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.

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.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15576
Location: 127.0.0.1
Editor, Skilled player (1439)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2108
...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.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
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?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
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.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Skilled player (1672)
Joined: 7/1/2013
Posts: 448
Per my vote, absolutely yes!
Joined: 6/4/2004
Posts: 284
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.
Editor, Skilled player (1439)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2108
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.
TASVideosGrue
They/Them
Joined: 10/1/2008
Posts: 2785
Location: The dark corners of the TASVideos server
om, nom, nom... sweet!