Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

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.