Ludendorkk
(he/him)
Yeah, my personal experience is that Circle had the reputation as "the shitty one" and "the one where you can't see anything", I didn't know people were down on Harmony until I was in college
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Whipping A Dead Mr. Hed: The Castlevania Thread Of Sacred Remains
- Thread starter R.R. Bigman
- Start date
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
Look, it was 2001. Circle of the Moon suffers under close examination, but at the time, it was a milestone for handheld gaming... and objectively, it holds up better than the Castlevania game the original Game Boy got at launch. I wish I still had my copy of Circle of the Moon, and still play it on other formats from time to time. (That will include the Switch, because I'm sure buying this collection is an inevitability.) I was excited about The Castlevania Adventure in 1989, but over thirty years later, it's become a thoroughly repellent experience.
conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
Castlevania: The Adventure is good. I played it for the first time last year and quite enjoyed it. Overshadowed by its sequel, undeniably, but a nice little game with great tunes and some inventive stages (the third stage is a series highlight).
Circle is alright. The version in this is the best version, by virtue of telling you when you have the chance to get a DSS card. I'm going to try to collect them all, which I've never done once, despite beating the game a few times back in the day.
I also think drop rates have been increased, but I may just be imagining things. I just have more potions than I usually do.
I also think drop rates have been increased, but I may just be imagining things. I just have more potions than I usually do.
The Card Mode hack that places the DSS cards in hidden spots around the castle and massively increases health drops is better, though. <3
madhair60
Video games
So far I'm extremely happy with this collection. I actually just finished an Aria playthrough so I'm not super keen to go again, but the QOL feature for Circle of the Moon (showing which enemies drop cards) is a literal game-changer for me - I beat that game once, ever, and it was a fuckin' pig to do because I think I got... maybe three? Maybe four card drops? In the whole game?? I think it might just have been one necessary for traversal that let me freeze enemies or something.
Playing Magician Mode or using the DSS glitch to have access to the full deck sort of exposes another wonky layer that the scant availability of them in standard play partly disguises: despite a literal hundred of them, most of the abilities are boring, impractical, or both. Many of them additionally work on obfuscating principles like being hit with the right kind of enemy attack to find out what the ability even does, or having to do a button combo to activate them. I think this sort of stuff is fine in a game like Symphony where each and every secret and hidden function is a curiosity for its own sake in a game that can be approached in many diverse ways, but Circle presents the DSS cards as the backbone of its play systems and then proceeds to fumble both the application and end results.
muteKi
Geno Cidecity
I love that several of them are unlikely drops from enemies that show up in extremely isolated areas only after beating a number of bosses and, most importantly, are enemies that you have a time limit to actually kill. I kind of love the game but it very regularly fails to live up to the promise of its design considerations.
The gameplay was way too rough and difficult for me to really enjoy it, but when I played through the game with save state assistance a while back I was impressed by just how many of the cool things that Belmont's Revenge did had actually appeared in Adventure first.
The gameplay is slow, the jumping puzzles are infuriating, and the third stage especially is a nigh insurmountable wall without outside help, but I'm impressed a Year 1 Game Boy game had moving walls, floors, and ceilings.
Kinda weird that Juste sees a big empty room in Dracula’s castle and decides to make it a personal project to redecorate it.
Thats a weird set of priorities you got there, J.
Thats a weird set of priorities you got there, J.
Just beat Circle for the first time in a while (I did not get all the DSS cards, nor was I able to beat the Arena lol). Great music, fun game, better than it's reputation, but that Dracula fight is one of the worst final bosses in any game I've played.
Gonna give Harmony another honest shot. I really would like to cross it off the list.
Gonna give Harmony another honest shot. I really would like to cross it off the list.
The HQ sound option is absolutely astounding. It’s an enormous difference! This is fantastic!
As for the collection itself— the two best games are Aria and Dissonance quite easily.
I don’t hate Dissonance, but it’s a solid 7/10 game compared to Bloodstained and Aria’s 10 and SoTN’s 9. In case you’re wondering, and Circle is a 6 or even a 5 for the reasons Peklo listed.
Disonnance’s biggest issue, in my opinion, was Juste’s forward dash. It took absolutely all fun from the good castle design cos you would just mash the forward dash to try and get where you needed to go as quickly as possible.
That’s how I felt when I reviewed it when it came out years ago.
I look forward to experiencing it again now, and seeing if and how my opinion may change.
As for the collection itself— the two best games are Aria and Dissonance quite easily.
