the only castlevania metroidvania not made by iga and it shows. the focus here is explicitally different; instead of exploring a castle and creating a clear loop around it where getting from area to area is easy, CotM presents each area of the castle almost like classicvania level. for the most part, once you've completed an area you have very little reason to go back. this is kind of true in your regular castlevanias too, but you'll often pass back through old areas later and unlock secret rooms and corridors with extra challenges, or ways to other locations through them. it is admittedly similar, but still noticably different.
it's also noticable how different the gameplay focus is! CotM gets particularly nasty at points, with enemies who just start smashing you up big time. i particularly noticed it with the holy knights who just started rocking my shit up. even when I was ready to fight dracula at the end the dark armour guys were still beating my ass and making me feel like a baby. wah! thats pretty cool though, it did make traversing parts of the castle feel particularly dangerous. what wasnt cool was the fact that there's little to no healing items! maybe it was my bad luck but i genuinely found one high-potion in the entire game as a random drop from an enemy. regular potions become ludicrously useless very fast, and even with 5 or 6 of them it only takes one hit from a boss to negate them all. the last 3 bosses of the game i just did without healing items. i'm not sure if that's normal or not but it was very stressful! the final dracula fight is particularly frustrating because of that!
this is somewhat more of a personal point, but i also think this game is just uglier than all of the other vanias i've played. yes, even harmony of dissonance. harmony has its own charms i think, even with juste's blue outline. but in CotM every character and enemy sprite has a black outline around it, and, i dont know, it just doesn't look good? couple with the fact nathan's sprite has a really simple, uninspiring animation too. compare it to how many frames there are when soma cruz runs, and nathan just looks incredibly lame. even the backgrounds this time around dont do a lot, i feel like there's a real lack of memorable set pieces in this version of dracula's castle. so many of the rooms blend together. i really noticed it in the chapel, i just couldn't tell where the fuck i was more often than not because every room just felt like an awkward platforming gambit and nothing else
the DSS is a cool idea and it i think when i understood it i enjoyed it. it was genuinely very cool being able to have all these different elemental whips and swords and stuff, but i think the card system from enemies and combining cards is cumbersome for what should have been a simple system. it honestly would've just made more sense if you could switch out to different whips at will, in a more traditional sense. i suspect other people might disagree but i just find this kind of mechanic clunky and unnecessary.
anyway, that's it for the castlevania GBA games.
1) aria of sorrow
2) harmony of dissonance
3) circle of the moon
it's also noticable how different the gameplay focus is! CotM gets particularly nasty at points, with enemies who just start smashing you up big time. i particularly noticed it with the holy knights who just started rocking my shit up. even when I was ready to fight dracula at the end the dark armour guys were still beating my ass and making me feel like a baby. wah! thats pretty cool though, it did make traversing parts of the castle feel particularly dangerous. what wasnt cool was the fact that there's little to no healing items! maybe it was my bad luck but i genuinely found one high-potion in the entire game as a random drop from an enemy. regular potions become ludicrously useless very fast, and even with 5 or 6 of them it only takes one hit from a boss to negate them all. the last 3 bosses of the game i just did without healing items. i'm not sure if that's normal or not but it was very stressful! the final dracula fight is particularly frustrating because of that!
this is somewhat more of a personal point, but i also think this game is just uglier than all of the other vanias i've played. yes, even harmony of dissonance. harmony has its own charms i think, even with juste's blue outline. but in CotM every character and enemy sprite has a black outline around it, and, i dont know, it just doesn't look good? couple with the fact nathan's sprite has a really simple, uninspiring animation too. compare it to how many frames there are when soma cruz runs, and nathan just looks incredibly lame. even the backgrounds this time around dont do a lot, i feel like there's a real lack of memorable set pieces in this version of dracula's castle. so many of the rooms blend together. i really noticed it in the chapel, i just couldn't tell where the fuck i was more often than not because every room just felt like an awkward platforming gambit and nothing else
the DSS is a cool idea and it i think when i understood it i enjoyed it. it was genuinely very cool being able to have all these different elemental whips and swords and stuff, but i think the card system from enemies and combining cards is cumbersome for what should have been a simple system. it honestly would've just made more sense if you could switch out to different whips at will, in a more traditional sense. i suspect other people might disagree but i just find this kind of mechanic clunky and unnecessary.
anyway, that's it for the castlevania GBA games.
1) aria of sorrow
2) harmony of dissonance
3) circle of the moon