Super Castlevania IV [Hard Mode] Stage 3 (NO DAMAGE / NO WHIP UPGRADE / NO SUB-WEAPONS)

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Boss: Orphic Vipers - 07:09

The first big one. Stage 3 is when the game stops playing nice with you. Lots of tricky bits with jumps and, of course, HM (Hard Mode, not homing missile) bats everywhere to mess with you.

Block 3-2 is where the difficulty ramps up. There's a lot of tough jumps and some enemies are stationed in ways that will catch a reckless player just charging onward, and on top of that the screen will keep turning the bottom into bottomless pits. Now, I swear I've seen something like this in another Stage 3 of a certain alien infested Konami game on the Super Nintendo too. Hmmm.

Block 3-3 is basically half of this entire level and has even trickier parts with a lot of problematic jumps and Bone Dragons on top of that. The Merman are awfully random and sometimes you can just get rotten luck and get one to pop in the perfect spot to snipe you with its spit, er, water gun.

The boss of this stage isn't too difficult, but you have to be very patient here to avoid getting hit. One of the heads spits three projectiles and the other a short range venom breath.

Try to memorize which head spits the three projectiles and kill it first, after that the fight is basically won. Remember that the "whip dangle" blocks the boss projectiles, but sometimes you have adjust the whip to block high or lower shots.