Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

Ok we finally found the formular. Symphony of the Night established exactly what needed to be done with the series and now it was time to figure out how to make this Matroidvania thing work in a seriously addicting manner. And boy did it work. Circle of the Moon the first GBA Castlevania is addictive af. It was hard to put this down not only because it's on my favorite console of all time but also because it's plain and simple fun.

Again we play as some random ass character which seems to be a real theme of the series now. Our Master was captured and we have to save hm from the evil Dracula. The story is shallow and not really meaningful in any way. There's some weird thing going on with the moon but I gotta be honest: I didn't really pay attention as the gameplay was just sooo smooth and gripping.

This time around we're back to the whip as we're not playing as Alucard. The whip is slow and methodical which drives the entire dynamic of combat. There's no way to spam attacks in a fast way. It works wonders as all of the sudden the secondary weapons and new special cards become the most useful thing in your arsenal. I rarely found myself using the whip in the end of the game but we'll get to that.

Back are the pseudo RPG elements but this time around it feels more "real" than in SotN. Numbers don't change much but they do make you hit harder and take less damage. Also they make casting spells easier which is a new main system of the game. You can find cards which can be combined in order to "craft" spells. Each playthrough you'll get different cards which varies your time tremendously. I sticked to a spell that summons a protective ring of fireballs. They basically shredded everything around me without me even using my whip.

There's also a luck stat which I tried to increase but i seriously have no idea what it changed. Generally speaking: nothing is really explained to you so you're left wondering half of the time how the rpg system works. It's not really halting you in any way but it's a little confusing. So you explore the castle get new abilities by killing bosses whch all are superb and then you backtrack and explore some more. Pretty basic procedure. The layout of the castle is wellmade and relatively fun to explore.

I gotta say though that most of the abilities you'll learn are never really used in a natural way. They're only used for small portions of the game to find secrets which either increase your Mana Hearts or hitpoints. Every secret leads to one of these things and after a while it gets really boring. I wish some other items like potions or armor or weapons would be rewards. Speaking of weapons: there are none. You're stuck with the whip for the entire game. It's a shame cause I really liked the subtle switchup in SotN. Also the few armor pieces that you can find just increase your stats in a boring way and don't really add any crazy or minor new abilities.

And then at one point you've pretty much seen it all but the game is still going. New enemies are just the same sprites in a different color and the levels are basically just hallways filled with enemies. The interesting level obstacles from the traditional Castlevania games are nowhere to be found. Anf then you reach the final stretch of the game which is the most tedious horsecrap I could've imagined. Tons of overly strong enemies copy-pasted after each other in boring ass hallways in front of hard bosses without any save room. I was going nuts.

The game started off as this fun little pick up and go Metroidvania and turned into the most annoying braindead chore a person could think of. Somehow the game just doesn't try to add anything to the formular to keep you engaged. It feels like a meaningless hack'n*slash. Once you've reached Dracula you're praying for the game to finally end. Dracula is easy but annoying and long and suicide inducing material. Everytime you die you have to take 2min to walk back to his room and I just lost it. At one point I wanted to give up but somehow my demented brain was like "no bro". The ending is laughably stupid with you just looking at the crumbling castle being like " yo I did it I guess" It's a grind and not really a fun one. It sets a really good foundation for the GBA titles but it's just not as magical as SotN. It's a bit lifeless and I wish they'd turned it up to 11. Let's see what they'll do next.

My mission regarding my playthrough of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was to ascertain why this game garners a considerable amount of ire from fans of the franchise. The initial impression I had was that classic Castlevania fans were dogpiling on the game because it solidified the Metroidvania direction that Symphony of the Night established to colossal critical acclaim, leaving the foundation of the traditional 2D platformer that made the series a contender for pixelated greatness condemned indefinitely. Then I had to remind myself that this dissension between the two Castlevania eras is a feud I fabricated in my head, as all fans of the series love Symphony of the Night. My next consideration was that while Circle of the Moon is a successor to Symphony of the Night, it disappointingly did not surpass its Metroidvania mold. However, this was not due to everyone’s high expectations. Circle of the Moon was developed for the Game Boy Advance as a launch title for the last handheld system that branded the Game Boy name. If the Castlevania games on the original Game Boy are any indication, the gothic games sacrificed a heaping load of quality for the sake of mobility, seemingly more so than any NES series that offered a few games on the go. I wondered if a mobile version of Metroidvania Castlevania would suffer due to the downgraded system capabilities and upon playing it, I hit a bullseye as to where the scorn for this game stems from. However, because of my discovery, I do not support the contempt for this game wholeheartedly.

