Curse of the Moon is a good game...

You're right.  That's kind of cool now that I've seen it.

I noted that the fire elemental are also one hit after attempting to use veteran knock-back along with an intentional hit to get around one of them without Alfred.

... You can attack the portrait during its OHKO charge to bat it away and cancel the attack.

I still got hit by it enough times in my solo run that I just used the talisman against a wall to combo it to death before it used the insta-kill though.

I believe Miriam is the only one with a higher jump than the others, didn't notice much of a difference in Gebel/Zangetsu for jumps, only in character size with Gebel being the tallest of the group. So if Gebel can jump just fine from the center of the room, then Zangetsu can, as well.

I jumped it as Zangetsu no problem.

Yeah, the attack is telegraphed, but it also has good tracking, and the portrait itself is fairly large thus making the hitbox for the move fairly large as well. You can imply that I'm bad at games all you like, that doesn't change the fact that OHKO moves are garbage design.

No, I probably wouldn't have liked playing Bushido Blade. Look, there's a good reason not many games give their enemies OHKO moves anymore. Devs realized it's bad design. Also, your example game is a completely different genre than this one, making it a false equivalent.

So?

Numerous recent Super Mario games still have your character die in one hit if they don't get a Mushroom or other power-ups.

I can also name another game where you can instantly die to various attacks; that was released just last year.

Super Bomberman R.

Every single enemy in that game can kill you in one hit, no matter what.

Bomberman is a different genre, so once again you've given me a false equivalent. As for Mario, you can at least prevent yourself from dying in one hit by getting a power up, which aren't all that hard to obtain, so that's not a good example either.

purifyweirdshard Yeah, if you know that the enemy is vulnerable to knockbacks even when it's charging you, it becomes less of a threat. Problem is, I'm so used to games where trying to attack enemies while they're charging at you is a bad idea, so I didn't try that. I figured I'd stand more of a chance by just avoiding and then attacking.

I'm sure I would've too, but OHKO moves from enemies in games like this really turn me off. I tried again when I learned that they could get knocked back, and then it was easy. Still doesn't make OHKO moves a good idea. If it just did tons of damage (half your max hp) I'd be okay with that. The point of a health bar is to provide the player with mistake allowance. If you get killed in one hit every time, you might as well not have a health bar for that fight. That's stupid.