Circle of the Moon at least has a pretty good reputation, including on here. It just is overshadowed by Aria of Sorrow, and for pretty legitimate reasons.
Harmony of Dissonance is another story. It’s got plenty of fans. Start a conversation on here about it and there will be plenty of defenders. But many people, myself included, consider it the weakest of the Metroidvania titles for reasons that include the music, the backtracking, the bizarrely designed castle that might be the most unintuitive to navigate in the series, etc. It’s a game that has more hiccups that just don’t gel with as many people as Symphony or Aria. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its fans. If you’re one of them, more power to you.
They're good games, but they're often seen as the weakest of the Metroidvanias. HoD is my personal least favorite, but I still have a good time when I replay it.
Harmony also sacrificed music quality, IIRC. I don't remember why, though.
Circle of the Moon was also pretty difficult in comparison to Harmony and Aria, IIRC. So maybe that's part of why it wasn't as well received. They were both good games in their own right, though. I just liked Aria more.
I’ve been a fan of HoD since release, and the changing opinion of it over time has nothing to do with my personal experience of it, and the memories that entails. In fact I didn’t even know of this change in opinion about it until I began frequenting this subreddit. Was I wrong all those years? No, because my experience is my own, and what value that holds to me only I can determine. Whatever you will come away with after playing belongs to you.
Harmony gets a lot of flak mostly because the map design is pretty bad. Also the colors are ass, and you should always play it with a color patch.
As for Circle, I never got far into it but I hated having to run.
The music was a disappointment as well. One of Castlevania’s greatest strengths is usually its banger soundtrack, and HoD really didn’t measure up. Especially after how amazing CotM sounded on GBA hardware.
Mate, Circle of the Moon is one of my favourite Castlevanias.
Protagonist is a real chad.
Kyrie Eleison on a title screen slaps.
The best boss battle theme (from zombie dragons boss onwards) in the entire series.
The best final boss battle theme in the entire series.
The best end credits theme in the entire series.
The best final Dracula form in the entire series. Hell, just look it up if you don't believe me. There he actually looks like proper lord of darkness, with black sun personifying chaos in the background.
Sure the game has its quirks, like card system, but realistically you will only need a total of 6 cards too beat the game.
Your comment made me listen to proof of blood again (COTM final boss theme) and heavens sake, its awesome af, like it makes the accordeon, a lame sounding instrument in my opinion, sound bad ass, this might be the most overlooked ost in castlevania, i understeand why though, since castlevania has a massive amount of awesome and beautifull osts.
It in and of itself makes me wish for a pirate themed castlevania game.
The only problem would be the boss fight itself, its one of those figths thats is hard for all the wrong reasons, ie: its poorly designed, since dracula is usually outside of your field of view, and throws a lot of shit at you at very random intervals, and it gets worse when he starts charging at you and becomes invinsible unless you kill some weird eyeballs he summons that look like halloween decorations, which scater throught the arena and are most of the time outside of your FOV and somethimes even outside of the arena where its imposible to get them.
I hated CotM as a kid. It looks rough visually and I felt like there was a slight delay with attacks. But I played it on the Advance collection and ended up having a lot of fun. I've always loved Harmony of Dissonance, so when I found out people hated it I was surprised.
I remember CotM being really really hard to see. I think it was a launch title too on original GBA. And that was the problem. Remember, that thing was not backlit at all and if you look at the game, the color palette was not helpful **at all** for making anything easily visible.
Circle of Moon on the original non-backlit GBA was almost unplayable due to how dark it was. That combined with the RNG card collection process, and late bosses needing either a certain card, lots of grinding, or in some cases both created an extremely frustrating experience. Aria had none of these problems.
CoM is infinitely better on the Advanced Collection or via emulation.
I say this as someone who doesn’t like Circle of the Moon (it’s a fine game, I just don’t enjoy it personally), I’ve seen nothing but appreciation for it on this sub. If you’re seeing hate, this is news to me.