Castlevania’s timeline is as scatterbrained as some of the series over at Nintendo, but I’m at least granting it a smidge of credibility due to Castlevania planting new characters across the century-spanning lore as opposed to the same character in Metroid and a reincarnated form in Zelda. As far as Castlevania is concerned, Circle of the Moon takes place in modern times during the industrial era, almost as close as when Bloodlines set itself in the same century as when it was released (misleading, but technically true). Circle of the Moon’s dashing Van Helsing protagonist is neither a Belmont nor Alucard waking up from yet another one-hundred year dirt slumber to take down his dad once again. The silver-haired Nathan Graves and his chum Hugh Baldwin are trekking through the cobweb-covered corridors of Dracula’s estate, for Nathan’s guru in the profession of vampire slaying and Hugh’s dad, Morris Baldwin, is about to be sacrificed to the vampiric lord to reinvigorate his foreboding power to its full extent. The duo also have to contend with Dracula zealot Camilla who resurrected the count and is working the operations of his grand return. Unfortunately, after falling for what feels like fathoms below the estate’s entrance, Hugh diverges from Nathan and leaves Mr. Graves on his lonesome to search for their seasoned sensei. Did the previous Castlevania titles introduce the premise with this much character exposition, or is this a new development to signify how the series has progressed? The player gets a better understanding of what is occurring better than scrolling text, that’s for sure. I’d also like to add that there is no cheesy voice acting thanks to the GBA’s relatively primitive nature as a handheld, so everyone can at least approach the text dialogue with a hint of sincerity.

Once Nathan finds himself under the floorboards of Dracula’s foyer, he never really hoists himself back up to the surface to correct his error. Naturally, Circle of the Moon is still a Metroidvania that administers the procedural design philosophy we expect of it. However, the grand breadth of Dracula’s castle that the genre fostered in Symphony of the Night isn’t exuded here. Sure, pressing the designated map button to look at Circle of the Moon’s layout will conjure up comparisons to Symphony, but actually excavating through the interior will convey that our prince of darkness is in another castle. Circle of the Moon’s castle is a dingy depiction of Dracula’s manor, and this isn’t only due to the fact that the GBA couldn’t compete with the pixelated graphical fidelity of the original Playstation. Every corner of Circle of the Moon’s estate is comparatively minimal to what Symphony offered in terms of its visuals. Backgrounds are no longer detailed with lavish, ornate decorations that exude an aura of opulence. The color gradience of the foregrounds also tends to blend in with that of its immediate surroundings, an aesthetic choice that deviates from what made even the earliest of Castlevania games on the NES striking. Circle of the Moon’s presentation is very matter of fact, which shrinks the scope of the overall objective. Take a drink every time you come across a new section of the castle that begins with an “underground” descriptor, which should imply that the areas are relatively restrained by their geographical submersion. Even the outdoor sections on the other vertical end of the spectrum are compact like courtyards instead of rooftop attics that span the perimeter of the castle. All in all, the Metroidvania map and the askew linearity that comes with it is not tainted by Circle of the Moon’s direction. Still, it obviously lacks the panache that gave Symphony its allure.

