Golem

The Golem is an enemy from many games spanning across the Castlevania series. Like other monsters in the series, its role in each game ranges from boss threats to nonexistent. Most Golems are made of rocks or clay, including several boss varieties such as the ones in Haunted Castle, Super Castlevania IV (in North America dubbed Koranot, which is backwards for "ton a' rok"), Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (called a Big Golem), and Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth. Circle of the Moon introduced the Iron Golem boss, which soon became a common regular enemy in its own right and is renowned for its incredible resistance to damage. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow featured two Golems not found in other games, including the Wooden Golem (which was replaced later by the Treant) and the bizarre Flesh Golem, whose soul caused Soma to be able to eat otherwise harmful food. Castlevania: Judgment features a playable Golem who has obtained self-awareness and can be considered a character in his own right. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow featured gigantic Golems known as Titans as well as a smaller one called the Black Knight Golem.

Lore
The Golem was conceived long ago in Jewish folklore. During the Middle Ages, it was seen as a symbol of one's own great holiness and power to create a Golem, and many prominent Rabbis were rumored to have actually created a number of Golems. In the making of a Golem, according to yet more folklore, is to build it from the dust of the earth, much like how God made Adam. There are multiple ways to activate a Golem:


 * By inscribing one of the many names of God into its forehead.
 * By inscribing one of the many names of God on a slip of paper, and placing it in the Golem's mouth. (Note: This is similar to how a Jiang-Shi is activated in Chinese myth, except that the paper is inscribed with Imperial decree and nailed upon the forehead.)
 * By inscribing a specific religious command using one's own blood on calfskin, and placing that into its mouth, a method that sounds suspiciously occultic rather than religious.
 * By inscribing the Hebrew word, Emet ("truth") on its forehead.

It is always the wisest decision to never give the Golem the ability to speak. If it has the ability to speak, then the Golem is given a soul; and if it is given a soul, the Golem becomes anarchistic and cunning--in a sense, the Golem becomes a wicked, foul creature. Another good idea is to always allow the Golem to rest on the Sabbath (Sundays), or else the Golem will go berserk and become destructive of everything around it. If either one of these mistakes are made, or if for any other reason, there are also a few ways meant to deactivate the Golem.


 * If activated using the word Emet, one must erase the "E" to form the word Met ("death").
 * If activated using the calfskin parchment, the parchment must be removed from its mouth.
 * If activated using the slip of paper, the paper must be removed and destroyed.

In all definitions, the Golem is meant to be a servant to the one who created it. While there are many forms of the Golem throughout the Castlevania series, they all really stay true to the original myths surrounding the Golem. Frankenstein's Monster, a recurring boss monster in the series, can also be considered a Golem--except that he is formed from corpses while the Golem is traditionally dust and earth. Both prove to be some of the most difficult characters in the series.

Castlevania: Bloodlines
In this game, the Golem is featured for the first official time as the boss of Stage 2, which takes place in Greece. After defeating the warlock who was using his magic to force the waters of Atlantis to rise to threatening heights, the player rides the tide down to the bottom of the Atlantic palace and comes face-to-face with the warlock's creation: a Golem! Its body has multiple layers that the player must break in order to do damage to a red orb that acts as its head (And, therefore, its weakpoint). Its attack are mainly just pummeling the ceiling to cause rocks to drop from the ceiling and trying to slug the player from a point-blank distance. After the Golem is defeated, it raises its fist, as if to threaten that it will someday return...

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Golem appears in two (or three, if you count the boss Iron Golem) forms in the game. The first is the Golem enemy, which slowly walks around. When damaged enough, its lower body (his legs) fall off, and he slowly crawls toward the player. The second is the Golem DSS card, which represents the element of earth, thus creating earth effects when combined with other cards, such as earthquakes. When the Uranus card is obtained, the player can summon the Golem, which makes stones come out from the ground as the Golem emerges, doing extreme damage to weaker enemies.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Harmony of Dissonance was famous for its numerous boss fights, and the Golem joins the large cast of boss monsters. It functions much like it did in Bloodlines, even so far as to have the same red orb that acts as its weakpoint. However, it has a few new attacks such as actually spewing a cascade of rock shards.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
In this game, the Golem is relegated to being just a very strong enemy. As a matter of fact, this time around, it seems to have invited its cousins to help the other legions of Dracula's minions. There are many more Golems than just the familiar stone giant (Flesh Golem, Iron Golem): one of which, made of iron, is nearly impossible to defeat without use of the Killer Mantle soul because its defense is ridiculously high. While they aren't bosses, the Golems make nuisances of themselves all the same. Regardless of their high defense, all Golems (except the Big Golem) can be destroyed with one hit of the Killer Mantle. This weakness also makes obtaining their Souls much easier.

