Top 10 Castlevania Bosses

Just because Albus isn’t a big, spooky monster like many of the other entries on this list is no reason to write him off as anything less than a formidable opponent. Albus is an expert marksman, using his trusty firearm ‘Agartha’ he will fire multiple shots your way to take you down. Additionally, Albus has the ability to harness the power of magical glyphs which allow him to manipulate both light and dark energies and launch them as projectiles. Sure, you can stay on your toes and dodge these attacks, but Albus is just as nimble as you are, leaping and jumping all over the battle screen. Sporting a lethal combo of strength and speed, Albus gets our countdown off to a pulse pounding start.

(Shows Shaft movie theme) Not that Shaft!
A dark priest with menacing magical prowess, Shaft is the one responsible for resurrecting Dracula and furthermore helping him to fulfill his evil ambitions. Before he even enters the fray, Shaft will summon a variety of other enemies to wear you down like Medusa and Frankenstein’s monster. If you are skilled enough to survive that, you’d better be ready to bring your ‘A’ game as Shaft teleports around the area, firing a bevy of elemental attacks at you. Careful timing is key to surviving this encounter, but with enough patience Shaft goes down like all the rest.

The physical manifestation of all evil things along with serving as the source of power for Dracula himself, a battle with Chaos can definitely be defined as chaotic. In it’s first phase, Chaos is a large spinning sphere with three creepy looking statues that steal your acquired abilities before the fight even begins. After destroying them, things go into overdrive with Chaos firing homing projectiles all while a sinister serpent comprised entirely of bones slithers around the room. What’s more, four ‘eyes’ in each corner of the room constantly fire energy blasts but these can be easily defected if fast enough. The only weak point is the large black spot in the middle of the area, so focus on that and another big bad will bite the dust.

An unconventional boss fight for the series, the Gear Steamer is made up of multiple gears formed together by some unseen telekinetic energies. This boss can manipulate its many gears to take on a variety of shapes and sizes as well as launch said gears at the player in a straight line or at an angle. Gear Steamer is also surprisingly fast for such a big guy, somersaulting and spinning all over the place making him much more difficult to hit than expected. Only its center is a viable weak spot, unfortunately every time its struck the enemy shrinks in size. It sure would be handy if there was a ‘toss water’ button to just douse this guy in H20 and watch him rust.

This Master of Puppets is so hideous and vicious, that he is most certainly twisting our minds and crushing our dreams. A giant and freakish face that looks like multiple pieces patched together, with four long arms stretching out, the Puppet Master is definitely a-head of the game in the “giving us nightmares for life” department. All jokes aside, Puppet Master is no pushover with some devastatingly damaging attacks hidden in its arsenal. One of which is the capacity to summon a bunch of floating dolls that can easily overwhelm the player if too many of them swarm the screen. It’s real death blow is how it can trap the player inside one of the iron torture chambers around the room, which can inflict huge amounts of damage.

Suffering from a seriously bad case of amnesia after a fight with Dracula in an earlier Castlevania game, Julius Belmont is on a search for his lost identity in Aria of Sorrow. Due to a string of spoiler-ific reasons that we won’t mention here, his search leads all the way to the player’s character Soma and the two get ready to rumble. This is an encounter that purely relies on speed and reflexes as you counter every kick, whip and glide from Julius with those of your own. Julius Belmont is a ferocious fighter, more than living up to his family name and earning a spot on our countdown.

Stop hittin’ yourself, stop hittin’ yourself! What’s worse than having to fight the dangerous monsters in the Castlevania games? How about having to fight yourself, the person responsible for taking down said dangerous monsters! Taking the form of the game’s antagonist Alucard, the Doppelganger uses nearly every move the player has come to know and love and these include: slashing with a sword, throwing knives and performing some insane aerial acrobatics. Considering that this boss is essentially you, it literally evens the playing field. You will need to be two steps ahead during the entire fight in order to outsmart the Doppelganger and live to hunt vampires another day.

Do you enjoy boss battles where you are completely outnumbered, being bombarded by an endless barrage of attacks and have little to no breathing room in order to formulate a plan of attack? If so, try taking on the Fake Trio from Symphony of the Night. The second those three coffins burst open, it’s a triple threat of intensity, absolutely requiring you to pay close attention to attack patterns in order to stand a chance. Never a lull in the action, each member of the trio has a particular fighting style: Grant attacks with a whip, Sypha casts chilling ice storms and Trevor drops knives from the ceiling. In short, hit ‘em fast and hard…because they are sure going to do that to you.

A recurring boss battle in the series ever since its first appearance in Symphony of the Night, Legion is a massive floating sphere composed of countless corpses that serve as the outer protective shell for its fragile core. As means of attack, Legion is able to drop bodies off of its larger entity which lunge towards the player like zombies. Its other abilities vary from game to game, for example in Symphony of the Night, Legion is able to shoot a devastating beam of energy out of its many tentacles (beam clip). The bigger they are, the harder they fall so the strategy here is actually quite simple; just slice and dice like a madman until the job is done.

Before we reveal our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions…

Dark Lord of the Lycans
“Castlevania: Lords of Shadow” (2010)

Brauner
“Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin” (2006)

Succubus
“Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” (1997)

Dancing Specters/Ghost Dancers
“Super Castlevania IV” (1991)

When it all comes down to it, Dracula and Death are recognized as the main antagonists throughout the Castlevania games and for good reason, as they are some of the most iconic and satisfying battles in the series (XREF). It would be near impossible to choose between them for our number one spot, but lucky for us Portrait of Ruin supplied a love letter to any gamer that wanted to tangle with both of them at the same time. An absolutely thrilling encounter, you will need to use all your skills to stand a chance against this tag-team smack down with the ultimate lords of darkness. Just when you think you’ve won, Dracula transforms into his much larger and more menacing true form for an even tougher round two.

Do you agree with our list? What’s your favorite Castlevania boss battle? For more whip crackin’ top 10’s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com