Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse/Walkthrough

There are three different paths to Dracula's castle, and each one has a different degree of difficulty and allows you to meet different characters. At various points in the game you will come to a fork in the road and allowed to pick with path to take. You can never go backwards however, so make sure you know what you're getting yourself into.

Routes
While there are different routes, they all start in the same place and they all end in the same place. The differences in difficulty comes not only from the number of stages, but the difficulty of the individual stages and what characters you can meet. Regardless of which path you take, you will have to go through stages 1, 8, 9, 10, and at least part of 3. Stage 2 is optional and accessible on all routes. 🇨🇴

🇨🇴
 * Characters: Grant & Sypha
 * Stages
 * 1) Stage 1
 * 2) Stage 2 (optional)
 * 3) Stage 3
 * 4) * Stage 4A
 * 5) * Stage 5A
 * 6) * Stage 6A
 * 7) * Stage 7A
 * 8) Stage 8
 * 9) Stage 9
 * 10) Stage 10

🇨🇴
 * Characters: Grant & Alucard
 * Stages
 * 1) Stage 1
 * 2) Stage 2 (optional)
 * 3) Stage 3 (partial)
 * 4) * Stage 4
 * 5) * Stage 5
 * 6) * Stage 6X
 * 7) * Stage 7
 * 8) Stage 8
 * 9) Stage 9
 * 10) Stage 10

🇨🇴
 * Characters: Grant & Alucard
 * Stages
 * 1) Stage 1
 * 2) Stage 2 (optional)
 * 3) Stage 3 (partial)
 * 4) * Stage 4
 * 5) * Stage 5 (partial)
 * 6) * Stage 6Y
 * 7) * Stage 7
 * 8) Stage 8
 * 9) Stage 9
 * 10) Stage 10

Second Quest
Once you defeat Dracula, the game will restart.
 * You begin the game with the same helper that you finished the first quest with, allowing you to get through the early stages in different ways and reach a few new items. Notice that you cannot get any new helper in this mode. If you manage to beat the previous game with Trevor alone, you will not have a helper for the entire second play through.
 * While it may seem like exactly the same thing at first, it is significantly more difficult, due to the enemies making more damage akin to the later stages. Other than the Japanese version, there will be reskinned enemies that also can act differently.