GBA Castlevania games

I’ve recently finish with the three Castlevania games that were release for the Game Boy Advance and I say “finished with” instead of “finished” because I actually only complete one of them. Why? I hear you ask. No, I’m just kidding, I know nobody reads these things.

The first of the GBA Castlevania’s was Circle of the Moon, first of the post-Symphony of the Night 2D Metroidvanias in the Castlevania series, which were a lot more popular than the 3D shite the series the pulling on the N64 and later the PS2. Circle of the Moon sees the player take control of some guy called Nathan (I think?), an apprentice of someone who I think was a Belmont, which would explain why Martin has the iconic and annoyingly awkward to use Vampipre Killer whip. Dracula has been resurrected by... uhh, someone, I can’t remember her name, and sends Mark down a long shaft into the bowels of the castle, where he vows to... I can’t remember that either. If some ranked all the Castlevania games by memorability of the plot, I wouldn’t be surprised if Circle of the Moon ranks quite low on the list.

Anyway, one thing I do remember is the moment the player finally takes control of Jonathan and we are given a really bizarre plot-twist: Graham is actually a nutcracker doll... or was that just how he walks? I might have misunderstood something there. Yes, Gareth walks incredibly slowly in this game making any early backtracking really tedious, and the jumping poorly controlling due to the lack of momentum. This problem is rectified by the acquirement of a power-up fairly early in the game that allows Basil to sprint, but only if you double tap the directional arrows... every... god... damn... time.

Okay, it’s a small thing to complain about, but as the follow-up to Symphony of the Night where the movement was fast and smooth (as far as I can remember), the slow and clunky controls of Circle of the Moon can only come as a let-down. The double tap to sprint also applies to every time you wish to effectively jump out of the way of something. Jumping without first sprinting for a fraction of a second, David will simply propel himself half a screen into the air and land about six inches from his starting position. This because particularly problematic during one section where I was having to awkwardly jump between small moving platforms while those fucking floating heads bobbed across the screen, which was only made more annoying by Gerald’s inheritance of Alucard’s habit of being throw across the room whenever taking the slightest bit of damage.

But the thing that made me rage quit Circle of the Moon, was the introduction of those fucking flying sword monsters. They’d spin round, make a bee-line for you, go straight through you as if they weren’t even aiming at you, but giving you damage anyway, stop about out of reach, spin around and do it again, before Harold has had a chance to react to their new position. One of those fucking things was annoying enough, but when five of the spiky cunts were flying at me out of sync, so at any on second there was a flying sword trying to occupy the same space as me. This was the point where I took the cartridge for Circle of the Moon out of my DS and threw out the window.

Next up was Harmony of Dissonance, which is a title that I’m going to have to spell slowly each time I type it. Harmony of Dissonance is far more in keeping with Symphony of the Night, because the main character, Juste Belmont, runs as his natural walking pace, and has the look about his movement that makes him look like he’s weirdly moonwalking. I was having a much better time with Harmony of Dissonance than I was with Circle of the Moon. The controls were much smoother, and there no annoying enemies around. Well, there were some but they didn’t make me want microwave the game cartridge.

Juste still holds on to the Vampire Killer, which I don’t mind entirely, but some weapon variety is nice to have when it’s available. The castle was fun to explore, despite what I’d heard about bad level design, although I did have to download a map off VGmaps.com, and fill it in on MS Paint after a couple of hours so I could keep track of the many pathways that I couldn’t get past yet. I know there’s the in-game map screen, but I was needing to take note of specifically what was preventing me from traversing each one (too high, locked door, etc).

Despite the praise I’ve just given the level layout, It’s actually the reason why I quite in the end. I had heard about Harmony of Dissonance boasting two entire castles, but I was about 85% of the way through what I thought was just the first castle, before I discovered that I was actually about 40% of the way through one and 45% of the way through the second, but not only that, but both castles had next to complete maps on the map screen, that I now had to just meticulously go through bit by bit to get the whole game explored. It was with this plot twist in the game that my interest in carrying on just evaporated. I didn’t care anymore. So I stopped...

So, the third GBA Castlevania game was Aria of Sorrow which was the one I actually completed. Aria of Sorrow sees Soma Cruz in the protagonist role, a far more interesting character than Geoffrey from Circle of the Moon, and the setting is 2035 in Japan. Well, technically it takes place in an eclipse which makes absolutely no goddamn sense in the slightest, but dark magic, I guess. I would argue that Aria of Sorrow is the best sequel to Symphony of the Night than either of the other two, because, like Alucard, Soma Cruz doesn’t possess the Vampire Killer, and has to find bigger and better weapons as the player progresses through the game. Soma also has the ability to randomly absorb the souls of defeated monsters giving him unique abilities when equipped, which is a mechanic that I don’t think was featured in Symphony of the Night.

I really have not a huge amount to complain about regarding Aria of Sorrow; it built on what came before, made an interest leap into the future, retained the good of its predecessors, and disposed what didn’t work about them. Praising games doesn’t come naturally to me, I can talk at length about why something doesn’t work or why I hate something that needs to die; but “it’s really good” is all I can come up with when it comes to a good game.

Aria of Sorrow: it’s really good. The other two, not so much.