Curse of the Moon is a good game...

To be honest, I was thinking of the NES games when I typed the post. Either way, that's an example of bad design in those games too. There's no good excuse for an insta-kill move. Instead of putting those in, give the enemy more moves to use. It's just lazy to have an enemy that only has one move that kills instantly if it connects. I doubt Inti will patch this, so I'm just not going to bother playing the rest of the game. It was fun while it lasted.

I can only hope that RotN doesn't suffer from this kind of nonsense.

The portrait's sort of a Vania staple, it's in Rondo as well. At least it's a bit challenging in Cotm, all you had to do in Rondo was stand to the side and whip it.

Well, I hope you'll reconsider. You could of course fly above it as a bat when it does the (quite obvious) move if you don't feel like you can dodge it.

In this game, it's that one attack that does this to you, otherwise it's normal damage. In Rondo, it's over if it touches you at all, but the likelihood of that happening is much lower since it bounces far away with each hit.

It's no different than a stage hazard that kills you, to me (all of which are also passable by Gebel bat too heh), so it's certainly fine and I wouldn't say any sort of bad design. Without bat form, you have to be careful with jumping. Even there, Miriam gives you more leeway than the others since she jumps a good bit higher.

Come to think of it, I think each character might have a method to where they wouldn't have to worry about dodging that move since they could kill it befoerhand - just dependent on sub weapons.

Is this on the Zangetsu only run? I'm just getting started on that one. I don't remember coming across any enemies with a one hit kill, unless they knock you off a cliff. I'm wondering if I bypassed it with some of the shortcuts.

Some past Classic-vania's and Igavanias have plenty of Bosses with instant-kill moves, so it's no skin off my nose that the Portraits in Curse of the Moon can do them.

Rusalka (my favorite boss in Order of Ecclesia) has an instant-kill move in the form of summoning a tidal wave. You have to hide under the stone pillars she drops in order to avoid death.

*EDIT:  Heck, I used to think Dullahan's Ghost Chaser move in Portrait of Ruin was an instant-kill, but that's because I was usually low-level by the time I faced him (and used Jonathan more often than Charlotte).

ZeroSbr I find your sentiment regarding this insta-kill rather interesting. Are you also upset about the lava that appears later on? How about bottomless pits? I'm not judging you, just curious.

Yup, did solo Zangetsu my first run, as well.....Veteran/Normal and did not have any issues with either painting boss. They are predictable, easy to learn patterns and very simple to jump over using the sides of the area. Never once saw it as an 'artificial difficulty' at all and for being pretty much the only 2 things in the game (monsterwise) to 1-shot is definitely nothing to complain over, especially when capable at other 'hard' games.....

I don't see how a one-shot portrait is that bad if common enemies can also "one-shot" you by knocking you into a pit, which is a staple of Castlevania games.You can also destroy the portrait extremely easily with Alfred's ice attack, just freeze it and and hit it once. Finally, it only one-shots you when it charges up,I believe, you can attack it freely when it's floating around the room, and when it does its charge attack you just need to time your attack right to drive it back.

I'm sure it's the same one. I've never been hit by it either, but I've seen others get hit by it. (They didn't complain.)