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conchobhar

What's Shenmue?
Any input on why companies are so reticent to port PS1 era stuff? I feel like the NES/SNES/GBA games from Capcom and Konami have been played to death by everyone through various means. Why no 32 bit ports EVER?
I know what you're getting at but I don't think this applies to Castlevania. Symphony has been constantly available since release— it's had ports on the 360. PS3, PSP, PS4— while this is only the second time the GBA games have been ported… and the first was on the Wii U.
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
Now I don’t work on commercial emulation and can’t answer this with any real authority, but one hurdle with trying to do multiplatform releases of emulated 32 bit and beyond games could be what kind of BIOS calls were the games making? It might be prohibitively difficult to emulate a particular game without the original hardware BIOS included, and unless you aren’t partnering with Sony or whoever for a release, you aren’t legally allowed to use it.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
News of the GBA games likely materializing in the near future now provide me with opportunities to practice some well-honed indignance about how people still continue to assess Harmony and especially its music like they did twenty years ago. It's not that long ago we talked about this--and muteKi puts it really well--but any time I'm roused from slumber to confront a Take it usually results in me loving the material even more passionately because I'm forced to evaluate just what about it appeals to me in the first place. I'll just drop some excerpts from a conversation below:

in other contexts gb music or nes music or whatever able to be labeled "chiptune" would be fetishized for that very nature, but when it comes out of a gba game it suddenly turns everyone into audio chauvinists
it's not like there's some true intent mastertrack version of the soundtrack floating around, as far as anyone knows, that hokkai conjured up irrespective of all other development considerations and had to slam that into gba psg when someone clued him into hardware limitations
it's just what it is because it needs to be that way and is the best it can be for the game's purposes

hokkai's stuff is unique to me because he doesn't deal in the yamane-style sentimentalities compositionally so the tone is closer to a creaky horror-comedy. the percussive elements in tracks like "i'll sell at my place" and "luminous caverns" are just genuinely funny to me
they're probably the most progressive in terms of development and structure this side of cv4. you can't make hummable anthems out of them and because people consume vgm at large and particularly cv music as iconic melodic thing, well what are ya gonna do
i don't think this is something the series ever particularly excelled at but "old enemy" is probably my favourite final boss bgm. again largely thanks to the percussion
the sudden fluctuations in the volume of the beats are just really good and chaotic

i made the comparison many many years ago but they way it feels to me is like the aural equivalent of a silent horror film. what i would imagine that soundscape to be if audio existed in them
"prologue" especially
like one of the very few game osts that latches onto that feeling that demon's souls had, of the "performance" of the material struggling and falling short of the compositions so at times it sounds pathetic and falling apart and is just perfect for the game's tone
"concerto of the midnight sun" is a great title but they really landed on something evocative with harmony of dissonance
which ppl will of course try to weaponize like "eh. eh? even the game knows the music sucks"

I'm excited to play the game again and for people to play it potentially for the first time--not that I'm away from these games for very long, usually, but I'll take any excuse to refresh.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
"It's a SNES in the palm of your hand" was basically how the GBA was marketed back in the day, with all the expectations that entailed. Granted, the bloom fell off that pretty quickly due to the way it handles sequenced audio, but early GBA games like Harmony still got a lot of undeserved shit for it and there were enough later handheld Castlevanias that there wasn't the later reassessment that typically follows controversial entries in any given series.
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
Circle of the Moon’s ost was really good, as well.

If we’re going to defend maligned games in the Castlevania series, I will always stand up for the N64 titles. The relatively slow pace and “unique” control scheme felt truer to the soul of the series than any of the later 3D installments. Speaking of the controls, I think the “delicate” character controls and sometimes adversarial camera may have intentionally added a lot more suspense to the platforming. Only in retrospect do I see how influential survival horror games were to CV64/LoD, and many of those games used stiff controls and unfriendly camera angles to greatly add tension to otherwise very simple combat encounters. Maybe the developers had same idea for platforming, because even now, some levels still haunt me. The Tower of Sorcery is nothing but a bunch of crystals floating in a black void with almost no combat, but it’s one of the most terrifying levels in any game I’ve played.

Games don’t utilize the fear of heights anywhere near what they could.
 

lincolnic

can stop, will stop
(he/him)
I'm thinking about picking up the Castlevania Advance Collection, what should I know going into it? I played Circle of the Moon on GBA when it was new, but I remember nothing about it aside from having fun. I've never seen the other two games. What's the general consensus on them these days?
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
Harmony of Dissonance is okay. The map is very bloated, and many of the bosses are just big versions of regular enemies.

Aria of Sorrow is maybe the best of all the handheld Castlevania games, period. I like Dawn a bit more, but I’m in the minority.
 

WildcatJF

Let's Pock (Art @szk_tencho)
(he / his / him)
Aria of Sorrow is arguably the best Metroidvania (I think it is) and it's a standout of the GBA library. This alone is worth the asking price.

