Demonic Spiders/Castlevania

These Demonic Spiders can make even the most hardened vampire hunter turn in his cross and stake.


 * The Goddamned Bats in Castlevania loved to fly into you just 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 in later games, turn you to stone on impact. In fact, the series is full of annoying enemies like this, but the flea men are synonymous with "nuisance enemy," with their fast, unpredictable movements, and their being such small targets. Just to rub it in, Castlevania is quite Nintendo Hard, which meant that everyone, including the 'Bats, had to cause just as much damage as the bosses.
 * Then, to add insult to injury, later games include enhanced versions of Medusa Heads (gold ones that can petrify you, often right when you are on a gear or conveyor belt headed straight for a spiked wall) and the Fleamen (Rippers, which move faster and throw Dagger at you). All in all, Castlevania has turned "annoying enemies" into a performance art.
 * If that weren't bad enough, there are the Fleamen. These nimble little creatures move roughly three times as fast as you do (not that that's saying much, since poor physics made Simon slow and clumsy as an ox), and they do enormous damage. 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).
 * Beat Castlevania 3 and go through a New Game + . Medusa Heads are replaced by Flying Skulls. Imagine Medusa Heads with a random movement pattern.
 * There's also the Black Crows, which follow an erratic movement pattern. Castlevania's near-equivalent of Ninja Gaiden's hawks.
 * Castlevania's latest release proves that if it ain't broke, MAKE IT HARDER.
 * Play a Metroidvania on Hard mode, and watch as Goddamned Bats that used to do 1 HP of damage now do at least 60 HP of damage!
 * The Chupacapras (or Cave Trolls). There's a reason they love to pack the Bonus Dungeon 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.
 * Pretty much every Demon in Circle of the Moon. 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 I Wanna Be the Guy 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. The non-elemental Demon, a seemingly intentional Boss in Mook Clothing to the point where the room at the end of the Bonus Dungeon consists of just one of them, isn't half as deadly as this one attack.
 * Circle of the Moon is full of Demonic Spiders—a lot of the 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. 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.
 * The worst armours are probably the Dark ones, mostly because they fire these orbs at you. Easy enough to avoid right, except for the fact they're always places where you're trying to get up, and you'll get hit over and over and over... That devil guy who appears lategame is a royal pain as well and nigh impossible to kill without sustaining heavy damage as he just spams loads of random crap at you. It's tough to even get by him!
 * This is where the DSS magic system excels. Screw whip enhancements, rotating elemental shields and über-summons. None of them will help you much against the Armors and Demons. But if you have the right card, you can make yourself immune to any single element at a time. Those cursed Ice Armors in the waterway? They will now heal you. The aggravating lightning spam of the Thunder Demon? Heals you. Dark Armor/Devil magic? Heals you. With the immunity card and enough elemental cards to go with it, the game suddenly becomes a lot easier.
 * Well, Good luck getting that Black Dog card, you only find it in the Arena section, filled with all the previous enemies, WITH NO SAVEPOINTS.
 * Don't forget that the Arena also drains all your MP, thus forbidding you from using the spell cards/magic to fight. You can cheat the system by using an MP-refilling item and then immediately activating a spell, but you will only get one off before you're empty again. So in reality: Whip attacks and item healing only. Hope you brought a lot of potions.
 * Order of Ecclesia, in its bid to ensure that nobody ever complains about Metroidvania 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 Large Cavern is not nearly so generous. Never complain about Volaticus being a Useless Useful Spell again.
 * 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 Voltacious, 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.
 * Weapons Masters, too, are extremely difficult. 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 Large Cavern.
 * Order of Ecclesia includes the aforementioned bonus dungeon called the Large Cavern, which is infested with all of the game's Demonic Spiders, often having to fight multiple ones at the same time. Your only saving grace is that to unlock this dungeon, you need the glyph that gives you flight. This can turn the tide, or be worse than useless. Have fun!
 * Correction: You can access Large Cavern before you get Volaticus. Try if you dare
 * Gorgon heads were pretty bad too. They would fly at you, change directions randomly, and were completely out of context, this being gothic horror and all. Fine. But they also appear in every single platforming section of a level ever.
 * Frozen Halfs in Symphony of the Night, somewhat. While they are pretty easy to kill, if you let them live for too long, then after their first (underwhelming) attack, they will float up (typically out of reach) and shout "Maximum power!" And then OH SHIT WHERE ARE ALL THESE HUGE ICE BLOCKS COMING FROM WHEN DOES IT STOP ARRGH.
 * 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.
 * ANY level 75 enemy in Curse of Darkness. Ghouls? They can't be fazed, stunned or push back by attacks, and if they grab you they'll chew you to death. Fleamen? Superfast, hard to hit and they deals a lot of damage. But the kings are the Red Ogres: Can move around easily despite their bulk, can shot multiple Eye Beams and swings a colossal club around. Any of his attacks can turn Hector in a pile of kebab without much effort.
 * Simon's Quest has Floating Eyeballs, which behave similarly to "Hump Bot" from Journey to Silius, except they usually come in swarms.
 * In Castlevania III, Medusa heads were bad enough. But in a New Game +, they were replaced by flying skulls with an erratic motion pattern that make the Medusa heads seem like a vacation.
 * Valhalla Knights in Symphony of the Night can be very nasty. Especially on luck mode.