Line #21 DemonicSpiders/Castlevania


1	These DemonicSpiders can make even the most hardened vampire hunter turn in his cross and stake.
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5	* The bats in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaI'' love to fly into you ''[[LedgeBats just]]'' [[LedgeBats as you made a tricky jump, causing you to plummet]]. Even worse are the Medusa heads, which move up and down so that you have to guess when to attack/jump, and the fleamen, with their fast, unpredictable movements. While this generally keeps them in GoddamnedBats territory in later games, what truly fits them into this trope is that, in the first game, all enemies deal ''exactly as much damage as bosses.''
6	** Speaking of Fleamen, these nimble little creatures move roughly ''three times'' as fast as you do (not that that's saying much, since poor physics make Simon slow and clumsy as an ox). They attack by rushing into you. And since they are shorter than your whip swing, that means that you either have to hit them during one of their hops, or duck and try to whip them before they rush you. Think about how bad that is, then consider this: In the third area, they are on cliffs high above you, and they will simply blast off the cliff towards you when you get close enough. You will get hit. Then, after that sinks in, consider this: In the fourth area, during the long stretch after you exit the sewers, birds will fly by and drop Fleamen willy-nilly onto the stage to attack you freely. Then, after ''that'' sinks in, consider the sixth and final area: The birds still fly and drop fleamen, but now you are jumping across giant bottomless gaps and climbing stairs. If you so much as pause you will either be swarmed or knocked into a pit (and you usually will be anyway).
7	** Beat ''Castlevania 3'' and go through a [[NewGamePlus New Game + ]]. Medusa Heads are replaced by Flying Skulls. Imagine Medusa Heads with a random movement pattern.
8	** There's also the Black Crows, which follow an erratic movement pattern. Castlevania's near-equivalent of ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'''s hawks.
9	** Play a {{Metroidvania}} on Hard mode, and watch as the GoddamnedBats that used to do 1 HP of damage now do at least '''60''' HP of damage!
10	* The Chupacabras (or Cave Trolls). There's a reason they love to pack the BonusDungeon of each game with these things. They're fast, hop around, and if you get too close they create an electrical field that hits you repeatedly for high damage. On every hit. Depending on the game, that field can one-shot you if you can't get out of the way in time.
11	* Disc Armors are irritating in general, but every single thing about them in ''Dawn of Sorrow'' seems to be designed for maximum frustration. They mostly appear in pain-in-the-ass locations (the only easy-to-access location gets destroyed by Gergoth after the boss fight), their attacks are hard to avoid and hit fairly hard (and often hit multiple times), and their soul drops are irritatingly infrequent and run on a leveling system where nine souls are required just to get them to hit the second and final level. It's as if the devs were trying to make them as obnoxious as possible.
12	* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaCircleOfTheMoon'' is ''full'' of DemonicSpiders:
13	** Pretty much every Demon enemy counts. The Earth Demon gets an honorable mention for being in ''the fourth screen of the game'', and with attacks far more damaging than anything you have yet encountered, or even anything you will encounter up until the first boss. Tough to dodge, too. But the one that is by far the worst is the Ice Demon. It spams an attack that gives next to no warning, requires ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy'' level platforming skills to dodge even if you know where it's coming from, and if it hits, you're as good as dead. It freezes you in place, which means you WILL get hit again, and when you do, it's for '''three times the damage'''. Think you can just whip the attack away like you could with the Fire Demon? Yeah, that'll cause it to shatter, all right. Into shards that are equally as deadly as the original attack, only even harder to dodge. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the Ice Demon is fought near the end of the Underground Waterway, a location where the water is inherently harmful to you. Players who made it this far without the Cleansing magic item will - not ''may, will'' - loathe being stuck in that water while waiting for the Frozen status to wear off. By contrast, the Devil, a seemingly intentional BossInMookClothing to the point where the room at the end of the BonusDungeon consists of just one of them, isn't half as deadly as this one attack.
14	** A lot of the [[AnimatedArmor Armors]] have very annoying attacks and appear more frequently than the demons. Flame Armors have a simple sword swing, but the hit range is way larger than what you'd expect. Stone Armors throw three boulders that get progressively closer ''and'' do splash damage; Thunder Armors fire homing orbs; Ice Armors throw two spears; one high and one low, both of which freeze you (see the Ice Demon above for all the fun being frozen gets you), and Poison Armors shoot tall clouds of gas that are difficult to jump over. The worst are probably the Dark ones, mostly because they fire these orbs at you: easy enough to avoid, except for the fact they're always places where you're trying to get up, and as such you'll get hit over and over and over. All of these attacks hit really hard and make it tough to get close enough to whip them. None of their attacks can be countered with the whip, they often take four or five hits to kill, and if you revisit an earlier area late in the game, the Armors that were there are replaced by ''more powerful'' varieties. While the DSS Magic System will grant you immunity to these attacks, the Black Dog card ([[CastingAShadow Darkness-element]]) is only found in the Arena, guarded by the very Armors you probably need the card against. And you have no MP while in the Arena, and there are no savepoints.