One could argue that a claustrophobic Castlevania map is an attempt to complement the Metroid half of the genre’s portmanteau, emulating the choking tension exuding from Nintendo’s sci-fi series. While this theory is entirely up to speculation, an overt attempt Circle of the Moon takes to recall another game is reverting to its own roots. While Nathan Graves shares no lineage to the iconic Belmont clan, you’d sure as hell be fooled by his moveset. Circle of the Moon reverts to the vampire slaying weapons found in the classic, traditional 2D platformer Castlevania titles. Nathan cracks his whip with the same pent up hesitation as Simon and Richter once did, and all of the subweapons such as the holy water, daggers, and axes are accounted for as well. Perhaps Nathan read up on the historical achievements of the Belmont clan and deduced that their arsenal was the most effective roulette of tools to use against the throngs of the uncleansed. His assumptions proved correct, as the subweapons tend to dish out a heaping load of damage to the enemies, especially the boomerang crosses. Good thing the hearts have also been reverted to ammunition because the subweapons are lifesavers. Still, I wish Circle of the Moon hadn’t digressed to the stiff controls of the classic Castlevania titles. This isn’t an issue on a fundamental level, but complications arise when Nathan executes any of the special moves that unlock obscured areas of the castle. Trying to run by pressing either directional button twice was especially finicky. Hopping from a wall to a platform above or to the other adjacent surface was always a rigid stunt, and catapulting Nathan about a hectometer straight in the air always had the potential for disaster. When the Metroidvania features complicate the 2D platformer base, the Castlevania stiffness is less forgivable on any console that succeeds the NES.

Of course, the items of old are organized like Symphony’s RPG menu, complimenting the methodical gameplay of the Metroidvania. Hearts of varying amounts can be replenished from the pickups, and the roasts that heal Nathan have to be selected from this menu whenever Nathan is in a pinch. One new feature that is arguably Circle of the Moon’s main point of innovation that is also organized in this menu in the card system. On rare occurrences when defeating an enemy, they will leave behind a card whose description will be detailed in a subsection of the menu. One row of these cards feature Roman Gods/planets of the solar system while the bottom row all have serpents and chimera creatures from ancient mythology. Selecting a combination of one card from both rows will ignite a fusion of special properties that is triggered by the left bumper on the GBA. The combination can either accentuate the whip’s offense or boost Nathan’s defense, which can be applied for seemingly an inexhaustible period. However, the real coup de grace involving the cards is the spells they can create. Similarly to Rondo of Blood, executing the spells with a button combination will unleash a fury of vengeance that eclipses the entire screen and decimates in the vicinity, provided the player has enough magic to execute the maneuver. While the prospect of such devastation is enchanting, only a few of the card combinations will allow the ability to cast a spell, and the button combinations needed to pull them off are just as finicky as the basic controls. Still, it’s a pleasant sight seeing a feature return that has surprisingly only been implemented once across the series thus far, and having it coincide with a whole new system gives the player more incentive to seek out more that the game offers outside of standard progression.

I recommended abusing the power of the cards because if there is one thing that Circle of the Moon borrows from the classic Castlevania games, it's the difficulty. Holy jumping Jesus, is Circle of the Moon a bitch on the ol’ patience threshold. Nathan isn’t epically restrained by his mortal status as a human being instead of an androgynous, quasi-immortal creature from gothic folklore. All the same, I wish that Alucard could intervene and maybe transfer his undead abilities to Nathan via a toothy neck peck so he could evade all of the obstacles surrounding him. It’s not as if the enemies in Circle of the Moon are any less deadly than those in Symphony. The problem stems from the spacious placings of the save rooms, which are few and far between in this castle. Uncovering an uncharted area does not mean that the player will soon mark their discovery with the save function like it did with the abundance of these rooms found in Symphony. The save rooms also tend not to be in close shot of any of the boss arenas, who are the crux of crushing the player. Cerberus, the very first boss, is erratic and unpredictable, and any contact with the three-headed wolf is imminent considering his gigantic size and ferociousness. Biblical goat demon Adramelech overwhelms the player with poison bubbles that litter the field, and the GBA screen can barely fit both the heads of the colossal Twin Dragons. Both Death and the encounter with narrative-centered Camilla tease the player’s supposed victory with a second phase. It’s so disheartening defeating these monsters with a microscopic sliver of health left only to perish by the slight rubbing of a projectile skeleton bone and reverting back to before the bosses were conquered, something that happened one too many times for comfort. Nathan also isn’t inherently impeded by the whip, but another reason why Symphony was a comparative walk in the park is due to the fact that Alucard could always swap his blade for a stronger one if the player kept up with finding loot. Because Nathan is restricted to one weapon, his ease with these bosses is contingent on his level, which, of course, unfortunately involves a grinding session or two to survive.

