Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (2001)

This Castlevania GBA entry was one of the very first games available on the GBA, and it made a strong impression despite its quirks. The MC is called Nathan Graves as he ventures into Dracula’s castle to rescue his mentor, offering a blend of classic side-scrolling action and the exploratory metroidvania design that Symphony of the Night popularized. And honestly, most the Castlevania titles, released after SOTN, was intended to be metroidvanias due to the insane popularity of this PlayStation 1 entry.

The game’s most unique addition is the Dual Set-Up System (DSS), which lets players combine two sets of magic cards dropped by enemies to unlock a wide variety of abilities, ranging from elemental attacks to stat boosts. This mechanic adds depth and replayability, since different card combos can completely change how you approach combat. A standout for me is the optional content, the Battle Arena is a coliseum-like which has a lot of combat challenges, I highly recommend playing it, but only when you are late into the game because it is very hard.

Its difficulty is also steeper than later handheld Castlevania titles, with tougher enemies, stricter controls, and limited healing opportunities. Despite these flaws, this title is remembered as a strong and atmospheric entry in the franchise. It set the stage for future GBA Castlevanias and showed off the handheld’s potential right at launch. For fans of challenging action-adventure games with a Gothic vibe, it remains a rewarding, if sometimes punishing, experience. I consider this a must-play for fans of the franchise, particularly speaking, I can't get enough of these metroidvania Castlevania influenced by the popularity SOTN.

Circle of the Moon was the first metroidvania to follow up the legendary success of Symphony of the Night while also serving as a GameBoy Advance launch title. This context is almost immediately apparent when you first start the game. The look and feel of the game harkens back to Symphony rather than the awkward intervening N64 games released before this. We control a new hero, Nathan Graves, a young vampire hunter hoping to avenge his parents by taking down Dracula. There are a few other characters, though the game is fairly light on story like most of these games and the gameplay follows a similar metroidvania structure, exploring the many rooms to gain new keys and abilities that will allow you to access other areas, all while growing stronger to defeat tougher bosses. While the game takes a lot from its predecessor, it does a few things to distinguish itself, though these departures are hit or miss in their effectiveness.

One major addition is the card system. There are 10 action cards and 10 attribute cards and combining an action card with an attribute card offers a unique effect, allowing for lots of possible magical abilities available through different combinations. You get these cards by grinding a rare drop out of the right corresponding monster, which can take some time. This system was kind of a cool idea, but in practice, the drop rate is pretty frustrating and adds a lot of grinding. There's an added layer of mystery in that the game doesn't tell you what a combination does until you test it out and discover the effect. While that's neat in theory, it could be a little annoying in practice running around with a combination trying to figure out what might trigger the effect to give you an idea.

Another major issue is the game's difficulty is much higher than Symphony of the Night's. While that game could at times be a little too easy, the amped up difficulty here can be fairly frustrating. Most of the game I still found to be fairly playable, though I did from time to time need to do some grinding to take out the next boss or two. However, near the end of the game the difficulty gets rather absurd and even with a good deal of level-grinding, the final boss is ridiculously hard to beat without cheesing and spamming high level magic attacks and/or relying on save states. While trivial difficulty is not especially great, I would have found the game far more fun if it had been too easy rather than what we got. True, many of the earlier non-metroidvania Castlevania games are equally if not more difficult, but implementing that kind of gameplay here where the solution often is to grind levels just isn't very appealing.

That said, if you're just craving more Castlevania like Symphony of the Night, this isn't the worst place to go. Much of the gameplay loop and sense of discovery is quite similar, even if it is not as good. The soundtrack isn't up to par, but it's decent. And the scenery still evokes a lot of the same appeal and atmosphere. It is a weaker imitation, but not a terrible one. Further, to give credit where credit's due, I do appreciate that they didn't just try to do a complete copy of Symphony of the Night and at least tried some things differently here. As well, even achieving a lesser implementation of this style on the GameBoy Advance is impressive in its own right. Even if it didn't end up working too well for me, Circle of the Moon could have been a lot worse than it is.

