Alkaiser's Full Review: Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon for Game Boy Advan...
Along with Street Fighter and Final Fantasy, when the discussions of the longest, most succesful video game franchises have to include the Castlevania series.
I am not able to comment on the series' earlier incarnations, as I haven't played them. I did play the last Castlevania game before this, Symphony of the Night, and found that to be immensely enjoyable, so I set out to play the GBA offering.
At first I found that I had to play it 15 minutes at a time, because I could only strain my eyes for that long. The guys at Konami strove to make a "darker" more menacing looking Castlevania, and they succeeded, however, they chose the wrong platform to do that on.
The GBA obscures so much detail that you'll end up running into a lot of attacks the enemies use just because you can't see them. The bombs that the skeleton bombers throw, the bats, you really can't see any of them most of the time, and henceforth, you get messed up a lot.
If you can find the right lighting to play in, then, you won't have to worry so much about it, and you can start to see some of the nicer little background details that the Konami guys spent time creating.
Unlike SOTN, this time, your character gets a whip. This was a sore point with people who didn't like that fact that Alucard from SOTN wielded a variety of weapons, because it contrasted with the previous version of Castlevania. So Konami listened to their fans, and gave you a whip this time.
You've got 4 basic buttons to use. The B button is the attack button. Hit Up + B to use your "heart" based attack, the secondary weapon. If you press and hold B your character will do a spinning whip attack which hits a lot more, but does less damage.
The A button jumps. Eventually you'll find an item that will let you double jump, and if you hit Down + A, you'll do a slide which doubles as an attack.
The L button will activate your DSS configuration. The DSS configuration will let you use cards that you've acquired that give you special powers. You mix and match the cards to create other effect which is cool. Some of the effects are obvious, like 2 rotating fireballs surrounding your character. Others are a bit harder to discover, like your defense % increasing proportionally with the amount of the map you have explored.
The R button is the special button. You use it to active the other items you get, and it'll eventually allow you to do things like grab onto walls, break stone blocks, etc.
The controls are fairly easy to get the hang of, with the R button being the most difficult to get right.
You character will gain experience points along the way which will raise his stats so you will do progressively more damage, take less damage, etc. Levelling up becomes an important part of the game, as often you will find that a boos just does too much damage, and you don't do enough. Sit around and level up your character in the area, and you'll be able to take down that mean boss without too much difficulty.
This game is highly enjoyable. I've played it for something like 6 hours on the game clock, and I haven't beaten it, which means it's at least as long as Konami's last offering, Zone of the Enders. A worthy pick-up, but you may want to shy away from it if you're worried about the whole darkness of the GBA screen, because this game only makes it worse.
Maybe once some 3rd party companies can make some real accesories that illuminate all of the screen, I'll be able to enjoy this game as it was meant to be enjoyed. In spite of all this, though, COTM is definitely a buy.
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