YMMV / Infernax

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • For a True Final Boss who's foreshadowed throughout the game and residing at the end of a brutal Marathon Level, Baphomet becomes this if the player has enough magic potions at their disposal. With the Dove Familiars, Baphomet's low-HP minion spam becomes a non-issue while he takes extra damage from the doves, and with Holy Light, Alcedor can spam projectiles to deal sizeable damage to him, who is huge, always vulnerable everywhere, and can only position himself at one end of the boss room when he's not in the background. The boss's non-minion attacks aren't too hard to avoid either: A ground fire breath that can be jumped or Skycalled over, and a rain of bodies which can be avoided by noticing the spots in the air that tell where they land. His only saving grace is that if you run out of magic, which is possible because of the hard level leading to him, his hard-hitting attacks will rip you apart.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Abbadon on the Ultimate Evil route, despite being able to nearly fill the screen with attacks, is a cakewalk compared to Tancred and his guards, being an unexpected shmup boss with an easy-to-discern pattern that can be mitigated with good use of your spells. Given that you have unlimited flight in this fight, you arguably have an easier time dodging attacks than you ever had fighting Tancred himself. The fact that you go straight to him, with no opposition whatsoever, rather than having to fight through hell like on the Ultimate Good path makes the ending feel especially abrupt. Just remember to use the fireballs and stay in the middle of the screen when he uses his tentacles.
• Breather Level: The Hidden Crypt forgoes the platform-hellishness of the dungeons preceding it with the very weak Hell Fetuses interspersed between a bunch of fights with some Crypt Skeletons that a player at that point will likely have figured out the attack patterns of already. Overlooking that, the dungeon isn't very long either, being a linear straight shot to the Lord of Maggot, an average-difficulty boss, and then the Infinity +1 Sword.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Horned Skeletons are a massive wake-up-call mook at the start of the game, having a huge amount of health at that point and dealing a brutal 3 damage at a point where your max HP is unlikely to exceed 6. The very first Horned Skeleton you will probably encounter appears right before Valeshire Keep's boss, and it's more likely to kill you than the other enemies or even the boss. If one decides to visit Combbelton Cemetery instead of Valeshire Keep first, these guys replace most of the basic skeletons halfway through. Buying the first armor upgrade is a necessity if you don't want to be two-shotted by these, after which they become more manageable.
  • Fallen in the Urzon Citadel on the Ultimate Good path. They infest several zones, appear in numbers, fly, fire painful aimed shots, can take a beating for their size (5 hits from maxed-out mace and power), Teleport Spam a lot, have a smaller hitbox than one would suggest, and worst of all tend to appear in areas with tricky platforming sections to knock Alcedor into instant-kill lava, meaning that you will have to make sure there's none left before attempting those segments. Even though they will abort their attack and teleportation when damaged, their flight makes them tricky to hit.
• Fake Difficulty: The game is frequently more time consuming than challenging.
  • On Classic Mode, dungeons have a single checkpoint at the entrance meaning the player will have to go through a lot of backtracking to save and heal midway through a dungeon, but there's stopping them from doing so.
  • Your healing potions can only be replenshed in towns rather than at every checkpoint, meaning the player is in for a tedious commute if they don't have the Teleport spell yet.
  • The game features elements of Platform Hell, most notably whenever instant-death hazards are combined with tricky platforming or enemies that can knock the player into them. These sections can rapidly drain the player's lives and force them to replay several minutes of content. As of patching, Casual Mode does downplay this to a certain extent by downgrading instant-death hazards to only take a certain amount of health, but this assumes one is more willing to play on that mode rather than Classic Mode.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • How painful your death is depends on how evil your enemy is. The monsters are sadistic and take their time. In an Ultimate Evil path, you will face good guys, who offer the most painless deaths.
  • The passwords for each cultist lair become increasingly more and more vicious as you get deeper into their ranks in an Evil path. It's not much different from how cults operate in real life. "Book of Truth" is the point where they recruit people, claiming to be benevolent and offer the truth. "Archfiend" is when they reveal their true colors as Satanists and responsible for the demonic invasion. "Death to Henry" is the point where they reveal they are murderous scum that want to kill the Church members and take over the land.