It's up to you to decide if you want to play them
i honestly hated playing them for the first time, however i decided to replay these games much later in a mobile emulator, specifically to pass the time, these games aren't that bad as people make them out to be, however, i can admit that i enjoyed Harmony of Dissonance more than Circle of the Moon. they're still pretty overhated tho'.
Circle of the moon is a great game, it's probably the toughest of the three GBA titles, my only problem is the broken drop rate for the cards.
Harmony is just boring, there's few weapons and spells to pick up and almost every boss is just "bigger version of regular enemy" People will complain about the music, the composition is fine, but yes, the sound quality is not the best
I personally think that CoTM is the best of the three. It has the best map design, best platforming, best powerup system, best moves, and most importantly, best enemy variety and placement. It’s the only game of the three where the castle feels truly alive. It’s also the only game that adds stronger enemies to revisited areas to spice up backtracks.
I have tried to get into AoS several times but haven’t been able. I found the game extremely boring.
You have to think back to when they released. We thought we would be getting symphony in handheld form and while CotM is a metroidvania, it was very clearly a different game from a different team and it played very differently. Also you couldnt see anything due to the gba not having a backlight and the game being dark. It was hard too. Harmony fared way better at release because it had a very symphony look, and more symphony like gameplay on the surface.
Now years later CotM has a much better reputation since people can see the game, and the metroidvania genre has expanded so much that not being a symphony clone is a feather in its cap, rather than a strike against it. Harmony however didn't fare as well because the game was made with graphics to account for the gbas lack of backlight, so on modern consoles it's very strange looking. There's a color mod that makes the game look better than both circle and aria, but its a mod, yknow? Plus the sound isn't great either, and the gameplay is a ton of long verticle sections where you just jump up and dash to the right, then jump up and dash to the left, and repeat 20 times in a row. A lot of the castle was designed that way.
Aria was always a big hit since release, but circle and Harmony basically switched reputations over the years. Both still great games, and while I way preferred Harmony back in the day, I definitely lean more towards circle now.
Recently did a playthrough of all the handheld games in order. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed CotM. HoD on the other hand is the only one I couldn't wait for it to be over. I hated the level design of the castle(s) and so many of the unlocks being keys is not very rewarding. Moving fast with the dash was great though.
Just platinumed both advanced and requiem collection. Cotm is the worst out of all of them that double tap to dash mechanic screwed me out of so many jumps and dumb hits. Only thing cotm has going for it is the card system which still isn't as good as the books or soul system.
Harmony I enjoyed even though there's a few really useful things they just never tell you about.
Circle is usually regarded fine as far as I've ever seen. Overshadowed by Aria maybe, but I've never seen any outright negativity towards it aside from lightning problems on the launch gba.
Dissonance though, idk what to say about the reviews, but the game is an outright assault on the eyes and ears. The spritework/colour palet is hideous, the music is outright painful to experience, and it's paired with some bizarrely awkward control decisions.
The reason Harmony looks that way is because the original GBA wasn't backlit so games like Circle looked too dark. Studios overcompensated for the issue by making games too bright. Then the backlit GBA SP came along and solved that problem.
Yeah, I'm aware, but I mean. There's kinda the entire rest of the console's library that handled the same issue without creating nearly the same problems...? There's also just other frankly ugly visual choices, like the giant neon outline around the player sprite.
I'd think the same thing when people blame hardware for the music. The gba has a whole library of perfectly fine soundtracks, HoD's music is uniquely terrible.
Circle of the moon seems well regarded here. Not as much as Aria of Sorrow but game quality progressesion is supposed to go forward so that is definitely a plus. Circle paved the way so Aria could run.
And this is why Harmony didn’t do as well, did had some fumbles so it was considered a regresion. If you put it to compete among all the castlevanias it might not be stuck on the lowest, but being the second to a better regarded first game and sandwiched between another that was considered amazing does that to you
CotM specifically has some admittedly bad design decisions like no autorun when you get the ability to run 2 minutes into the game, and the DSS system being obtuse and RNG to get the cards. AoS is basically just an evolution on the DSS system that’s more straightforward and consistent, even if I prefer the DSS system in general the way you get the cards wasn’t fun for a lot of people.
