In true Castlevania tradition, powerful enemies guard the final area of the game in Symphony of the Night. This is not immediately apparent, because you’ll likely encounter them before completing the secondary castle, but you’ll certainly know when you find them. These guys are walking walls of defence, seemingly immune to almost anything you throw at them, to the point where they may at first seem impossible to take down. Manage to do so however, and you’ll soon learn why they’re so defensively capable and exactly what they’re guarding.
Guardian Enemy Details
As you might imagine, given the amount of strong text shown here, the Guardian enemy is very defensively strong. Slashing weapons tend to be the biggest problem here, because the vast majority of players will prioritise these out of comfort and familiarity, yet they are the least effective at taking them down. This is also by far the most popular and regularly found weapon type in Symphony of the Night too, so you may just find yourself in the situation where nothing else is available. Add to this an immunity to the three main elements, plus its propensity to put up a full damage immune shield whenever you attack, and you’re left with a very tough opponent to take down.
Two things should encourage you to do so however. Firstly, it has the highest EXP gain for an enemy outside of boss fights; spend some time here and you’ll be able to level Alucard up to 55 or 60 with ease, though the gains will slow down to a crawl at this point thanks to the way that EXP scaling is dealt with in the game. Secondly, these enemies drop some nice items, including the very defensively powerful God Garb. From a pure defence perspective, armour pieces don’t get any better than this, though we’ll concede that the Alucard chest piece does reduce all elemental damage, making it better in a good deal of situations. Either way, it’s worth taking down some Guardians if you can, so let’s get into exactly how you might go about doing so.
Soul Steal
Thankfully, Symphony of the Night includes a good amount of spells to cast in Alucard’s repertoire, which can help you to defeat the Guardians, albeit with a little patience. Soul Steal, which we’ve pictured above, is by far the best option here. It’ll deal a good amount of damage to the Guardian, and since its influence stretches across the entire screen, you can take them down from a safe distance. This method is very MP hungry and a good deal slower than other options, but it’s a great way to get a few levels, even if you’re just passing through.
We should note that this is also a great option for players that find themselves reaching the centre clock zone at a very low level, but beware that your MP at this point will likely be even more limited, necessitating more visits to a save room between battles. Cope with this however, and you’ll be rewarded with the fasttrack to a high level Alucard and if you’re lucky, the ever elusive God’s Garb. Don’t hold your breath on that last point however; with all the luck stacking and drop rate increasing equipment in place, it’s taken us until level 67 to get a single one of these drop…
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Blunt Weapons
- Fist of Tulkas
- Moon Rod
- Any blunt, powerful weapon
One key missing point from the enemy sheet above is a strong green text in the blunt weapon category, and for many players this may be the ideal ticket to victory. Blunt weaponry is a pretty rare sight in Symphony of the Night, especially those of a high enough level to damage these walking brick walls, so you’ll have to dig a little deeper to get your hands on something worthwhile. It can be perilous getting close enough to deal a good amount of damage with a fist, but they’ll often deal more damage per single hit than any other weapon of a similar level.
Regarding reasonable weaponry, by far the best options are the Fist of Tulkas and the Moon Rod. The former is a very high attack power fist weapon that is dropped by the Lion enemy in the Reverse Library; not only will this deal great damage with its normal attack, but it can also deal continuous damage via one of its special attacks (Back, Forward & Attack), pictured above. Similarly, the Moon Rod has a special move that launches moon projectiles across the screen called the Crescent Cutter, activated via the Down, Down-Forward, Forward & Attack. This is a great way to take Guardians down from afar, and along with the Soul Steal tactic above, it’s probably the safest way to deal with them.
End Game Weapons
- Crisseagrim
- Sword Familiar
- Alucard Shield & Shield Rod
- Masamune
- Muramana
Our final option doesn’t really require a great deal of explanation, outside of possibly suggesting equipment. This particular method is to simply smack them with your strongest equipment until they fall over, and only works because they’re not technically completely immune to slashing damage, despite mitigating a lot of it. With enough power garnered through key equipment, or indeed hilariously overpowered weapons, you’ll still be able to chop them down.
As you might imagine, the now-legendary Crissaegrim is the best option for this, because it deals 4 slashes for every single attack and has barely any backswing, so you can shred their HP in super quick time despite that high defence. Other options include the Sword Familiar weapon, which becomes available after levelling the familiar itself higher than level 50, the Masamune, which has a useful special move for dealing damage from a distance, and the Alucard Shield with the Shield Rod combination, but you’ll have to get close to make it work. Doubtless you find your favourite combination of equipment for taking these guys down, hell we’ve even heard about players using the Toxic Mist transformation to defeat them, which we would imagine takes an inordinately large amount of time.
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Categories: Castlevania - Symphony of the Night