  • For some reason, if you enter the first cultist hideout in a Good path, as a spy for the guards, the High Priest spills everything you need to know. If you enter as an actual recruit, he doesn't trust you enough and makes you do a few quests. The reason is actually pretty clear. The cultists have a spy in Arkos, who recruits you in an Evil path. The High Priest knows you are new. But in a Good path, the injured soldier you saved has killed the spy, so the High Priest thinks you are an old member, from the hideouts for the more experienced members.
  • Belphegor is introduced with a Slouch of Villainy and never leaves his throne until confronted, instead having the cultists and monsters to do the dirty work. This is fitting considering that he's the demon who represents the deadly Sin of Sloth.
  • The true villain of the game is Baphomet, a pagan deity that the Knights Templar in real life were accused of worshipping. Alcedor himself is basically a Templar, so his ultimate enemy being Baphomet is hugely fitting.
  • It seems very odd that Alcedor survives fighting Baphomet or Abaddon, but not Belphegor, despite the former two being much more powerful. However, both True Final Bosses are fought in another dimension and not Urzon Citadel itself, unlike Belphegor. On the Ultimate Good path, while the dimension collapses, you escape from a portal, while on the Ultimate Evil you have wings. It's very likely that Belphegor is a Load-Bearing Boss, and the fatal wounds that Alcedor sustains after beating him are actually from the citadel collapsing on him — hence Alcedor still being grievously wounded even if he didn't take any damage from Belphegor. To this contributes Belphegor's ability to make part of the citadel collapse during the fight, meaning the collapsing of the ceiling could be intentional on the villain's part. Another possible reason is that you are also stronger than before in the Ultimate Routes, which are required to earn the strongest mace or longsword you need, most likely combined with the other reason.
• Funny Moments: Has a page here.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Using the Konami Code on the title screen changes the character from Alcedor to Maxime Gunn who plays like the future path version of Alcedor, except the already overpowered machine gun can be upgraded with weapon upgrades and techniques taking a weapon that already shreds bosses to absurd levels. And just like using the Konami Code in Contra, he also starts out with 30 extra lives.
  • In a similar vein, using the code to change the character to a wizard may seem much more difficult than the base game, but having regenerating mana means the character can spam Thunderstorm/Firestorm or Drain Life. That clears the entire screen, meaning the Ledge Bats that make the platforming difficult get cleared out and jumps can be made easily. It also makes grinding for experience simple.
  • The Holy Light spell and its evil counterpart Hellfire both enchant your melee weapon to shoot fireballs with every swing. These deal high damage, travel the length of the screen, and come out as fast as you can swing, meaning it's trivially easy to stay at a safe distance and spam bosses to death with constant attacks.
  • Elixirs fully restore your health and magic. With a few magic upgrades, this can translate into multiple full heals or applications of the powerful Holy Light/Hellfire buff mentioned above. Each one costs 50 gold, but by the end of the game the player will have nothing else to spend money on, so they can easily keep five on their person at all times.
  • The Deux or Die update gives us Cervul, Alcedor's trusty squire, whose kit has so many advantages and versatility over Alcedor's that you can't help but wonder how he's just a squire. First off, right from the start Cervul has an unlimited supply of throwing axes at his disposal, already giving him a big range advantage over his lord. While his damage per hit is lower than Alcedor's, it doesn't matter much as Cervul is still safely out of harm's way and you can spam axes as your patience sees fit. Not to mention Cervul can actually angle his throws with the directional inputs, making Al's one mace swing pale in comparison. And this is before getting into Cervul's tools—Cervul can't use magic but he doesn't need it when he has tools like:
    • A pavise that covers the entire body as opposed to Alcedor's shield only covering half, which Cerv can upgrade to letting him shield upward, Shield Bash, use two of them, and reflect all projectiles. He can't use weapons while holding it but he can drop it and have it shield on its own, and then Cervul can dish out damage from behind it with his axes or even change to his mighty...
    • ...Crossbow, with its damage output being very high even on its first upgrade in the early game, leaving Alcedor with NO powerful projectile attacks until deep into the late game. Its upgrades will eventually turn it into the most powerful weapon in the game, eventually having the ability to pierce through enemies and rendering it the perfect weapon to farm EXP with. While it has to be reloaded after every shot (which isn't that long anyway), the second upgrade will effectively cut this reload time in half.