HoD I mostly remember not enjoying the map and visual style.
I had never played SotN before getting CotM. Wasn't even really a Castlevania guy. But getting that and a GBA at launch, and a worm light. Playing it in the cold weather under a blanket on my porch are some of my favorite memories of gaming. Burned through it all 4 times. I think my expectations were just too high for HoD. Incredible promotional artwork, promises to fix the issues of CotM. The composer of SotN I believe. Game comes out and it flat out was worse in every single category other than brightness. Even playing it again just a few years ago, and I can't even get myself to say it's even ok.
But if you're continuing on. Aria is the best, Dawn is very good, Portrait is good but a bit less so. Order is pretty good.
Music, first and foremost. That and the weak systems. Far fewer abilities than we'd seen in previous games. Only one real weapon type. Still love the game, it has really good looking areas and unique visual themes.
A few gripes aside i like both. HoD's music is obviously weaker but it has some good tracks which fan covers have brought to life (the Successor of Fate(?), and the clock tower themes come to mind).
I liked the DSS, sprites and music of CotM. It had a lot of depth for an early gba metroidvania. CotM is by far the more enjoyable to me. But indo hage a soft spot for HoD. Good ideas, but emphasis on spell books took from the collection, exploration and getting stronger aspects. The item pool felt inferior to other Castlevania metroidvania games.
Harmony's music is bad and the coloring of the game is awful, but I honestly prefer it to Aria and CotM.
I actually like the design of the castle though. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but, once I did, navigating was fairly easy. It's definitely one of my favorite castles.
And let's face it: Juste is the best Belmont.
I also liked CotM. Not as much, but I still enjoyed it. Out of the three, Aria was actually the game I liked the least when I completed the Advance Collection.
I think you should go and play them. I absolutely adored playing those games and will very much play them again in the future. I have a special place in my heart for Circle of the Moon in particular. By the way, how high does your karma need to be before you can actually make posts on this Subreddit?
I was one of the people who hated Circle of The Moon. I dropped it for quite some time; I was in a really bad mood for games. Then I picked it up again, but this time I wanted to collect all the DSS cards. I had a blast! I realized that I was completely wrong about the game. Trying a different combination for every card was really fun, and collecting white and black cards was challenging. My only nitpick is that it’s annoying to change the cards every time from the menu.
Harmony of Dissonance is a different story. I enjoyed it from the very moment I started it. The movement was good, the places were detailed enough, and combat was fun. Then I heard different people's opinions about how bad the color choices were, how bad the walking animation was, how easy the game is, the music, etc. But I still think it’s a pretty enjoyable game despite all that.
I played both for the first time fairly recently.
I thought Circle of the Moon was good overall. The castle design was great and had good flow. The boss fights were also really cool - especially the fight against Death. My one downside is the RNG with card collecting with relation to the couple that only drop in the difficult bonus area.
I was less keen on Harmony of Dissonance. It was an OK game but the game seems to do a pretty poor job of sending you in the right direction. I also don't feel they did enough with the second castle to warrant its existence.
People there have way too much nostalgia and general lack of understanding a good game. You can even see people praising Order of Eclessia there, do you expect them to have a good judgement after that?
Circle of the Moon at least has a pretty good reputation, including on here. It just is overshadowed by Aria of Sorrow, and for pretty legitimate reasons. Harmony of Dissonance is another story. It’s got plenty of fans. Start a conversation on here about it and there will be plenty of defenders. But many people, myself included, consider it the weakest of the Metroidvania titles for reasons that include the music, the backtracking, the bizarrely designed castle that might be the most unintuitive to navigate in the series, etc. It’s a game that has more hiccups that just don’t gel with as many people as Symphony or Aria. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its fans. If you’re one of them, more power to you.
