of the stupid "donut" boss from Megaman X6 from Blaze Heatnix stage that you have to beat 6 times. Edit: people who played or seen footage of Megaman X6 know what I mean.
That was a fun challenge! Are you planning on doing the sequel or any of the other Castlevania games? I like this one and Order of Ecclesia a lot, so I would like to see what you could do with the others!
Honestly I’d argue that you’re not ‘using’ the soul if you don’t take more than your max HP in damage. So, 872. it’s essentially had no effect since you could use items to heal afterwards
Im trying to beat it magic only (my rules being I can use everything but a weapon to kill enemies. Even punching isn't allowed unless I'm punching a lanturn or something, although waiting for magic to refill is hell) so seeing this gave me the patience needed to try and beat it. I'll edit this once I do it or find it impossible
Legion wouldn't be considered as an optional boss.If you want to get an alternate ending where Soma finds out that's he's the Reincarnation of Dracula, you need it's soul.
Very well made video! I appreciate this because it's hard to find. I could actually watch it from beginning to end because it's detailed but to the point. Subscribed. Keep it up bro.
