I remember playing Castlevania 2 back in the days. I never even came close to beating it. I only ever got as far as i did through sheer willpower and spending a shit ton of hours just brute forcing the game. A few years ago, i tried again. I read every conversation in the game and pretty much tried everything before reading a walkthrough. I was stuck at the same part that i was as a child. The solution: take a specific orb, go to a specific wall and crouch for a few seconds. Maybe you can find this out while playing the game, but holy shit these "puzzles" were random.