Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was released as a Game Boy Advance launch title. And developer Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe’s swan song, for the subsidiary was dissolved the following year. The game kicks off with the protagonist Nathan and his partners walking in on Camilla’s revival of Dracula. Their attempt to interrupt ends with mentor Morris being held as sacrifice as Nathan and Morris’ son, Hugh, plummet down a long shaft to the castle’s underground. The two rivals split up and the player takes control of the whip-wielding Nathan, who leisurely strolls and whips his way past bomb-throwing skeletons fire-spitting bone heads. That is, until you locate the Dash Boots, so Nathan can finally start exploring in earnest.

Circle of the Moon aims to balance traditional Castlevania with Metroidvania-inspired exploration. In addition to your traditional sub-weapons it introduces the Dual Set-up System (DSS). Combining two cards, dropped by enemies, results in a magic enhancement. Sadly, it’s poorly implemented. It relies heavily on RNG with low drop-rates and no hints as to which enemy could potentially drop what card. I finished with only half the cards but also with 23 Leather Armors, which served no purpose as there’s no means to exchange redundant items for money or, say, cards. The game also ramps up its difficulty fast in the second half of the game, mostly by throwing hordes of evolved (recoloured) enemies at you. Boss fights aren’t exactly the cherry on each area’s cake, either. Half of them float around, sparsely animated, firing off projectiles while you dodge and facepalm for losing the Cross sub-weapon yet again.

Conclusion: Circle of the Moon offers a solid but uninspired Castlevania experience. Some unfortunate choices in its design leaves a lot of potential untapped and it might’ve been a great entry in the series with a little more budget (and perhaps love) from Konami’s headquarters.

Man I don't know what everyone else saw in this game that I didn't but I just hated my overall time playing this one. The map design is so bland and boring, the movement is so limited, the card system is a neat idea if you can actually get enemies to drop the damn things. And while it is their first attempt at a metroidvania on the GBA, it really felt like it. The removal of currency and having no game shop made this game unnecessarily hard. If I weren't playing this one on the emulator I don't think I would've beaten it. I filled out like 90% of the map and even by the end I was struggling. I hear people really enjoy the card system but I could never get these damn things to drop. I feel like drop rates in this game in general are so rare and scuffed that It doesn't matter how well you play, you'll reach a bullshit section due to how underleveled you are and don't have the appropriate armor to take care of the threat.

Also, you can ONLY use a whip in this game, Idk man that's just lame, I get it, he's considered to be a belmont but this just makes him less fun to play as. I think the devs may have realized this so for Aria you actually play as a non belmont, and further down the line if you do play as one they give you the option to use different weapons like with Jonathan in Portrait of Ruin.

Yeah I didn't like this one, at all, I wish I could see what all the 3-4 stars people saw in this one but as it stands this is my least favorite metroidvania i've played.

I'm tired.

Let's play armchair game designer, because lord knows we don't have enough of them on here.

Before you can run, you must walk, and boy does Nathan Graves enjoy walking. Nathan just adores going on a stroll in Camilla's castle while his master's getting his toenails ripped off in preparation for being slaughtered in a satanic ritual. Mr. Graves wouldn't know how to run even if I slapped his dump truck ass with the world's most painful block of wood. It's a godsend that Camilla's basement houses the very shoes he needs to be able to find the joys of exercise again after he forgot how to sprint when Count Dankula played his Trap Hole card in the introduction scene. One must wonder how long it would've taken if Drac's minions didn't make such a fuck up as to leave shoes for Mr. Graves to wear for his aching strolling feet. Even with these shoes Nathan only knows how to barrel forward with wanton disregard for his own being. Alucard had it figured out already, just run with care. That's all you gotta do. For Nathan though? Only two speeds exist. Tortoise, and drunken hare riding on a Kawasaki Ninja.

