Post by h00t on Mar 15, 2019 23:51:05 GMT -5
Just had a couple of ideas for basic enemies I thought I'd share. (Some edits for typos, additional ideas)
These both come as a means of addressing a complaint I have with vanilla SotN and most of the GBA games. The enemies are, with few exceptions, stupid punching bags. Your vastly enhanced mobility and arsenal was not matched up at all with enemy movement patterns, which are largely unchanged from the days of having to fight a protagonist bearing only one committal jump and a whip (and/or subweapon). In thinking of the below ideas (or in Persephone's case, just saying Castlevania Chronicles did them better), I tried to keep that lack of movement and brains in mind.
Persephone/Vampire Maid: This was a ridiculous and downright badass enemy in the X68K game who got done real dirty in the GBA and DS games (and in the N64 games to a lesser extent, due to the tactical nuke that was Holy Water). Originally she did backflips, threw knives, and eventually went batshit and threw homing energy balls when dealt enough damage. I was kind of miffed that in later games she was just relegated to vacuum duty and an occasional roundhouse kick. What a slap in the face to their legacy.
Perhaps behavior could be sort of in two phases like her first appearance. At first, she's formal, bows, and has a sense of decorum with her retreating backflips and knife tosses. If you get too close, maybe then she kicks you away. But after enough hits, she becomes more animalistic, and that's when she starts being able to doing her floating jumps with homing energy balls, lunging forward claw swipes, and maybe a grab and bite attack like CV64, which you have to shake off jiggling the d-pad.
I suppose the difference between these phases could be approach/retreat behaviors. She keeps her distance in phase one, but is a lot more aggressive and in your face in the second. (And if you really wanted to get evil with it, having her energy balls paralyze you so you're easier for her to grab and chow down on.)
I guess the other decision would be what sprites to base her on. Touching up the Chronicles ones means she already has most of those attacks already sprited out, plus the DS renditions of her look kind of assy.
Manananggal/Aswang/Wak Wak, et al: I read about this critter on Wikipedia, so some of this may need to be taken with a grain of salt. It's a vampire-adjacent mythological creature from the Philippines; it goes by many different names and has equivalents across Southern Asian countries. They detach their upper torso from their lower one and fly around at night, using a long proboscis tongue to suck blood. Pretty gnarly!
In SotN terms, I'd envision it being a palette swapped Flying Zombie. The Flying Zombie was an awesome concept, with an amazing set of howl sound effects when it got hit. But again, like Persephone, not much of a threat, and more of a reason to mash Square while walking right. I think one way to address this would be to take advantage of its upper torso's flight - zipping around and swooping down at you from above like a beefier type of Crow enemy. A good analogy for this is those upper flying half dudes from Mega Man 1. Perhaps its entrails could drop poisonous/cursing blood from up high, or like its namesake, it could shoot out a long tongue at you, like the Cave Troll does. I could imagine these guys being real bastards in a platforming heavy place like the Clock Tower, or in combination with bigger enemy types.
Also completely coincidental and not the reason I thought of it - in folklore one way to kill these things is with a whip! Fashioned out of a stingray's tail, but a whip nonetheless.
So those are some ideas. Man, I really want to play Chronicles again. So good.