Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Every time I play Harmony of Dissonance, I am wowed by how great it looks for a GBA game. Beautiful visuals, awesome animations, and wonderful backdrops. I feel like most of the efforts to this game were put towards matching a visual experience to SotN. However the gameplay just feels a little lacking. The dual castle system is a cool idea, but it isn't really implemented well. Most of the differences between the two castles are minimal at best. With enemy changes and that is pretty much it. There are also quite a few larger rooms that are just completely empty, as if they just figured to skip adding anything to some of these rooms. Ultimately the gameplay seems to take a back seat, and the exploration becomes a bit dry at the halfway point. Jumping feels unnecessarily floaty, and the hitbox for the whip is unnaturally large, allowing you to pretty much hit anything pretty effortlessly. The one saving grace is that the dash is a nice addition and allows the character to move pretty quickly. Enemy variety is much more exciting than CotM, but far less than most Igavanias. Fortunately, it isn't too long of a game, so even if it overstays its welcome, you will move through it pretty quickly. I would say HoD isn't necessarily a bad game, but just a sort of bland one that is surpassed pretty significantly by what would follow on handheld consoles. Also the soundtrack is really solid for the most part (as expected from Castlevania), but has some lulls as well.
5 - Average