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
In perhaps its most memorable role, the Golem is one of the bosses Leon must defeat in order to open the door to Walter's Keep. It is worth noting here that during the Golem's level, Leon must find a stone letter "E" and bring to the boss room, and insert it into an epitaph that has "Met" written on it. This is one of the actual ways of activating a Golem (Writing Emet on its person). However, the Golem does not seem ready to obey the man who brought it to life, and attacks Leon. It is basically a bruiser boss: many of its attacks consist of throwing Leon around the room or crushing him beneath its own earthy presence. It also possesses the red crystal, although this time under his arm. When defeated, as usual, it once again returns to the peace of the earth.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
They are featured here the same as in the first Sorrow game, except that their sprites are redrawn to fit the more-demanding graphical capabilities of the Nintendo DS.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Appearing in the Buried Chamber, the Golem from Portrait of Ruin is a simple enemy who resists to Jonathan's sub-weapons.

Castlevania: Judgment
$Judgment$ Golem is a playable character in the 3D fighting game Castlevania: Judgment for the Nintendo Wii. His design seems to be a mixture of both the Golem and Frankenstein's Monster. He's revealed in his story mode that the Time rift the game takes place in has granted Golem a measure of sentience, which he uses in an attempt to make himself fully human. However, only in the rift can his sentience be maintained, and the rift would doom humanity if he remains extant; as such, Golem sacrifices his chance at humanity to help seal the rift and save mankind. After Golem mends the rift in time, he loses his sentience and becomes a mindless monster once more. Sadly, he was later destroyed by a vampire hunter. His theme is "Tower of Dolls", a song from Castlevania: Chronicles.

Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth
In The Adventure ReBirth, the area boss of Stage 4 is an enemy that resembles a Golem. He is capable of smashing, jumping into the air and landing (creating a shockwave), and summoning several mini-golems which float around.

Flesh Golem
Essentially a large glob of flesh given life. It drops no useful items and does not give out a lot of experience. It is also somewhat weaker than its relatives, having a weakness to slashing weapons such as swords. But his soul is useful for restoring hp, because of his soul you can eat rotten meat and spoiled milk and restore health instead of decreasing it.

Big Golem
Big Golem appears in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow in the Dance Hall as the game's 4th boss, and later in the Underground Waterway as a regular enemy. It behaves exactly like the other Golem enemies you can encounter in the game, being that they move slow and are easy to avoid. However, in Big Golem's case, you can't avoid him. He only has two mentionable attacks in the entire fight.

The first attack is where he decides to thrust the palm of his hand at you. Normally, the regular Golem enemies kick to attack in this game, save for Iron Golem, but he has to use this attack because of his size.

The second attack is unique only to Big Golem. He opens up his mouth and spits rocks out at you. While not as devastating as the arm thrust attack, it covers some distance between the two of you, so make sure you try to avoid it.

After you defeat this boss the first time, you get the Skeleton Blaze soul. It allows you to slide underneath places, which helps to unlock the Inner Quarters area. Later on, you can acquire his soul. It behaves much like the Creaking Skull and Cagnazzo souls, mainly because it's a Guardian Soul, and it supports the battle from behind you. It is not as powerful as the Cagnazzo soul, but it is more powerful than the Creaking Skull soul. However, it doesn't cover as much distance as the Creaking Skull soul, so you may want to equip the soul depending on the range you're fighting in.

It is possible for Soma to slip behind it by trying to walking past it, though he'll receive damage(in Julius' case, he can warp behind it with no damage taken), once there, the player can attack it from behind and the boss/enemy will not turn around, making it easier to beat. Though caution needs to be considered as Soma/Julius can still get hit if the Golem accidentally steps backward, so a bit of spacing needs to be in mind.

Koranot
Koranot is the Golem king you meet him in the deth tower after you beat Pulevix. Koranot spelled backwards is "ton a rok", this can be interpreted as "ton of rock", which is an accurate description of this boss enemy.

Trivia
It's one of two bosses in Harmony of Dissonance that receive non-neutral damage from one of elements, Golem resisting Thunder. The other boss is Skull Knight, which is weak to Thunder.