Completed at slightly above 90% completion rate at around 7½ hours and felt alright with those numbers. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon marks a successful proof of concept to continue the Symphony of the Night direction of incremental upgrades allowing greater map exploration. Circle of the Moon comes equipped with interesting new items and mechanics, emphasizing the RPG-styled progression from before with more expansive options to customize the game experience. The customization is solely thanks to the DSS or Duel Set-up System, where players combine cards dropped by enemies to create different effects that assist the player. On-the-fly experimentation can supply a longer whip, fireballs surrounding and protecting the player, turning the whip into a giant hammer, and much more. Though the card system adds a lot to the experience, relying solely on random drops for these cards means grinding the same enemies repeatedly, hoping you'll get a card drop so you can move on. The game is generous in telling you if a enemy has a card to drop and if you have it, so this could be far more stressful than how its already implimented.
Speaking of killing enemies repeatedly, the map design does leave something to be desired in how the player backtracks old areas. It's the literal name of the game, which is to explore new places and defeat bosses to get new abilities so you can go back and find new stuff. Running through the same areas repeatedly with little to break how you navigate said areas gets old after a while. Not until you can finally launch yourself into the air towards the end of the game does any movement upgrade feel substaintial, and is too little too late by then. No amount of spawning newer, more challenging enemies in old areas can make the leveling and exploration feel as impactful as it should, either.
All these negatives aside, Circle of the Moon is still a great game. For a GBA launch title, most of my expectations are met for a great action title. Exploration is plentiful and there are secrets plenty. If you're a sucker for severe punishment, a gauntlet of obnoxious, incremental arena battles are available to grind. Being a game released before publishers could charge for more modes and cheats, Circle of the Moon has ceaseless unlockables and modes to toy away at to maximize your time with it genuinely. Even if the later entries dwarf the first GBA Castlevania, this is leagues better than the trash I was playing as a child. I would've traded nearly any other game I had for something as replayable and complex as this.
Speaking of killing enemies repeatedly, the map design does leave something to be desired in how the player backtracks old areas. It's the literal name of the game, which is to explore new places and defeat bosses to get new abilities so you can go back and find new stuff. Running through the same areas repeatedly with little to break how you navigate said areas gets old after a while. Not until you can finally launch yourself into the air towards the end of the game does any movement upgrade feel substaintial, and is too little too late by then. No amount of spawning newer, more challenging enemies in old areas can make the leveling and exploration feel as impactful as it should, either.
All these negatives aside, Circle of the Moon is still a great game. For a GBA launch title, most of my expectations are met for a great action title. Exploration is plentiful and there are secrets plenty. If you're a sucker for severe punishment, a gauntlet of obnoxious, incremental arena battles are available to grind. Being a game released before publishers could charge for more modes and cheats, Circle of the Moon has ceaseless unlockables and modes to toy away at to maximize your time with it genuinely. Even if the later entries dwarf the first GBA Castlevania, this is leagues better than the trash I was playing as a child. I would've traded nearly any other game I had for something as replayable and complex as this.