Castlevania: Curse of Darkness/Innocent Devils

Innocent Devils (IDs) are demon servants brought to life by Devil Forgemasters. Each type of ID has numerous forms that it can grown into. There are four levels of growth, and at each of the first three levels the ID has one of two possible forms it can evolve into. Each form will learn an additional 1 to 3 attacks.

There are six types of IDs:
 * Fairy Healers that can restore both life and status
 * Battle Brawlers that can fight as well as you
 * Bird Fliers with devistating skills
 * Mage Magicians with powerful offensive and defensive spells
 * Devil Use the Magic Circle to move anywhere
 * Pumpkin An optional ID that provides massive stat bonuses when summoned

Fairy
Fairies focus primarily on healing, but can also fix various status ailments and grant invulnerability. There are a handful of offensive skills, mostly used by the Comet Star, but they aren't that great. It's usually better to focus you efforts on learning healing skills and use battle or bird IDs for fighting. They have relatively low hearts, but since they cannot be hit by enemies, you can use it all for healing.

Recomended path:
 * Infant Fairy -> Leaffle -> Killer Bee -> Tiramisu
 * Actually, it's more important that you get the Leaffle and Killer Bee skill sets than the Tiramisu's, however it's skill are a bit more useful than the Tiara's. Heal Lvl. 3 will restore the most HP per use of any level, except Gold Heal. Time Heal restores a moderate amount of HP over an extended period, but is dirt cheap. Use it after each screen to refill your HP and you'll stand a much better chance of surviving. Poison Powder is fairly useless, but does do damage and tends to disrupt the enemies' attacks.

Required Skills:
 * Unlock - Infant Fairy (opens treasure chests)
 * Press It and See - Proboscis (presses buttons that Hector cannot reach)
 * You will need a Proboscis to get to every place in the game, and it is somewhat useful. It is the combat fairy, though it is nowhere near as powerful as some of the other types, and you sacrifice most of the good healing skills by going that route. Build one up and then just keep it in storage until you need it.

Battle
Battle types are, as can be expected, your main fighters. Aside from simply beating the crap out of anything and everything, they can create a defensive field that will protect you (though the ID cannot attack or even move while generating it). While they have a number of incredibly powerful skills, you can generally just let the ID fight with it's weapon, which will defeat the enemies just as quickly and save you hearts. They have very high hearts, but since they loose hearts when hit, you'll want to use them as life points rather than skill points.

They fight well, but tend to take a lot of damage as well since they dive into the middle of the battle. This is fine in most cases since you'll get a steady stream of hearts that heal them, but they tend to get beat up during boss fights. They have no defensive tactics, so they do nothing to get out of the way of the boss's power attacks and you can't get more hearts during the fight.

Recomended paths: (note that these paths do not have a level 3 form)
 * Magmard -> Speed-Mail -> Corpsey
 * Magmard -> Speed-Mail -> Rasetz
 * Both are insanely powerful and fast (Corpsey is slightly more powerful, Rasetz is slightly faster) to the point where you don't even need to participate in some fights. Really the only deciding factor is whether you want an ghost samuri or an gigantic sword-weilding demon on your side.

Required Skills:
 * Brute Force - All forms (opens iron doors)

Bird
Birds are fantastic IDs - aside from being necessary to cross gaps, they are very strong (though not nearly as strong as the Battle types). They are also significantly faster, and since they are airborne they take much less damage than the Battle types. Many of their skills target wide areas, so they are perfect for hitting large groups. Their main attack (a dive bomb) is weak, but they can attack repeatedly for massive damage and can disrupt enemy attack.

Recomended paths:
 * Crow -> Skull Wing -> Wingosaurus -> Indigo
 * Crow -> Skull Wing -> Wingosaurus -> Crimson
 * The other three final forms are fairly useless, especially compared to these two. They are fast, powerful, have numerous strong skills. They are basically the same - the only difference is that Crimson has fire based attacks and Indigo has ice based attacks. Eventually you should get both since fire and ice are the two most common weaknesses among the enemies.

Required Skills:
 * Glide - Crow (cross gaps)
 * Long Glide - Wingosaurus (cross longer gaps)
 * You'll need Glide to get from the Mortvia Aqueduct to the Forest of Jigramunt. Long Glide is needed to get to several optional areas and items.

Mage
Mage types have similar traits to the typical wizard classes found in RPGs - powerful skills/magic (offensive and defensive), but low physical attack and life, and near non-existent defense. This means you have to be somewhat conservative about using their skills since it takes away their life points when they use them. Properly used, Mage IDs can be more devastating than Battle IDs. Mages can kill the red skeletons, which keep resurrecting when you hit them with normal weapons.

Required Skills:
 * Time Stop - Wood Rod (stops time, surprisingly enough)
 * Purify - Nautilus Rod (kills red skeletons)
 * Both skills are needed to access a few areas in the game, and Purify not only opens new areas but finally lets you kill those damn red skeletons. If you've ever played Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse you'll love this opportunity.

Devil
Devil IDs are more important for the storyline than they are for fighting. It also only has three forms, and getting to the last one requires building a rather complex weapon first. It's skills aren't particularly interesting, though necessary to access various areas. Its final skill, Explosion Magic Circle is quite powerful if used properly.

Recomended path:
 * Gale -> Brow -> The End
 * Actually, it's the only path.

Required Skills:
 * Magic Circle - Gale (slide through narrow gaps)
 * Basically the only reason to have the Devil ID, and it's an inherent skill. Get, level up a lot, and then go fight Legion. Getting the final skill is time consuming, so only do it if you are a completionist or really bored.

Pumpkin
An optional ID, Pumpkin was a bonus character you could play as in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. He does not attack or heal, but give large bonuses to your stats, so this is a good ID to equip if only Hector is fighting. It has several forms, and they all branch off of the initial form or are the only option after level 2. The forms are merely cosmetic as the stat bonuses do not change and Pumpkins never learn any skills.

Recomended path:
 * None

Required Skills:
 * None