I don’t hate Dissonance, but it’s a solid 7/10 game compared to Bloodstained and Aria’s 10 and SoTN’s 9. In case you’re wondering, and Circle is a 6 or even a 5 for the reasons Peklo listed.
Disonnance’s biggest issue, in my opinion, was Juste’s forward dash. It took absolutely all fun from the good castle design cos you would just mash the forward dash to try and get where you needed to go as quickly as possible.
That’s how I felt when I reviewed it when it came out years ago.
I look forward to experiencing it again now, and seeing if and how my opinion may change.
Personally I didn't consider the forward dash an issue. I quite like that Juste can dash all around the place in both directions.
That said though, the majority of the bosses aren't really built to handle a protagonist as mobile as Juste is. Outside of more reckless play from trying for a better time at the boss rush, the only ones that posed a significant threat to me were the minotaur with the ball & chain* and Maxim.
Standard enemies are much more dangerous than bosses in this game.
* And in that case it's more that the ball does heavy damage and it's all too easy to accidentally graze it when it's on the ground.
That said though, the majority of the bosses aren't really built to handle a protagonist as mobile as Juste is. Outside of more reckless play from trying for a better time at the boss rush, the only ones that posed a significant threat to me were the minotaur with the ball & chain* and Maxim.
Standard enemies are much more dangerous than bosses in this game.
* And in that case it's more that the ball does heavy damage and it's all too easy to accidentally graze it when it's on the ground.
The issue I have with Harmony isn't the music or the controls, it's the aimlessness of the game right from the get go. You just wander around, fighting bosses sometimes with no reward in terms of movement upgrades or even equipment. The castle doesn't make much sense, one second you're in a medieval castle, the next a garish pink crystal cave and then back again, so it's very easy to just lose your bearings.
It's been a while since I've gotten very far in it, so that may change, but it just feels like a chore to play that Aria and even Circle (awful slog of a final boss aside) don't.
It's been a while since I've gotten very far in it, so that may change, but it just feels like a chore to play that Aria and even Circle (awful slog of a final boss aside) don't.
I think that's all deliberate for what the game's premise is wanting to be about and the kind of sensations it aims to elicit in the player. To compare, in Circle you are in Dracula's house, itching to kill him; in Aria you're trapped in his house and trying to escape. Very clearly objective-driven stories at their heart no matter what complicating circumstances arise. Harmony is an inversion in that it has the excuse motivator of a kidnapped friend (poor Lydie has to be the most nonexistent "character" in the entire series with the ostensible relevance to a narrative she has; Igarashi is a fundamentally sexist writer and this is him at some of his most blatant work in that regard) but the heart of the game is in Juste and Maxim's relationship and how the uncertainty and doubt reflect in the play spaces in an environment that you also can't trust, or your own memory of it as it's presented to you in the overlapping way it is. I find it so navigationally tense and exciting to parse together as an exercise in horror-attuned alternate worlds, a gaming cliche that in this case is integrated toward a thematic end that affects both immediate play and one's impressions of the narrative. Castlevania stories to me are usually more striking the less people they actively involve, and Harmony has one of the most intimate casts around, further facilitating that sense of loneliness in the search for answers inside a surreal and liminal dreamscape.
I've been playing Harmony most of the day today, and I've gotten to the second castle and have the double jump and stuff, and have just randomly been wandering around, looking for the next area I can actually progress in. It's quite dull! I don't feel tense exploring, and I wish I did because it'd make traversal a lot more interesting than "found another literal door I can't open, guess I'll slog all the way over to the other side of the castle to see if I can progress over there." Maybe I just don't like literal locked doors to be barriers in Metroidvanias, rather than some sort of traversal upgrade being how you access a new area (Circle had this problem too - the shoulder tackle and box pushing thing feel like they should be one item, and there was that switch you had to press that blew up those green iron maiden looking things).
Part of the issue, I think, is that I don't like the art in the game very much, so being lost doesn't mean I'm at least enjoying the scenery while poking around. Some of the enemy designs are interesting (Scarecrow is terrifying, for example! Melty Skeleton is weird in a good way, too lol), but the actual rooms and corridors themselves range from boring, nondescript gray to garish, neon ugliness (to be fair, the former plagued Circle, too). I know that's down to being designed for original GBA hardware, but we've long since left that behind, so now we're left with... this. Ugh.
Part of the issue, I think, is that I don't like the art in the game very much, so being lost doesn't mean I'm at least enjoying the scenery while poking around. Some of the enemy designs are interesting (Scarecrow is terrifying, for example! Melty Skeleton is weird in a good way, too lol), but the actual rooms and corridors themselves range from boring, nondescript gray to garish, neon ugliness (to be fair, the former plagued Circle, too). I know that's down to being designed for original GBA hardware, but we've long since left that behind, so now we're left with... this. Ugh.