15	* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'', in its bid to ensure that nobody [[ItsEasySoItSucks ever complains about]] {{Metroidvania}} [[ItsEasySoItSucks being too easy again]], brings us a great deal of these guys, but one shines out beyond the others: the Tin Men. These anachronisms constantly charge at you, swinging an axe in an arc higher than your normal jump. They resist most everything you can throw at them, hit like a speeding bus, and are much faster than Shanoa. If you manage to damage them enough to stop their charge, they will whip out a ''machine gun'' and fire until one of you is dead. As you'd expect, Dracula's Castle can and will make you fight up to ''four at a time''. But at least during this sequence, you have higher ground on which to stand that they cannot reach. The BonusDungeon is not nearly so generous, and will probably silence any complaints about [[PowerGivesYouWings Volaticus]] being a UselessUsefulSpell again. Worst of all, you can encounter them as soon as Minera Prison Island. ''Before'' you get your DoubleJump, or good enough armor to survive more than ''one'' hit from them, or good enough weaponry to put much of a dent in their HP. On completely flat ground. If you want to survive, ''[[StealthBasedMission stay out of the spotlights.]]''
16	** Another example includes the Double Hammers. These soldiers walk on their hammers like stilts, move extremely quickly, and swing their hammers at you. Sometimes, they will grab their hammers with both hands and do a flip. All of these attacks deal enormous damage, in the multiple hundred HP range, and there is very little room in which to avoid it. The only real way to kill it is to fly behind it with Volaticus, which is an item that allows flight, and simply pound on it until it dies, avoiding it whenever it prepares for an attack. It has a high HP count; only bosses have higher. Thankfully, they only appear in the Training Hall (not, as the name suggests, a training area, but rather a gauntlet of the most brutal platforming challenges the game has to offer) and the Large Cavern.
17	** Weapons Masters are extremely difficult. [[WalkingArmory They hold every type of weapon other enemies hold, from dual-bladed boomerang swords to enormous hammers to throwing daggers]]. They throw things at you, leap somersaulting into the air flailing its giant hammer, and swing swords at you. It is deadly, does as much damage as a Double Hammer, and has just as much HP as well. Thankfully, it also only appears in the BonusDungeon.
18	** The aforementioned bonus dungeon, called the Large Cavern, is ''infested'' with all of the game's Demonic Spiders, often having to fight ''multiple ones at the same time''. You can either take a SelfImposedChallenge and enter the cavern as soon as you unlock it, or do the saner action and find the Volaticus glyph which gives you {{flight}}, alleviating some of the horros.
19	** Cave Trolls can be found as early as the Tymeo Mountains, but they have endgame-level stats. To put it in perspective, you're expected to fight these guys near the end of Dracula's Castle and in the Large Cavern. These bastards have long range, erratic, and highly damaging attacks while you have to contend with a relatively small hurtbox and their agile jumps.
20	* Gorgon heads are pretty bad too. They fly at you, change directions randomly, and are completely out of context, this being gothic horror and all. Fine. But they also appear in ''every single platforming section of a level ever''.
21	* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'':
22	** Frozen Halfs. While they are pretty easy to kill, if you let them live for too long, after their first (underwhelming) attack, they will float up (typically out of reach) and shout "Maximum power!" before raining huge, damaging blocks of ice down on you.
23	** The witches from the same game and ''same area'' fly around erratically, constantly put up shields whenever you try and attack normally, and sometimes when you don't, spam orbs, skulls, and CATS that do surprisingly high damage, and are just a pain in the backside. Your only hope half of the time is just to get out, fast! Oh yeah, if you do kill them, they turn into a cat and run until the room ends or they hit a wall. They can still do high damage. Luckily, this isn't a problem in later games, and there's an item in the game called Cat-Eye Circlet, that restores huge amounts of HP by cat contact. That make the witches pathetically easy. Also, they can be ''stopped'' by stopwatch.
24	** Valhalla Knights can be very nasty since they move very fast and can do a lot of damage, particularly on Luck Mode, where your stats are rather mediocre. The Stopwatch, which normally freezes or slows most enemies, cannot do anything about them.
25	** Azaghals, the strongest sword-type enemies in the game, are not only hard to hit, but will probably hit you during his knockback animation, dealing high (about 60-80 when you first meet him) damage. However, they can be ''slowed'' by the Stopwatch.
26	* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaCurseOfDarkness'':
27	** ''ANY'' level 75 enemy. Ghouls? They can't be fazed, stunned, or pushed back by attacks, and if they grab you, they'll chew you to death. Fleamen? Super-fast, hard to hit, and they deal a lot of damage. But the kings are the Red Ogres: Can move around easily despite their bulk, can shoot multiple EyeBeams, and swing a colossal club around. Any of his attacks can turn Hector into a pile of kebab without much effort.
28	** And even worse, in the second bonus dungeon, the Tower of Evermore (pretty much the only place you will meet those enemies), these are often ''combined in the same room''. Hector can at least bring stupid amounts of healing with enough fairies and potions. Trevor, on the other hand, only needs to get hit be the Red Ogres' grab attack once and he is dead. No matter what. From full HP with max Armor. Forcing you to go through the ''50 floors'' of the first bonus dungeon again to even access the 50 floors of the second.
29	* ''Simon's Quest'':
30	** Floating Eyeballs behave similarly to the "Hump-Bot" from ''VideoGame/JourneyToSilius'', except they usually come in swarms.
31	** The slime. Indoors? No problem, they cling to the ceiling before dropping and you can see them coming. Outdoors? An unpredictable, bouncing nightmare.
32	* ''Aria Of Sorrow'' comes with a demonic enemy that constantly flies above your head and attacks downwards. They come in three flavors: one has a trident for better reach, and the other two poison and curse you on contact.

Context DemonicSpiders / Castlevania