    • A banner that speeds up both heroes in its vicinity. Whether Cervul is holding it or has set it down, Alcedor and Cervul both move and attack faster when near it. Since only Cervul can hold it, Al can get the best out of it as long as Cervul is following him, but Cerv himself can get a lot more out of it as Alcedor still has to be dangerously close to enemies to attack, unlike Cervul, allowing him to quickly spam his axes and crossbow bolts (the speed up applies to the reload too, and it stacks with the "quicker reload" upgrade).
    • Lastly, there are the bandages. While it's actually not advantageous over Alcedor's Heal spell (however, Cervul can get bandages way earlier than Alcedor acquiring the Heal spell) as Heal fills HP completely as opposed to one HP per bandage (two HP after an upgrade), Cervul can actually use bandages on Alcedor, making the bandages more of a boon for Alcedor, if anything.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Eyes aren't too dangerous on their own, but can be tricky to hit thanks to their flight and tiny hitbox, especially the red version that moves more erratically. They become much more dangerous as Ledge Bats if the player has to deal with them while completing a platforming section over instant-death hazards, especially if a spawner is churning out an endless supply of them.
  • Deep Ones in Stormheim Castle. They're almost always found in areas with water, appear in large numbers, and seem to have the primary purpose of jumping out and knocking Alcedor in. While they're not hard to kill, dying to a single hit if Alcedor has enough mace and power upgrades, they will also chase Alcedor down very quickly if they land on dry ground, and will even fire fast-moving projectiles. If one is going for an evil playthrough, one should NEVER get the longsword before finishing this dungeon.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • The Necro fought in the barn sidequest is this if your weapon isn't strong enough to one-shot zombies, since it will always summon more to block the way before disappearing and popping up in another spot, often behind his zombie horde. If you can't kill the zombies fast enough, it'll be a lot harder to reach the Necro where it pops up.
  • Paimon's true form only has two attacks aside from Collision Damage, the first being a fire breath similar to its initial encounter. The second attack has it climb onto the ceiling and cause it to rain Roach-filled cocoons, which are weak and die quickly. However, Paimon's weakspot becomes nearly unreachable via most means (even Familiars won't target them) until it gets back down, making this attack phase drag out the fight every time it's used.
  • Optional Boss Halphas uses organic Grappling Hook Pistols in his hands to move around somewhat randomly and unpredictably. He's not hard to avoid, but is only damageable for a very brief period whenever he lands. Thanks to his momentum while grappling forwards in the air, he may sometimes slide all the way to one end of the room upon landing, making you waste the vulnerable period by having to move to one side of the room.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Playing the game as Maxime Gunn. You can shred any demon you face to pieces with your bullets.
    • The Future route has you use a gun by default and mow down every foe that comes at you with ease. Only Azazel can stand up to you.
    • The Future route makes you a MESSIAH. An entire cult has been praying and waiting for your return in the darkest hour of mankind. The world has been taken by demons. You are given a Holy Machine Gun, yet with all your secret moves and your magic power, that machine gun is an instrument of salvation. In the end, you are the one who deliver mankind from the demons!
  • Tancred is awesome in all routes. In the Good one, he can never die, and might even save your skin from monsters. Also, if you let Tancred and his men go slay the cultists without you, while some of his men will die, he will still take down the cultists AND call you out. In the evil one, you will not kill him the first time you fight him. The second time, with his soldiers gone, he swears revenge and becomes one of the toughest bosses in the game.
  • On an Ultimate Evil route, you get to face off with two Sergeants. What seems like an easy kill against human troops quickly turns into a brutal Dual Boss where both Sergeants suddenly show off acrobatic jumping feats like forward somersaults, with the Axe Sergeant even using ninja-like skills to throw axes at Alcedor. They're by far one of the toughest battles in the game despite being normal people and not monstrous demons.
  • On an Evil route, Belphegor's guards respect you enough to not attack you and talk to you instead. In an Ultimate Evil path? They bow to you.
  • Even the common soldiers get moments. They can actually kill cultists in gameplay and even shoot Robert dead for you.
  • The injured soldier you heal in Arkos, if you save him, returns home only for the cultist who attacked him before to try again. The soldier kills the cultist on his own.
  • Dealing with the last possessed man in a good path. The first time, you will fail to save the victim. The second time, you need help from the best exorcist in the land to succeed. The last time? You have Holy Light and save the victim yourself!