Because all of the bosses before him made me pant and wheeze like an elderly dog, I was absolutely dreading Dracula’s encounter that I knew would wrap up Circle of the Moon. After literally knocking some sense into Hugh, the key behind him unlocks the sealed door where Nathan fell in the beginning to finally face Dracula. What I didn’t expect was that his first phase would be a breeze, almost a complete joke. However, considering this is the first Castlevania game that allows the player to prepare even further, I knew the others would wipe the smug grin off of my face immediately, In a haze of dark surrealism, Dracula sheds his cape and reveals his final form: a bulky purple beast with what resembles the Xenomorphs from Alien as his intimidating flair. His first phase here features flame spread that can be dodged easily, but I’m pretty certain the meteors that rain down from the heavens are totally unavoidable. His second phase pushed my patience to its absolute limit because I could only hit the traveling eyeball core at scant opportunities because of his fucking bat entourage that is always guarding him. Drain that magic meter with spells like with the urgency of someone having a gun pointed at your head. After this grueling fight that took me over ten minutes on my one successful attempt, I’ll be seeing bats attacking me like an alcoholic experiencing symptoms of withdrawal.

I think Circle of the Moon was designed for the classic Castlevania fan who felt forsaken by Symphony of the Night and its radical deviation from the early format in favor of a Metroidvania experience. Konami wasn’t apologizing for launching the series in a new direction, and Circle of the Moon is their attempt to compromise. In execution, however, the reason why Circle of the Moon isn’t a lauded title in the series is that it isn’t all that exceptional on either front. It’s too difficult and less RPG-based for fans of Symphony, and the GBA hardware dilutes the Metroidvania elements that classic Castlevania fans already didn’t care for. However, despite times when I wanted to thrust a cross through my console out of pure frustration, I thoroughly enjoyed my Circle of the Moon experience. My one gripe with Symphony despite it being my favorite game in the franchise is that it was missing some of the attributes that I liked from the typical 2D platformers, and this game translated the weapons from those games fluidly. Hell, maybe I experienced a nostalgic sensation from being constricted to the crooked controls and bludgeoned by the bosses as the classic series once did to me. Mark Circle of the Moon down as an example of an acquired taste in the Castlevania series.

Um jogo definido tanto pelas suas boas ideias quanto por suas falhas cruciais.

O sistema de cartas é interessante e divertido, mas baseá-lo em sorte foi uma péssima escolha. Abrir o mapa desde o início instiga a exploração, mas também frustra pela quantidade de vezes em que encontramos regiões inexploráveis. O layout vertical do castelo dá uma “cara” única pra exploração, mas torna o backtracking maçante.

Fora os pontos mais relevantes, o todo é bem executado, mas tinha potencial pra ser mais.

So, after Symphony of the Night ended up being the genre defining masterpiece that it was, the future titles really had some big boots to fill, and well… Castlevania 64 didn’t do this in the slightest. Fortunately enough, the N64 wasn’t the be all end all of the series, as just like with the previous console generation, there were also titles being released on handheld systems, in this case, the GameBoy Advance. The twist this time around however, is that it was on this system where the best games in the series were being released at this point, starting off with Circle of the Moon, taking the same core metroidvania structure of SOTN and giving it its own unique spin on things, along with polishing and simplifying a lot of the gameplay itself.

To me, one of the most interesting things about this game is the way that it feels more like the bridging gap between the classic games and the igavanias more than SOTN did, along with the fact that this is a completely different feeling game to anything else in the series. This becomes most immediately clear in the difference in artstyle this has, with a much darker, gritter look to the pixelated models, feeling more like an updated version of the NES artstyle, rather than the more stylised look of games like Rondo of Blood. To add to this melding of eras, the player’s control scheme and mobility is considerably more limited than that moveset of Alucard, with a much slower walk speed and once again only having a relatively slow whip, bringing back the slower paced nature of the classic series, albeit without the committal jumps or other more cumbersome elements of such movement. Overall, the mobility in this game, while slower, feels good to use for the most part regardless due to the fact that the game’s designed around this, leading to there not ever being a situation where the player is left thinking that the speed of their character is what stopped them being able to accomplish things, especially once they get the hang of the double tapping to run, which is a somewhat annoying issue at first but ends up being quite negligible after a bit of getting used to.

