CASTLEVANIA: Circle Of The Moon
(Konami, June 13, 2001)

One of the premiere launch games for the Gameboy Advance is this awesome action/RRG based on the long running CastleVania series. CastleVania Circle of the Moon returns back to it's 2D roots and it's plays a lot like the award winning CastleVania Symphony of the Night on Playstation and Super CastleVania IV for the Super Nintendo.

Nathan Graves tries to help his Master and his son to prevent the resurrection of Count Dracula but they are too late and they get split at the start of the game and Nathan's lone adventure then begins in CastleVania. Nathan starts off the game with the traditional whip weapon but he can also gain experience, equip armour, equip his hands, and he can even collect various cards on his long adventure. The cards of Monsters can be combined with the cards of the Gods to create a special effect that uses your magic points like the card of Salamander and the card of Mercury can give you a flaming whip. There are over 70 combos to try out.

Learning the controls is a breeze! You have the usual action, jump, and menu buttons found in most action games so people should feel right at home with CastleVania Circle of the Moon. Nathan will learn more moves with new controls as the game goes now but all of them are fairly easy to master.

The game looks like a cross between Dracula X Rondo of Blood (released for the PC Engine) and CastleVania Symphony of the Night (released for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn) because of the familiar sub menus, gauges and the Super Metroid-like map. You'll see some awesome looking bosses throughout the castle like the giant twin dragons that fill the entire screen to the huge Ram beast with its fiery background. Although the game looks great, it also looks very dark most of the time and that's not good on the eyes thanks to the Gameboy Advance's non back lit screen. In other words the game needs to be in perfect light all the time or the GBA screen will just act like a mirror and you'll be lucky if you can see anything. Hopefully you have a Gameboy SP, Nintendo DS or GameCube Player by now so you don't have to put up with this?

The music is a mixture of new and old stuff. If you're a diehard CastleVania fan like me than you'll easily recognize some of the background soundtracks from past games like the music from the Art Tower in CastleVania: Legacy of Darkness for the Nintendo 64. Although the music isn't quite as good as some of other tracks from the 32-bit and 64-bit games, the realistic sound effects work well for the Gameboy Advance and there's no problem the various screams and whip strikes.

When Konami first previewed their new CastleVania game for the Gameboy Advance I knew it would be something special and they didn't disappoint! This is a great game for fans of the series because its not only a challenging, non linear game that will take weeks to finish but it also includes a little of everything from all of the past games. There are even secret codes you can enter once you finish the game to add to the replay value. CastleVania Circle of the Moon highly recommend for those looking for complex action game for their travels.

Overall Circle of the Moon rating: 90/100

*GameBoy Advance only
*Battery back up game save 8 files

For 1 player only
Rated Teen (T)
graphics: 8/10
sound: 7/10
gameplay: 9/10

-StarSoldier (Ryan Genno)
www.videogames101.com

Recommended: Yes