The input for running in this game is bad enough with requiring me to dash dance on the dpad and kill my thumbs, but Nathan's whip attack is noticeably sluggish compared to past Classicvania outings. It may not be noticeable at first, but try ducking and whipping and go back to playing as Simon in any of the past games and you'll definitely feel it. Nathan can jump like a stiff pong paddle and can even wall jump, and trust me I'm proud of him for being able to do so, but he should stick to his day job. Wall jumping in this is automated for at least two seconds as Nathan pauses on the wall and propels himself into the direction of enemy fire that sends him careening back down the pit that he was trying to make his way up from. You will encounter this scenario a lot, I assure you, especially with Circle of the Moon's obsession with slap dashing Armor enemies everywhere with annoying attacks that can bop you from the other side of the screen. No joke, I had a moment where I thought I was hitting an Ice Armor enemy in the underground waterway safely, only to get a very pleasant surprise in the form of another spear flying from off screen and stabbing me through the adam's apple thanks to the second Ice Armor that was behind him.

The primary system is collecting some shitty Yu-Gi-Oh cards and playing Blackjack with yourself to combine two of them and give yourself some form of power up, which could range from boring effects like your whip getting an elemental bonus, or actual cool shit like turning into a bone-throwing skeleton that dies in one hit. Unfortunately, the card for turning into a glass jawed skeleton is about 95% into the game and requires killing a very specific candle enemy that requires backtracking to a who-gives-a-shit area, and kindly asking it to drop the damn card sometime this week. This is where I get to bitch about the worst part of Circle of the Moon besides Nathan's completely useless movement, and it's the outrageous drop rates. That card that I'd need for the aforementioned skeleton transformation? The drop rate is zero point four fuckin' percent. That doesn't just effect the cards either. Health items? What are those?!

Seriously, I went for hours playing this game and didn't think healing was even a thing in Circle of the Moon besides the absurdly paltry potions that give a measly 20 hit points back, or getting to one of the sparse save points that fully heals you. Hell, you don't even get healed after boss fights. I beat probably six bosses before a piece of meat suddenly dropped from an enemy, where I double-taked and went back just to stare at it for a while. There is not a shop to speak of either, shopkeepers aren't welcome in Circle of the Moon. No buyable health items for you to help with the horrendous onslaught of tedium, but you can go ahead and enjoy all those completely useless armors you get to lug around on your person. Sure is a hard game we got here, would be nice if I could have some items, but Dracula is against formal goods trading.

Circle of the Moon is about inconvenience. It inconveniences you with movement that isn't convenient for the challenge that is set up for you as it would be for past entries. The only way to make your pathetic movement less inconvenient is to find cards inconveniently hidden away in an unknown enemy's back pocket that could potentially make certain encounters flat out trivial, like the normally problematic ice element in the underground waterway, or Dracula's nigh-impossible to dodge meteor attack in the final battle. It's all an inconvenient excuse to grind if you lack information, which this game inconveniently gives you none assuming you're not playing the Advance Collection version, which was the only convenient bit from my experience. Thanks M2.

It took me about three months to finish the save file I started on the Advance Collection a ways back after I completed Harmony of Dissonance and it's toilet noises, and it's mindbogglingly to me to realize that it was around last Christmas that I replayed and finished Aria of Sorrow again on the same collection. It wasn't necessarily a skill issue, it was a thumb issue from the horrendous dash input, and my complete apathy to this game's entire philosophy of wanting to train me on it's solitaire system only for the battle arena to give me the middle finger, and take that same system away in the ultimate show of disrespectful inconvenience. It was optional, sure, but it's existence is more than enough to make me want to transition into a volcanic state. It was even more aggravating to find out that Konami apparently bumped the experience requirements up for the western releases, thus demanding me to update the list for all the times they fucked us in the ass. I needed a lot of Picross breaks, and apparently a detour to that Peach game I didn't care about.

It kinda goes without saying, but the thought of replaying this on original hardware with the bad GBA screen, no suspend save, or in-game overlay hints of what enemies are carrying cards is less appealing to me than taking an epilator to my ballsack. I'll give it a pity star for Dracula's final boss design, I guess. I guess.

Thus concludes armchair game designer session, if you enjoyed what you've read, please like, comment, subscribe, ring the dingaling, and maybe sing me a nice song.

I'm going to bed now. Goodnight.

hoooooonkmimimimimi.

+Nathan Graves dump truck ass
+Rakugakids reference
+Yo Camilla call me
+Proof of Blood

-Nathan Graves dump truck ass
-Sinking Old Sanctuary?! More like Stinking Old Sanctuary!
-Why is my hair not as nice as Hugh's
-Where's my burrito