Circle was made by a different team than Symphony, and plays differently, but is fine and aided by some helpful new features M2 added. Harmony is perfectly decent gameplay-wise, and it was Igarashi's first crack on the system (which would lead to Aria and the DS games), but Konami overcompensated a bit on the colors so it is a little garish. And perhaps wandering. Dracula X is a curio tossed onto here for funsies, and is a lesser port of Rondo of Blood that aligns more with the older games than its direct inspiration, and is generally not as well regarded as most others in the series. Still, nice to have it included somewhere (even if Kid Dracula GB or Castlevania Legends would have made some sense as they too were portable titles at least).
 
I'm thinking about picking up the Castlevania Advance Collection, what should I know going into it? I played Circle of the Moon on GBA when it was new, but I remember nothing about it aside from having fun. I've never seen the other two games. What's the general consensus on them these days?
I would say it's worth it just for Aria. It can go toe to toe with SotN easily.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
Consensus is pretty down on Circle, but it's the most replayable of the bunch in my opinion, aided by the various modes and the ability to sequence break.

Aria is a very solid game, as has been mentioned. I never cared much for Harmony.
 
Circle of the Moon? My notable issue was like a lot of others; that slow movement and need to regularly bash double-tap L or double R to "run." I think there was a bad difficulty spike somewhere in there too. Hope they boost traversal somehow, its a fun game that I recall feeling like a cross between Symphony and Bloodlines?
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
The "consensus" is that Circle is some kind of underappreciated and overlooked standout next to its non-KCEK-developed search action peers; that Harmony is a thrashfire people were fooled into liking just because they didn't know any better; and that Aria is the only uncompromisingly good one out of the three and the heir apparent to Symphony's reputation and pedigree. All such assessments are reductive, but that's what an opinion aggregate will get you.

Personally, Circle is a flailing attempt at taking its model formula and trying to inject it with mechanical challenge above all without any consideration paid towards how interesting it's actually to interact with, nor how badly the level design suffers under the throes of endlessly, mindlessly repeating enemy configurations and layouts. Harmony stands as the best game in this selection and among my very favourites in the entire series; a total aesthetic and tonal marvel that wields obeisance to the series past with a keen understanding in exactly how to twist and subvert it to land on the uncanny. Aria is in many ways, as good as advertised, but it's also the cleanest settling into the comforts of Symphony's mold, and very leanly streamlined and concise for that, which is perfect for many people's tastes--for me, it's moments of brilliance mediated by the dulling familiarities of its rhythms. Dracula X--Vampire's Kiss for its better title--in the context of this collection and the series at large feels like an odd parasitical presence, a true low point for the stage-oriented action games that preceded it and which, were one to grant it such influence, it effectively dealt a killing blow to for many years through its sheer arbitrary incompetence.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
My biggest issue with Harmony, other than the soundtrack being full of robot farts, is that, even with the map, it’s incredibly easy to get lost past a certain point. You’re traversing between two castles which generally only differ in colour scheme and enemy presense, so it’s easy to lose track of where you actually are. And the auto-maps for each are brightly coloured which does It’s best to hide your actual location from you when you’re looking at it.

Circle has not aged well at all, but deserves props for being the first out the door and having some great ideas and a fantastic coundtrack,

Aria is one of the gold standards of the troid-em-up genre and is worth the price of admission all on its own.

Dracula X I don’t have any issue with myself, but I also don’t mind cheating right back when a game is unfair. It’s by no possible metric Rondo of Blood, but it’s fine.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
My biggest issue with Harmony, other than the soundtrack being full of robot farts, is that, even with the map, it’s incredibly easy to get lost past a certain point. You’re traversing between two castles which generally only differ in colour scheme and enemy presense, so it’s easy to lose track of where you actually are. And the auto-maps for each are brightly coloured which does It’s best to hide your actual location from you when you’re looking at it.

These are all points to its favour for me; it's the only one of the lineage sans some parts of Symphony which has ever navigationally stumped and disoriented me, a feeling I savour in this kind of genre, and especially as the follow-up to Simon's Quest that the game narratively is and beautifully echoes in its obscurities. There's just nothing else like it in the series.
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
I have never played Circle outside the very specific context of sitting next to a window in broad daylight and trying to angle the sun just right so that I could see what I was doing. I look forward to playing a version of this game that I can see!
 

madhair60

Video games
M2 have included some admirable bonuses here but they should have "always run" in Circle of the Moon, thanks, bye.
 

Regulus

Sir Knightbot
Harmony’s real low point is just how bad Juste’s run cycle is. The port credits have a cute little animation where all four of the protags run around killing monsters together and seeing them all at the same time does Juste no favors.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I like the music in all three of the Advance games, but to this day have never beaten Harmony. Maybe I will here, dunno. There's some mechanical upgrades M2 put into the games, notably in Circle where you can optionally have a popup appear when there's an enemy who can drop a DSS card, and it'll tell you whether you've already collected it or not. Though, yes, no "always run" mode for Circle, which sucks.