"Castlevania: Circle of the Moon Mini Review"

Pros:

• Metroidvania style gameplay that rewards exploration and backtracking in a massive castle.

• Responsive tight controls.

• Cool aestheticly pleasing art and level design.

• The DDS system has a large variety of effects and art design of the DDS cards are seared into my memory.

• You can save after you defeat Dracula's first form which is really nice.

Cons:

• The save rooms are spaced out farther than they ought to be and this can hinder not just backtracking and exploring, but progression itself at times.

• Item drops are rather rare.

• There are only two DDS spells that heal the player directly.

• Finding the DDS cards is a real pain. The cards are randomly dropped by enemies after defeat, and there is zero indication as to where the cards are supposed to be found without a guide. Having the cards hidden like other power ups would have been much better.

• Dracula's second form is hard in an annoying sense. Adramelech and the Zombie Dragons are hard bosses, but that can be beat by using level grinding, using the cross sub weapon, and memorizing the boss's attack patterns. However the last phase of Dracula's second form is made even harder because...

• The DDS monster summoning input sequence with the Uranus card is ridiculous and unreliable. There's no way a player would know the proper sequence without a guide. The input sequence, ↓ ←(→) ↑ + Attack, sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Which is really frustrating because it makes beating Dracula's second form easier 😡.

• This is the definition of a nitpick, but it's too bad the game was declared to be in an alternate continuity. As the inclusion of another clan of vampire hunters could have been an interesting addition to the series lore.

The Verdict:

I was under the impression as a child that I was just bad at the game, but as a much more experienced adult gamer I've come to realize that this particular Castlevania game is hard 😅, mostly due to a number of questionable game design choices. Perhaps not as hard as the linear first and third entries, but certainly the hardest of the Metroidvania Castlevania games. That being said, Circle of the Moon is a legitimately enjoyable entry in the Castlevania series that deserves more recognition that it has gotten.

(4/5)

Level 54, 92.0% completion, 9:33:53

I absolutely HATE how slow your character walks. Eventually you gain the ability to run (which is the equivalent of regular walking speed in any other Castlevania game released after this), but only by double pressing left or right, which is obnoxious and results in lots of shortfalls, etc. If you can get over that, it's actually a really fun game.

I played the version included in the Castlevania Advance Collection on Switch. I am pretty sure you can get this on ps4/5 and Xbox as well, WiiU, and i also played it on the GBA back in the day, but i never finished it back then.

This was the first Metroidvania-style Castlevania game after Symphony of the Night, the all time classic that reminded people in 1997 that not every game needed to become a 3d-game.

The game starts with an evil vampire, Carmilla, resurecting an even more evil vampire, Dracula, so that they together can take over the world and murder everyone in it, or something like that, it's not entirely obvious what they want, but it can't be good. Immidietly after waking up from his 10 year slumber/death, dracula is attacked by you, in the role of Nathan Graves, apprentice vampirehunter, you master Morris, who helped kill Dracula ten years ago, and Morris son Hugh. Dracula manages to throw you and Hugh down a deep shaft and capture Morris. Hugh immidietly goes crazy and leaves you behind to run off and save his dad alone. Time to start exploring this big and mysterious 2d-castle!

First thing you will notice is that Nathan controls very stiff and slow. He walks slowly, swings his whip slowly, and doesnt really have a lot of options on how to move. After fighting a bunch of low level monsters you eventually find a slightly higher level monster that you might kill or try to outrun before you find a magic item that makes yo able to run, and you realize that you will need to collect a lot of magic items to give yourself the ability to move around with more ease.

There is a leveling system that works as in every other game, killing monsters gives you xp and with enough xp you will levelup and gain more power, making you able to fight ever stronger monsters.