Conversely, I’m enjoying HoD more than I remember, thanks to the aimless nature; it’s a weird castle this time. Layout is pretty dull, I’ll admit but I like the fact that the layout makes less sense than usual and the haphazard placement of everything.
Still put it in the lower tier of Igavanias, but that’s… err… not damning with faint praise but the opposite of that.
Praising with intense condemnation?
Still put it in the lower tier of Igavanias, but that’s… err… not damning with faint praise but the opposite of that.
Praising with intense condemnation?
I have never been able to connect to the common criticism of the game's visuals as "garish" because it sits so at odds not only with the intrinsic value of such a visual footprint but its context in the series it's part of. Castlevania has, especially so in its earliest games which Harmony borrows much of its referential iconography from, been comfortable and eager to shape its worlds with bold high-contrast colours, utilizing palettes that in no way could be claimed to be reserved or patterned after reality; they're about evoking mood through exaggeration and artifice, and often that involves impressionistic choices in palette. If the games aren't famed for this approach, they should be, and Harmony understands the legacy it's interacting with better than most, unafraid to add to it with its own explosions of the colour spectrum. For its part, I think Aria is also capable at defining its own visual language through similar means, and makes a distinction in its heavy use of inviting pastel hues instead of the searing vividness of the preceding game; they're both better as an unit for this reason. As for Circle... hope you like green bricks.
I took this screenshot earlier - this is one of the most garish screens in any game I've ever played:
And it's worse in motion, as the background morphs and warps around, all jittery-like (no idea how else to explain it lol). I do not like looking at it (though I suspect it's not as bad on original GBA hardware, where it's sure to be less eye-searing).
And it's worse in motion, as the background morphs and warps around, all jittery-like (no idea how else to explain it lol). I do not like looking at it (though I suspect it's not as bad on original GBA hardware, where it's sure to be less eye-searing).
It's going to read differently on a large screen, which is unavoidable with ports like this. I've played Circle outside of its handheld context before, and it's one of the few 2D games that possesses "camerawork" that actually manages to nauseate me--it's to do with Nathan's small proportional size in the environment, and how his jump is intensely vertical with not much horizontal travel, and the level design accommodating to that nature. It results in extreme amounts of screen sway that on a handheld display isn't an issue, but played elsewhere is instantly jarring and motion sickness-inducing.
Heh, that's how I feel about the room I posted above (and to be fair to Harmony, it's just that room. Other rooms in the game just aren't aesthetically pleasing to me, not actively nauseating like that one).
I can see what you mean about Circle. Nathan's jump is weird. I'd not noticed the constant camera movement, but you're right, there's a ton of it because as you say, his jump is very vertical.
What an odd couple of games.
I can see what you mean about Circle. Nathan's jump is weird. I'd not noticed the constant camera movement, but you're right, there's a ton of it because as you say, his jump is very vertical.
What an odd couple of games.
Alright, beat Harmony, finally, after all these years. It is pretty easy, though the challenge is figuring out where to go/what to do during the middle like, third of the game, which is an absolute boring slog. Picks up at the end, though. Dracula fight isn't very difficult either, which is lovely coming off Circle (I'd found all the relics other than the one in the "hidden" area in the ball room - that one's bullshit because you just have to guess that you can get through the wall there. I got lucky with the other instance of that, as I got knocked into the hidden area by an enemy lol).
Glad to get that one done, finally. It was the only Metroidvania Castlevania I'd not yet beaten. Otherwise, I've just not beaten the arcade games and the SNES version of Dracula X (which I guess I might do now that it came with this collection? Meh).
Now for Aria, definitely my favorite of the GBA games.
Glad to get that one done, finally. It was the only Metroidvania Castlevania I'd not yet beaten. Otherwise, I've just not beaten the arcade games and the SNES version of Dracula X (which I guess I might do now that it came with this collection? Meh).
Now for Aria, definitely my favorite of the GBA games.
Now I kind of wish there had been a port/remake of Circle for the DS that used both screens for maximum vertical action, a la Contra 4 or Legend of Kage 2.
Also a spiritual sequel to Harmony that pushed the interior decoration angle further and had you play a contractor assigned the task of fixing up Castlevania for its new owners
Also a spiritual sequel to Harmony that pushed the interior decoration angle further and had you play a contractor assigned the task of fixing up Castlevania for its new owners