Symphony is on, like, nearly everything at this point, and is not as good as most of the handheld titles in the series anyway, I don't care what anybody says. All it really has for me is a good soundtrack.
 

Beta Metroid

At peace
(he/him)
Dracula X is a nifty bonus but boy I'd sure like to have Rondo on Switch
I was just talking with some friends about the oddity of that situation. Rondo was on the Wii's Virtual Console, then to my knowledge, has only shown up packaged with SOTN for the PS4. Both this collection and the Castlevania Anniversary Collection seemed like perfectly good opportunities to get Rondo on Switch, and it's odd that it's been passed up multiple times.

I mean, I would have thought nothing of a console Classicvania being left off a collection of the three GBA Metroidvanias, but then they went and threw Dracula X on there, which raised questions. I suppose Dracula X and Circle of the Moon have a bit of a connection (mainly the Cerberus and Necromancer boss fights)?
 

Beta Metroid

At peace
(he/him)
Dracula X is bloodier in the Japanese version, with certain things more closely resembling their Rondo counterparts than what we got in North America (Richter's dying animation, Death bleeding upon taking damage and getting beheaded when beaten). I'm not aware of the GBA games' regional differences.
 
Given that Konami shockingly patched in some more quality of life features on their previous collections, I'm holding out hope for an always-run toggle. As long as Konami wants to keep putting these things out I'm going to get them, hoping Castlevania Legends finds a home as a bonus someday.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
Consensus is pretty down on Circle, but it's the most replayable of the bunch in my opinion, aided by the various modes and the ability to sequence break.

The "consensus" is that Circle is some kind of underappreciated and overlooked standout...

Personally, Circle is a flailing attempt at taking its model formula and trying to inject it with mechanical challenge above all without any consideration paid towards how interesting it's actually to interact with, nor how badly the level design suffers under the throes of endlessly, mindlessly repeating enemy configurations and layouts.

Your Honor, the defense rests.

(actually, the games have an 8.3, 7.9, and 8.9 user score on Metacritic, respectively, so maybe the truth is that Circle's detractors are just louder than its supporters)
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Most people have really fond memories of Circle as a launch window stunner and tentpole for their conception of handheld games (Dawn's reputation is similarly inflated because it was the first of that technological standard), with a contingent of more recent evaluations latching onto it for those reasons I described as an example of "hard game = better game". There isn't any widespread detraction for these games outside of Harmony.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
Aria is in many ways, as good as advertised, but it's also the cleanest settling into the comforts of Symphony's mold, and very leanly streamlined and concise for that, which is perfect for many people's tastes--for me, it's moments of brilliance mediated by the dulling familiarities of its rhythms.

I would say I largely agree with this. Aside from a small handful of choke points, there isn't a lot of friction in Aria and that made it one of the more forgettable titles in the series to me. The lone exception might be the floating gardens specifically because of how gleefully it ignores platforming navigation considerations, having one-way paths between some rooms and no coherency on the overworld map. That this then leads into the clock tower and one of the earliest battles with Death in the series might be intentional -- make the player think they've broken sequence accidentally? -- but it still feels awkward when usually the answer in one of these games to encountering such a challenge is to try another path and that's the only one remaining. After that point the rest of the game drastically drops in difficulty, and the claimh solais may as well be equipping the win button.
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
My opinions on the three GBA games:

Circle: The cards system has some cool stuff, but Nathan's default movement speed really should've been faster and he shouldn't have to double tap run to clear so many jumps. Stuff like the BearTank ring and the alternate stats/skill builds are fun, though it is a grind if you want to unlock all the different Nathans or the cards in a non-MAGICIAN file. Has really good music, albeit a lot of it is arrangements of existing songs.

Harmony: Prettiest of the three games, Juste's walk cycle aside; lots of cool sprites, effects and background art. Does some cool stuff with Game Boy sound. Dashing everywhere is fun. The actual castle traversal is kinda bland since things are more on the claustrophobic side to fit the screen, and outside of Item+Spellbook combos Juste is pretty limited in how to approach enemies (Dash>Whip>Dash>Dash>Whip>Dash) but the general flow of gameplay is good and Maxim mode really lets you tear through the game. Wish there was more cool gear like the Floating Boots and Christopher's useless fireball bit and less stuff like number-go-up. The room to decorate was neat.

Aria: Strikes a middle ground between Harmony's good looks and Circle's audio file useage in terms of tech. Soma has loads of different abilities, though only a select few are good substitutes for/compliments to Hit With Weapon. Lots of fun stuff to get, the game rewards being thorough with exploration. Castle is visually kinda bland compared to Circle and especially Harmony. Headhunter is an amazing boss. I like the flow of Symphony better, but this is the closest you'll get to it gameplay-wise on GBA.
 
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