While the sheer versatility and Speed of Alucard is what I prefer, where this game truly shines to me is in the actual design and difficulty curve of the world itself. In terms of difficulty, this feels like the polar opposite of SOTN, with the high damage output of enemies making this a genuinely extremely difficult game that only escalates the further you progress through the game, to the point where a single hit feels like a tremendous loss that could potentially be the difference between life or death. This sort of tension is something that I personally think makes the game far more engaging on the whole, especially given the lack of particularly cheap damage being possible for the majority of the time, making every new area become an adrenaline rush as you desperately hunt for the next save point, making the castle as a whole feel much more oppressive. This difficulty also funnily enough encourages more exploration as well, as while in this game, dead ends will always lead to either a Heart, HP or MP upgrade, due to the fact that stats genuinely matter quite a lot here, each of these feels rewarding by letting the player know that each of these pickups gives that tiny bit of an increased chance of being able to make it through the game, which in itself is extremely rewarding. This difficulty is further increased but something that has both positives and negatives to it, which is the lack of shop and low drop rates. On one hand, I really appreciate the fact that the player isn’t able to just stock up on the maximum amount of potions and have effectively infinite health, but I also believe that what happens as a result is that grinding for drops is encouraged instead, which can potentially make the game tedious if they want to get some sort of boosting accessory to give themselves a better chance, especially since, as said, stats feel like they have an extremely big role in this game, although I personally never resorted to grinding for anything.

A couple of other key talking points in this game to me are the DSS system, and the boss fights. The DSS system on the whole feels like it’s an intriguing, but ultimately flawed system that doesn’t quite live up to its fullest potential. I really like the core idea of combining cards in order to give the player a wide range of abilities, both offensive and defensive, in order to take on challenges in a variety of ways, but the issue is twofold, with these issues playing into one another. My first issue is that it really feels like some cards are just straight up more useful than others, such as the card that allows player to summon creatures essentially allowing the player to easily get past difficult situations, while others just feel like they do very little, especially with the amount of different card combinations that just provide the player with a more powerful whip or something. This wouldn’t be too problematic if not for the fact that the way to unlock these cards makes this unbalance considerably worse, with each of the 20 cards only dropping from a single type of enemy, with the chances being often extremely low, and the enemies that drop it being impossible to tell without either getting lucky and having one drop, or by looking up a guide. I personally believe that this was a missed opportunity, as these would be better used as rewards for exploration instead to further incentivize it, and make some of the more grueling optional paths littered throughout the game feel far more worthwhile, along with provide some more variety and way of getting them without having to resort to grinding and looking things up. Even though I also believe that the current exploration rewards are largely acceptable, with such a potentially great way to further reward the player for exploring, I’d much rather prefer this.

The boss fights are another extremely noteworthy aspect of the game, as this is the first time I believe that a Castlevania game was able to absolutely nail them, largely being visually creative and stunning, just like in SOTN, but this time with gameplay to match. Every boss encounter in the game proves itself to be something worth keeping on your toes about, with many of them becoming challenging endurance matches with high damage outputs that really require the player to properly learn each fight, with the sense of spectacle of many of them making for a consistently engaging experience, even after having to retry numerous times. This game also houses a couple of the most difficult fights in the series, namely the Dragon Zombies, which feels like a very fast paced fight due to having 2 targets to defeat, with the player having to constantly keep track of what attacks both are dishing out in order to be able to effectively position themselves both to dodge and deal damage, such a feat being difficult enough to likely have killed me more than any boss in the series up to this point, but without the unfair feeling of something like Dracula’s Curse’s final boss. Due to this, these fights feel like a proper test and bookend to each respective area. The areas themselves also alleviate backtracking to an extent, not only by more intuitively placing teleport locations to make most key paths easy enough to travel to from any other location, but also by changing the enemy layout and types found in certain locations after a boss is defeated, making going through early areas in the late game feel far less tedious than they potentially could have.