  • The fact that the Siege of Darsov, in a game where otherwise Evil Is Easy, is much harder if you side with the cultists, where you have to face several hard bosses, while if you side with the defenders, you can literally do nothing at certain parts and still win — meaning that even if Alcedor never came to influence the tide, Tancred's forces would still defeat the cult, though it would take a lot of effort.
  • The Ultimate Good ending. Cornered, Baphomet punches Alcedor sky-high as a last resort. So, Alcedor plunges at him, exploiting the height, and smashes the bastard's face. Then Baphomet dies, but Alcedor lives, becomes a hero, and unlike in every other ending, which is bittersweet at best and has the people still living in fear, in this one it's mentioned that Upel will never live in fear again, as long as Alcedor lives. The music piece that plays in the credits of the Ultimate Good ending couldn't have been better chosen to fit the triumphant mood: after all, with Alcedor essentially leading a holy crusade to purge the land of demons and their ilk, what better piece to represent that feeling of safety than "A Good Day to be Alive"?
• Nightmare Fuel: A decent amount of it to go around, thanks to all the Bloody Body Horror and Gorn going around. Despite its NES style pixel art graphics, it manages to put a more horrifying spin on the already horror-based Castlevania series that it bases itself on and at times, it felt like a horrifically gory Creepypasta game made real (just without the supernatural harm to the player).
  • The "Deceased" screen might seem decently grisly, being just Alcedor's skeleton, but it slowly gets bloodier and bloodier.
  • Several of the deaths you get, with the music indicating how long you suffer. A few enemies and bosses will eat you alive, including the otherwise harmless basic zombies, while even the swiftest, weapon-based deaths are very gory. In the Ultimate Good path, lose to the True Final Boss and he binds you with chains that rip you apart.
  • The very first karmic choice occurs when Alcedor meets a possessed man. Should Alcedor choose to save him, his possessor Paimon transforms his body horrifically and painfully... starting out by causing his heart to explode out of his ribcage. Kill him instantly, and his death, while instant, is still very detailed and gruesome.
  • Several bosses explode into a shower of blood and guts when they die. Some of them don't even need to be dead to spill their guts, such as Kalamon's hanging out from his Belly Mouth.
  • The Evil ending, while certainly a karmic one, is no less terrifying because of Alcedor's fate. Imagine barely surviving a deadly battle against a powerful demonic being, but then after that, you slowly lose yourself and turn into a mindless and horrible zombie, repelled out of the very land you were once the duke of by its own citizens.
  • The Ultimate Evil ending. Alcedor effectively rejects his humanity and becomes a horrific demon with an unquenchable thirst for conquest, starting a new Empire that spans both Hell and Earth. Good for Alcedor, horrific for everyone else who's living on Earth. Imagine just going about your business one day, not a care in the world... and then you see them, descending upon your town in such great numbers that there's no way that the guardsmen available can hold them off. Worse yet, one of said guardsmen, who happened to have participated in the crusades, recognizes somehow that the demon leading the charge is none other than Alcedor himself. The same Alcedor who also participated in said crusades, departing from them only because he tired of the bloodshed... and yet here he is, about to cause more bloodshed. And for bonus points, the name of the music piece that plays during the entirety of the Ultimate Evil ending, from the start of the cutscene all the way to the credits roll? "Horrible Night to Have a Curse".
  • Some Evil sidequests reveal how terrifying magic can make the cult for ordinary citizens. With the teleport spell, Evil Alcedor is able to abduct citizens straight out of their homes into the deepest depths of the cult's headquarters, where the confused and terrified villager is sacrificed to summon a demonic servitor.
  • Using the Thunderbolt/Firebolt spell while in a town will set the place aflame, setting guards on fire and causing them to run around screaming that you were supposed to protect the town, not destroy it. And to make matters worse, there is a hermit who wants you to do that... and becomes a faceless phantom that tries to kill you if you refuse.
  • In the Ultimate Good path, since the cultists can't use civilians for their sacrifices, some of them volunteer to be sacrificed and become monsters. This progressively gets worse until Robert himself turns most of his fanatics into skeletons.
• That One Attack:
  • Apollyon has one particular attack that stands out as a bigger danger than the others: Spitting a spray of randomly-aimed fireballs forward while flying, which is tricky to avoid thanks to the random trajectory. It also doesn't leave him vulnerable to damage, unlike his belly fireballs or his Eye-spawning, since his belly is always closed whenever he uses this.