Every monster has a chance to drop a piece of equipment or some sort of item that can increase your power further, and a chosen few monsters might drop a magic tarotcard. There are two types of tarot cards, elemental and abilities, and combining an elemental card with an ability card will give you different spells and skills that are the meat and potatoes of the game. Finding new combinations and figuring out how to best use them and where to use them is the most rewarding part of this game, apart from the actual exploration. There is a total of 100 combinations of cards, which range from giving your weapon new abilitis like freezing your enemies, summoning spirits to help you fight or different ways to heal you.

I really enjoyed this game.

Negative things about it is that it controls quite stiff and slow as i already mentioned, and that some bosses and regular enemies simply are stupid hard to beat. I dont know if i would ever have been able to beat the last boss without the Advance Collections "bonus features" with save states and rewind-functions, that guy is simply ridicilously strong...

I also read other people was very upset with the low drop-rates of the tarotcards... And yea, the drop rate is very low, and i was not able to find all of the cards, but the ones i did find kept me going through the game... I dont think you are supposed to acctually find every card in the game, you simply have to make do with the cards you are able to find.

Maybe it’s just that Castlevania charm but this is a game where you could list your complaints for an hour straight but then somehow really like it anyways.

My first and most relevant issue with it is probably the main mechanic of the game: the DSS system itself. While it is possible to figure it out, it’s not very straight forward. I got through probably about 40% of the game without even obtaining another card because of how low the drop rates are. Once I gathered about half the cards I found it to be a really charming system; but because I never bothered to farm enemies with a 1.0% (or lower) drop rate, and because I was basically done with the game at that point, I had narrowly squeezed through the entire game using like one or two DSS setups, which I doubt was the ideal experience.

A couple of the bosses really dragged for me as well (Adramelech and Twin Zombie Dragons.) For me they basically required I learn their entire pattern and execute a near flawless fight for 5+ minutes. To it’s credit though, It did remind of of that classic Castlevania frustration, which Harmony of Dissonance could actually use more of.

The music though, the atmosphere and the enemy variety are all great imo (palette swaps and all.) like I said, it has that addicting difficulty at points, and the gameplay is honestly so varied because of the abundance of upgrades that I can barely even list my method to how I beat Dracula. It was so specific to my setup and playstyle. I looked up some strategies after I beat it and was surprised to see many DSS combos and armor upgrades get mentioned that I never even found. The game’s upgrade system really just is that expansive, which is cool to see in a GBA launch title.

In short: It’s an early metroidvania in both a good and a bad way. Ambitious and unique, but occasionally flawed and frustrating. Regardless, this got me into the “vania” side of “metroidvania” and it was a fun, satisfying challenge with a lot of surprises to find for the people that like looking.

Unless you stick your nose deeeeep into step-by-step cheat guides that tell you exactly where every item is and how to get it, you will not beat this game. Period. End of story. Go fuck yourself.

You'll get as far as Dracula, the obvious final boss, but that's where it ends. You might even have fun playing this game up until that point. Unfortunately, Dracula is unbeatable unless you either 1) grind for a time period several times that which got you to him, 2) grind out impossible-to-find extremely-low-drop-rate items that you will not find without a guide, or 3) just flat-out cheat with emulator save states.

"Just equip the Dark Armor."

"Just spam summons."

"Just stock up on regular-ass healing potions."

These are examples of the "advice" you'll find on beating Dracula. All fucking useless unless you find a guide that tells you exactly which enemy in some hidden room (that only appears after you've beaten "X" boss) will drop that item 0.2% of the time you kill it.

I want to go back in time twenty years to shove this game's GBA cartridge straight up the ass of whoever at Konami is to blame for this shit-ass final boss.

Fuck.

Zero stars. And may Konami rot in hell.

Goddammit.

Welp.. I've now spent 5hrs doing nothing but walking back & forth down a hallway, killing spider ladies and grizzly bears for XP. Nearly half of my entire time playing this game spent doing nothing but grinding to prepare for the final fight...

...and I'm still getting insta-wasted by Dracula's second form. It doesn't help that there's apparently no such thing as healing items that give you back more than 1-2% of your HP -- and even those are ridiculously rare.

Is this game seriously going to make me bail at the final boss, after sinking almost 12hrs into it?