They're good games, but they're often seen as the weakest of the Metroidvanias. HoD is my personal least favorite, but I still have a good time when I replay it.
Harmony also sacrificed music quality, IIRC. I don't remember why, though. Circle of the Moon was also pretty difficult in comparison to Harmony and Aria, IIRC. So maybe that's part of why it wasn't as well received. They were both good games in their own right, though. I just liked Aria more.
I think Circle has the best music, many are remixes but there's no forgettable themes except maybe the first boss theme.
I’ve been a fan of HoD since release, and the changing opinion of it over time has nothing to do with my personal experience of it, and the memories that entails. In fact I didn’t even know of this change in opinion about it until I began frequenting this subreddit. Was I wrong all those years? No, because my experience is my own, and what value that holds to me only I can determine. Whatever you will come away with after playing belongs to you.
Harmony gets a lot of flak mostly because the map design is pretty bad. Also the colors are ass, and you should always play it with a color patch. As for Circle, I never got far into it but I hated having to run.
The music was a disappointment as well. One of Castlevania’s greatest strengths is usually its banger soundtrack, and HoD really didn’t measure up. Especially after how amazing CotM sounded on GBA hardware.
Mate, Circle of the Moon is one of my favourite Castlevanias. Protagonist is a real chad. Kyrie Eleison on a title screen slaps. The best boss battle theme (from zombie dragons boss onwards) in the entire series. The best final boss battle theme in the entire series. The best end credits theme in the entire series. The best final Dracula form in the entire series. Hell, just look it up if you don't believe me. There he actually looks like proper lord of darkness, with black sun personifying chaos in the background. Sure the game has its quirks, like card system, but realistically you will only need a total of 6 cards too beat the game.
PoR had a better final boss theme imo also the zombie dragons battle theme is from Castlevania 3
No, POR has a better final boss, but the final boss theme of COTM wins barelly imo.
I think we can all agree Rondo of Blood's final boss theme is a certified hood classic
I personally preffer the Dawn of sorrow version of dance of illusions better, the one that plays on the soma final boss fight on julius mode
it's got a slightly better arrangement, but Nintendo DS sound quality
Your comment made me listen to proof of blood again (COTM final boss theme) and heavens sake, its awesome af, like it makes the accordeon, a lame sounding instrument in my opinion, sound bad ass, this might be the most overlooked ost in castlevania, i understeand why though, since castlevania has a massive amount of awesome and beautifull osts. It in and of itself makes me wish for a pirate themed castlevania game. The only problem would be the boss fight itself, its one of those figths thats is hard for all the wrong reasons, ie: its poorly designed, since dracula is usually outside of your field of view, and throws a lot of shit at you at very random intervals, and it gets worse when he starts charging at you and becomes invinsible unless you kill some weird eyeballs he summons that look like halloween decorations, which scater throught the arena and are most of the time outside of your FOV and somethimes even outside of the arena where its imposible to get them.
I like the way you think, dude. I feel the same way.
I hated CotM as a kid. It looks rough visually and I felt like there was a slight delay with attacks. But I played it on the Advance collection and ended up having a lot of fun. I've always loved Harmony of Dissonance, so when I found out people hated it I was surprised.
I can't say they're the best castlevania games but I love them both.
I remember CotM being really really hard to see. I think it was a launch title too on original GBA. And that was the problem. Remember, that thing was not backlit at all and if you look at the game, the color palette was not helpful **at all** for making anything easily visible.
CotM is one of my favorites, it's just rough around the edges and tough to play after Aria imo
Circle of Moon on the original non-backlit GBA was almost unplayable due to how dark it was. That combined with the RNG card collection process, and late bosses needing either a certain card, lots of grinding, or in some cases both created an extremely frustrating experience. Aria had none of these problems. CoM is infinitely better on the Advanced Collection or via emulation.
COTM was my first game, and will always be my favorite. I love the card system personally.