Overall, while this game definitely has a couple of flaws, this is a seriously underlooked gem of a game that clearly tried to do something different to other entries in the series and pulled a lot of the idea off rather successfully. I appreciate the harsher difficulty this game has in particular, really makes it so there’s almost never a moment of dead air, as the player is consistently under pressure, lest they are severely punished. While likely not the first game I’d recommend to someone, this is a very interesting experience that I strongly recommend to those looking for a bit of a challenge as long as they’re able to overlook the more simplistic nature of the game compared to the other metroidvanias in the series.

Circle of Moon actually is a bit disappointing, not because its bad, but because it wastes its potential. The main issues are the game is a bit restrictive, it takes a step back from Symphony and brings back the old school controls where you can only whip in one direction and its a bit more linear with a somewhat smaller map size. The other issue is the boss fights in this are way too difficult and frustrating and are much harder than the normal enemies. Without using save states, this game will require you to grind to beat most of the bosses, and even with grinding it will still come down to mostly luck with a lot of these bosses. The final boss in this game is just so terribly designed and overly difficult that it feels like you're playing Ghosts N Goblins or something. Plus its super tedious to fight the final boss, I mean who thought itd be a good idea for the final boss to transform into a mob of bats that protect a ball and make it difficult to hit the ball, then have the boss transform back and do an OP attack that if it hits you nearly one shots you. Honestly the boss fights are what brings this down because I actually enjoyed the exploration and areas of this game and enemies, but its the boss fights that bring this game down for me and they are super tedious and frustrating. Its just a shame this had to be the first GBA Castlevania because it is almost decent but ruins that with some terrible design.

Circle of the Moon is a bit like playing Symphony of the Night as the Simon Belmont from the original Castlevania. If that sounds compromised, or maybe missing the point of SOTN, you'd be right. You play as Nathan Graves, a young vampire hunter who has inherited the legendary whip of Belmont fame. Dracula gets revived and kidnaps your mentor to prepare a blood rite, you set out to find him in Dracula's castle. Metroidvania ensues.

An early frustration is Nathan's flexibility of attack, which not only no longer has the omni-directional whipping of Super Castlevania IV but also removed the 8-way whipping from Rondo of Blood. Since COTM is a true metroidvania, you'll be moving vertically as much as you do horizontally, which means your limited attack ability is frequently annoying. Nathan is heavily reliant on subweapons, which are back in their Rondo of Blood form here.Generally, the level design feels like it was built for Alucard, and that leads to some awkwardness.

You obtain special abilities that open up more parts of the castle, and while it's fun to keep a mental laundry list of potential places to backtrack, Nathan's stiff movement and jumping just do not feel very equipped for the environment before him. Add to the fact that his rigid, old-school Vampire Hunter persona means you won't be finding varying weapon types and you have a relatively flat experience compared to the other open-ended CV titles.

There is magic in the game, though, in the form of the Dual Stack System, but it's implementation is a bit weird. Essentially, there are two decks of 10 cards a piece that can be mismatched to give Nathan some extra abilities when the L button is toggled. Sometimes it adds more damage, or gives some kind of damage reduction bonus. Most are pretty useful and can help a ton in difficult boss fights. That said, these cards are found by very uncommon random drops of specific enemies in the castle, with no way of determining which is dropped and by whom without consultation of a guide. It's just a headache. Grinding for them can conflate with the regular ol EXP grinding you'll need to be doing, so COTM at least combines its tedium.

I still found Circle of the Moon to be pretty enjoyable, as it's got some high points - especially the amazing soundtrack. But the story is pretty generic and the protagonist is without real personality, the controls are frequently annoying, and frankly it's just not as fun to play the generic whip-toting Belmont type for the entirety of a backtrackathon. I think a bit too much was removed from the SOTN formula to try and accommodate all types of fan. Recommended for those who still have the CV itch and have beaten SOTN and the other GBA and DS titles.