The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Backlog: Castlevania Circle of the Moon

I was thinking what to write about, since Majora's Mask is costing me more time than is dear to me, and then it occurred to me that I still have this huge backlog I haven't told you about. So today, I would like to talk about the first in a very short line of Castlevania games. I decided to play these in order of Alphabet too, not in order of appearance, since there's not much to connect the games storywise anyway. I will rate it according to standards at that time, and I can tell you already, it doesn't look good.

This was the first in a line of 3 Castlevania games for Gameboy Advance and it is inarguably the worst. You play as another Belmont, I think, I forget his first name, and you have to vanquish the evil Count Vlad Tepes Dracula AGAIN, despite the fact that he's shown to be remarkably immortal, even for a Vampire.
So cue another Castle-exploring adventure, in the vein of Symphony of the Night, only not quite as big, and not even near as much fun.

If there's one thing that's hindered this new line of Castlevania games, it's that they can be very repetitive on short distances. Ofttimes, you will find yourself in a LONG hallway, running into the same enemies over and over again until you reach the end. It is painfully obvious that these hallways were only construed to make the castle a whole, but it's a shame they just didn't put more effort into creating more rooms and more variety.

However, Castlevania games are not merely about exploration, there's also an RPG-esque experience system and always a nice ability system to make things more interesting. Well, let me start off by saying the equipment system is a lot more constricted than in Symphony of the Night. You can only wear three items, which makes item management a bit less of a bother, since everything is arranged in its own category per slot, but it also offers less variety, and no added extra's for combining specific armor. Also, there are no shops.

The ability system is done by way of cards this time. You have a range of attack cards and a range of element cards, which can be combined for a variety of attacks with special functions. Problem is, these cards only appear at random, and you never really know what monster you can get them from, so it is very well possible to get through the entire game, without ever finding a single card, which sucks.

But what struck me most about this game, is how incredibly frustrating it is. Being Hard is one thing, but being totally unfair is another. Most enemies will do insane damage, even if you're at a high level with good armor, and status ailments are plentiful, whereas healing items are not. It is extremely rare that you will find a Save/Restore room in the vicinity of a Boss, meaning you'll already be beaten up pretty good when you reach a big confrontation. And the Bosses themselves are of course no walk in the park either.
Save rooms are too few and far between, and the same goes for the essential warp rooms. It seems every time you want to/have to retrace your steps, you have to walk the maximum possible distance to get anywhere which is terribly annoying.

And that is indeed the gist of this game. Annoyance to a very unpleasant level.
It is unlikely that anyone who is not a GREAT Castlevania fan will get any enjoyment out of this. The screen is at all times very dark as well, no bright or colorfull rooms at all, which is not so bad in itself, but please remember you're playing this on a GBA, and you'll understand what the problem is here.
Combine that with boring room designs, sluggish controls, and unforgiving difficulty and you have a quite worthless game in your hands. A 5.5 for this one, only barely sufficient. One for the die hard fans, this, and even then you might not like it.

posted by Ingen! @ 11:40 AM