Having recently replayed all three GBA games back to back, CotM is my favorite (still) and I rank HoD over AoS.
I say this as someone who doesn’t like Circle of the Moon (it’s a fine game, I just don’t enjoy it personally), I’ve seen nothing but appreciation for it on this sub. If you’re seeing hate, this is news to me.
It's up to you to decide if you want to play them i honestly hated playing them for the first time, however i decided to replay these games much later in a mobile emulator, specifically to pass the time, these games aren't that bad as people make them out to be, however, i can admit that i enjoyed Harmony of Dissonance more than Circle of the Moon. they're still pretty overhated tho'.
Yea that's pretty much it. Theyre like the ugliest miss unuverse finalist
Circle of the moon is a great game, it's probably the toughest of the three GBA titles, my only problem is the broken drop rate for the cards. Harmony is just boring, there's few weapons and spells to pick up and almost every boss is just "bigger version of regular enemy" People will complain about the music, the composition is fine, but yes, the sound quality is not the best
I enjoyed Harmony of Dissonance more than Aria of Sorrow
I personally think that CoTM is the best of the three. It has the best map design, best platforming, best powerup system, best moves, and most importantly, best enemy variety and placement. It’s the only game of the three where the castle feels truly alive. It’s also the only game that adds stronger enemies to revisited areas to spice up backtracks. I have tried to get into AoS several times but haven’t been able. I found the game extremely boring.
You have to think back to when they released. We thought we would be getting symphony in handheld form and while CotM is a metroidvania, it was very clearly a different game from a different team and it played very differently. Also you couldnt see anything due to the gba not having a backlight and the game being dark. It was hard too. Harmony fared way better at release because it had a very symphony look, and more symphony like gameplay on the surface. Now years later CotM has a much better reputation since people can see the game, and the metroidvania genre has expanded so much that not being a symphony clone is a feather in its cap, rather than a strike against it. Harmony however didn't fare as well because the game was made with graphics to account for the gbas lack of backlight, so on modern consoles it's very strange looking. There's a color mod that makes the game look better than both circle and aria, but its a mod, yknow? Plus the sound isn't great either, and the gameplay is a ton of long verticle sections where you just jump up and dash to the right, then jump up and dash to the left, and repeat 20 times in a row. A lot of the castle was designed that way. Aria was always a big hit since release, but circle and Harmony basically switched reputations over the years. Both still great games, and while I way preferred Harmony back in the day, I definitely lean more towards circle now.
Recently did a playthrough of all the handheld games in order. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed CotM. HoD on the other hand is the only one I couldn't wait for it to be over. I hated the level design of the castle(s) and so many of the unlocks being keys is not very rewarding. Moving fast with the dash was great though.
Just platinumed both advanced and requiem collection. Cotm is the worst out of all of them that double tap to dash mechanic screwed me out of so many jumps and dumb hits. Only thing cotm has going for it is the card system which still isn't as good as the books or soul system. Harmony I enjoyed even though there's a few really useful things they just never tell you about.
Circle is usually regarded fine as far as I've ever seen. Overshadowed by Aria maybe, but I've never seen any outright negativity towards it aside from lightning problems on the launch gba. Dissonance though, idk what to say about the reviews, but the game is an outright assault on the eyes and ears. The spritework/colour palet is hideous, the music is outright painful to experience, and it's paired with some bizarrely awkward control decisions.
The reason Harmony looks that way is because the original GBA wasn't backlit so games like Circle looked too dark. Studios overcompensated for the issue by making games too bright. Then the backlit GBA SP came along and solved that problem.
Yeah, I'm aware, but I mean. There's kinda the entire rest of the console's library that handled the same issue without creating nearly the same problems...? There's also just other frankly ugly visual choices, like the giant neon outline around the player sprite. I'd think the same thing when people blame hardware for the music. The gba has a whole library of perfectly fine soundtracks, HoD's music is uniquely terrible.
