Mood: Tired
Listening to: Meinhard - Blood+Love
Slight spoiler warning for the GBA Castlevania games.
I've been playing some Castlevania games lately. It's a series I don't have much experience with, having only played Symphony of the Night and watched the two anime series. I'm a fan of Metroidvanias, so it's been a series I've always wanted to explore more.
I started with Circle of the Moon for the GBA, playing it on my Retroid Pocket 2, and man am I glad I played on an emulator with save states, because I don't think I would've had the patience without them. So far this entry seems to be the most difficult one of the three GBA games, and perhaps the most like older Castlevania games, before Symphony of the Night (but as said, I've never played), and it wasn't really my jam.
The bosses were tough and annoying. I liked this goaty boy's design though.
I also didn't like the DSS system. Basically there are cards you can find and mix and match in order to change things such as your stats, how your weapon functions, give you access to summons, etc. But the frustrating part of this is that the cards are enemy drops, only certain enemies have the chance to drop certain cards, and it's luck based. Even with high luck you can spend hours grinding for a card. I did some myself but I didn't get every card in the game, however I got the ones needed for the Thunderbird summon which trivialized the final boss. It's too bad it's a luck based system with awful odds, because I do like the idea of mixing and matching cards and finding new combinations, but it doesn't end up being fun.
I love the Tarot motif like everyone else but I hate RNG.
Next up was Harmony of Dissonance, which wears its Symphony of the Night-inspiration on its sleeve. It was definitely more up my alley, not as difficult, which I can see being a point of contention for some fans.
You got the blue afterimage movements like in SotN, but you also got the chain of a Belmont.
I enjoyed HoD's smoother gameplay more, being able to dash backwards and forwards since the start of the game. The game has slightly more story/dialogue than CoM; the story is that Maxim, Juste's (MC) best friend went on a training expedition for two years, returned and told Juste that Lydie, a childhood friend of them both, had been kidnapped. Maxim takes Juste to, you guessed it, Dracula's castle and they both begin to search for Lydie. At one point it becomes clear that Dracula is posessing Maxim, or at least in one "version" of the castle - there are two different versions of the castle that you can switch between - and in the good ending, by equipping Juste's bracelet together with Maxim's, which he gave to you at an earlier point, Maxim manages to resist Dracula and the vampire abandons his body and reconstitutes himself from his bodyparts, which you've collected.
Throughout the game there are furniture you can collect as well, which are largely useless except... if you get them all, a TINY detail changes in the good ending: Lydie will lean against Juste, suggesting romantic feelings. Which is hilarious as we don't see or talk to Lydie as much as we do with Maxim during the course of the game. There's much more development and chemistry between the two dudes than there is with either of them and Lydie, but isn't that always the case? Maxim tells Juste he wouldn't be able to go on without him and he's saved by Juste wearing both their bracelets... come on...
There are some boss designs I really like, like Legion.
That's all for now, as I've just started Aria of Sorrow, which might end up being my fave of the GBA trilogy. But that's an entry for another time! We'll see if I'll write another entry between now and then. I want to document the games I play on here even if it's just a few sentences and screenshots. Longer, more in-depth texts will eventually appear in "writings" on my site.