  • Alastor has three attacks, but one of them stands out as much harder to avoid than the other two: Opening its mouth and firing out a whole shower of fireballs, which is tricky to avoid thanks to the huge amount and random spray. Its other attacks are attempting to bite Alcedor from under which is easily telegraphed, and opening its mouth to fire out fireballs slowly and one by one, which is also easy to evade.
  • Azazel has a few attacks, two of which involve firing predictable lasers from his eyes and Arm Cannon respectively, and another spawns a few mooks that are easily destroyed by your machinegun fire. The last and most deadly attack he has is to spit three fireballs which temporarily destroy any of the six platforms they hit, making movement much more awkward if you want to avoid landing in the lava for instant death.
• That One Boss: One of the toughest bosses in the game is the Axe Sergeant and Sword Sergeant in the Ultimate Evil path's Attack on Darsov. They hit hard even with Hellish Armor equipped, move unpredictably and leap around a lot, can easily corner Alcedor, and spam ranged attacks^note since Alcedor trades his shield and mace for a longsword after falling to evil, it means his only option to remain unscathed if he can't avoid it is to deflect them with precise timing. Finally, unlike the demon bosses who sport predictable, telegraphed attacks, the Sergeants' attacks have little-to-no warning tells and come out quickly.
• That One Level:
  • Stormheim Shore introduces waterwheels that will slowly push Alcedor if he stands on them, and are always located above instant-death water. This isn't so bad by itself, but these sections have Eyes that can easily knock Alcedor in if he blindly jumps, often resulting in the player having to wait on top of a waterwheel to bait the eye and kill it, all while having to constantly keep their balance. The stretch before the castle contains a huge amount of eyeballs.
  • Several of the later castles have tons of Death Traps and Ledge Bats that are almost certain to knock Alcedor into instant-death water, lava, acid, or Bottomless Pits. Stormheim Castle is chock-full of Deep Ones that leap out of the water to knock Alcedor in if he doesn't quickly get past as well as tricky waterwheel platforms, Kadjanto Stronghold has a tricky segment involving Temporary Platforms above an acid pool and spear shooting traps to make things dicier, and Kastka Palace is filled with very tricky platforming above pits while also containing some of the more painful projectile-throwing enemies in the game. As noted above, as of patching, Casual Mode does downplay this to a certain extent by having the aforementioned water, lava, acid, or bottomless pits only do a certain amount of health in damage instead of outright killing Alcedor, but also as noted above, this assumes one is more willing to play on that mode than Classic Mode.
  • On the Ultimate Evil path, the siege of Darsov requires you to fight a sequence of bosses in row, all of whom can deal two or more points of damage even with the Hellish Armour. Hope you stocked up on Elixirs and maxed out your Power. The Sergeants and Tancred in particular are tough customers with the latter having a lot of health, fast movement, and the ability to guard, while the former act unpredictably and spam projectiles.
  • On the Ultimate Good path, entering the portal to Hell within Urzon Citadel. The area is HUGE and long, with several dangerous enemies like Fallen, loads of places to fall into the instant-death lava, and only one Altar in the middle of the level on Casual Mode. All along the way, Alcedor will have to face off against previous bosses in harder battles, usually dual battles, and conserve his health and mana as best he can, especially since mana is vital to defeat Baphomet without too much trouble. It's a long, vicious slog and the teleporters to several different areas only increase the confusion. Chances are the player will have to make repeated backtracks to the altar in order to not lose any progress. On Classic Mode, there are absolutely no altars to rest at except for the one outside the dungeon itself.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: This game has three potential True Final Bosses for each of its Ultimate Paths (Ultimate Good, Ultimate Evil, and Future), and they're all mutually exclusive. While Baphomet gets foreshadowed at several points throughout the game, and his eyes show up to mock you if you get any of the basic endings (Good, Evil, or Redemption), Abaddon and Azazel never even get hinted at until it's time to fight them. This leaves players who completed the Ultimate Evil or Future routes to wonder if the threat posed by Baphomet was ever dealt with^note granted, an Ultimate Evil Alecdor probably would have had to tussle with Baphomet offscreen at some point to cement his rulership over Hell, and the Future Route involving a Time Skip where Upel hasn't been burned to the ground implies that Baphomet was at least held off from sacking the kingdom, and players who completed the Ultimate Good route after either of the other two to realize that Abaddon and Azazel are probably still out there, waiting for their chance to attack Upel.

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