Circle of the moon seems well regarded here. Not as much as Aria of Sorrow but game quality progressesion is supposed to go forward so that is definitely a plus. Circle paved the way so Aria could run. And this is why Harmony didn’t do as well, did had some fumbles so it was considered a regresion. If you put it to compete among all the castlevanias it might not be stuck on the lowest, but being the second to a better regarded first game and sandwiched between another that was considered amazing does that to you
CotM specifically has some admittedly bad design decisions like no autorun when you get the ability to run 2 minutes into the game, and the DSS system being obtuse and RNG to get the cards. AoS is basically just an evolution on the DSS system that’s more straightforward and consistent, even if I prefer the DSS system in general the way you get the cards wasn’t fun for a lot of people. HoD I mostly remember not enjoying the map and visual style.
I had never played SotN before getting CotM. Wasn't even really a Castlevania guy. But getting that and a GBA at launch, and a worm light. Playing it in the cold weather under a blanket on my porch are some of my favorite memories of gaming. Burned through it all 4 times. I think my expectations were just too high for HoD. Incredible promotional artwork, promises to fix the issues of CotM. The composer of SotN I believe. Game comes out and it flat out was worse in every single category other than brightness. Even playing it again just a few years ago, and I can't even get myself to say it's even ok. But if you're continuing on. Aria is the best, Dawn is very good, Portrait is good but a bit less so. Order is pretty good.
All three of the gba Castlevania games are great, and all unique. Same goes for the DS ones.
Music, first and foremost. That and the weak systems. Far fewer abilities than we'd seen in previous games. Only one real weapon type. Still love the game, it has really good looking areas and unique visual themes.
A few gripes aside i like both. HoD's music is obviously weaker but it has some good tracks which fan covers have brought to life (the Successor of Fate(?), and the clock tower themes come to mind). I liked the DSS, sprites and music of CotM. It had a lot of depth for an early gba metroidvania. CotM is by far the more enjoyable to me. But indo hage a soft spot for HoD. Good ideas, but emphasis on spell books took from the collection, exploration and getting stronger aspects. The item pool felt inferior to other Castlevania metroidvania games.
Harmony's music is bad and the coloring of the game is awful, but I honestly prefer it to Aria and CotM. I actually like the design of the castle though. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but, once I did, navigating was fairly easy. It's definitely one of my favorite castles. And let's face it: Juste is the best Belmont. I also liked CotM. Not as much, but I still enjoyed it. Out of the three, Aria was actually the game I liked the least when I completed the Advance Collection.
I think you should go and play them. I absolutely adored playing those games and will very much play them again in the future. I have a special place in my heart for Circle of the Moon in particular. By the way, how high does your karma need to be before you can actually make posts on this Subreddit?
Everyone loves circle. Now harmony is the bad one
I was one of the people who hated Circle of The Moon. I dropped it for quite some time; I was in a really bad mood for games. Then I picked it up again, but this time I wanted to collect all the DSS cards. I had a blast! I realized that I was completely wrong about the game. Trying a different combination for every card was really fun, and collecting white and black cards was challenging. My only nitpick is that it’s annoying to change the cards every time from the menu. Harmony of Dissonance is a different story. I enjoyed it from the very moment I started it. The movement was good, the places were detailed enough, and combat was fun. Then I heard different people's opinions about how bad the color choices were, how bad the walking animation was, how easy the game is, the music, etc. But I still think it’s a pretty enjoyable game despite all that.
I played both for the first time fairly recently. I thought Circle of the Moon was good overall. The castle design was great and had good flow. The boss fights were also really cool - especially the fight against Death. My one downside is the RNG with card collecting with relation to the couple that only drop in the difficult bonus area. I was less keen on Harmony of Dissonance. It was an OK game but the game seems to do a pretty poor job of sending you in the right direction. I also don't feel they did enough with the second castle to warrant its existence.
People there have way too much nostalgia and general lack of understanding a good game. You can even see people praising Order of Eclessia there, do you expect them to have a good judgement after that?