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StarTopic Castlevania Advance Collection |ST| They made a game out of that Netflix show!

What’s your favorite of the collection?

  • Circle of the Moon

    Votes: 2 14.3%
  • Harmony of Dissonance

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Aria of Sorrow

    Votes: 10 71.4%
  • Dracula X

    Votes: 2 14.3%

  • Total voters
    14

Phendrift

Gerudo
Moderator
Pronouns
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I’m not great at making fancy OTs with cool graphics , but I figured this isn’t a huge release that necessitates one and it’d be nice for a space to talk about it since it just came out!

Price: $19.99
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series


GAMES INCLUDED
Descriptions from Konami’s website


Castlevania Circle of the Moon

Combine action and attribute cards to create over 80 unique spell effects, ranging from fire whips to ice blizzards, with the 'Dual Set-up System'.
The story follows Nathan Graves, a vampire hunter apprentice who enters Dracula's Castle along with his Master in order to prevent the dreaded return of the Count.

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance

This title introduced a lot of new features to the franchise, such as 'Boss Rush' mode and the 'Spell Fusion' system that lets players combine Sub-Weapons with Spell Books to cast devastating spells.

Play as Juste Belmont, the grandson of legendary Vampire Hunter Simon Belmont!

Castlevania Aria of Sorrow

Aria of Sorrow introduced a brand new attack system called 'Tactical Souls', that lets Soma Cruz capture the souls of slain monsters to acquire their abilities. (100+ abilities in total!)

Aria of Sorrow also has a ton of New Game+ content.​

Soma Cruz, a young high school exchange student in Japan, is somehow involved in the eternal cycle of reincarnation of the Dark Lord himself. What role does Soma play in all of this? Will he be able to return to his own world?
Castlevania Dracula X

Fight your way through Dracula's Castle and defeat the toughest enemies with the new special attack 'Item Crash'!

Castlevania: Dracula X is a reimagination of the cult action game Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and has been acclaimed as one of the most challenging Castlevania titles ever created.
The Dark Lord Count Dracula rises again from the dead to revive the forces of darkness and to annihilate this corrupted world and create a new one.
You are Richter Belmont, heir of the Belmont family, and you set out for Dracula's Castle to defeat its evil master.
 
M2 did a great work with this collection, but the lack of screen filters is weird.

The original has scanlines and a Dot matrix filter for GB games, so the scanlines and some sort of LCD filter are a painful omission. Harmony of Dissonance suffers without some sort of darknening and something that helps softening the pixels. It's a damn bright and chunky looking game.

Thanks to the DSS widget for Circle of the Moon yesterday i spent 2 hours and gained 4 levels killing a thunder demon in the clock tower for the Maticore card, in the meanwhile i got enough magic gautlets to open my own shop.
 
The Item Drop Widget addition really motivated me to give CotM a try (it's the only one of the GBA titles I hadn't beaten), and I've been having a swell time so far.

Sadly I've had to quit playing due to a finger injury (nothing major, it will just take a while to heal), so I haven't had a chance to continue recently.
 
0
so for gba i only played cotm back in the day at gba launch and im not sure i ever beat it.

started the collection and am probably half or more through harmony of dissonance.

thoughts so far...

circle of the moon:
  • starts out very nicely, feels good to play
  • map layout is extremely weird once you find most of the areas, very vertically oriented, save spots in very off the beaten path areas
  • excellent music
  • bosses are extremely difficult, especially 3 or so very specific ones (and last boss is absurd)
  • dss system is cool, but ultimately not many moves feel very powerful
  • sub weapons underwhelming, felt like only cross was useful
  • that challenge area with the 17 rooms ... come on
  • wish the game had more gear and items, especially things like health potions very hard to come by
  • ultimately by the end, i liked the game, but liked it a lot less than when i started
harmony of dissonance:
  • immediately felt better to play to me
  • music sucks ass (like wtf is going on here)
  • graphic colors are definitely too bright but it doesn't bother me too much
  • all the systems (item selection, health management, gear, magic, etc) feel like a huge step up from cotm
  • bosses might be a little too easy, but so far i've enjoyed them regardless
  • narrative thus far has been a little better than cotm and i'm digging the dual castles
  • probably only halfway through though, so more to come ...
 
0
This was my first time playing Harmony of Dissonance and boy what a weird game it is. Almost mind numbingly easy combat but exploration was very confusing and difficult.
 
0
Harmony of Dissonance is a very conflicting game for me. On one hand, it plays like a dream, there's no rigidity at all, Juste is a nimble character and the dash and backdash add a huge deal of mobility.

But then, this very same gameplay makes the game trivially easy, you can cancel whipping by dashing or jumping, and the jump attack animation gets cancelled when Juste's feet touch the ground, so once you get the hang of it you become basically an inmortal killing machine. I replayed the game back in january and didn't even die once.

The soundtrack is fine, imo, very weird sounding but that's supposedly on purpose. Some tunes like offense and deffense, aqueduct of dragons and successor of fate are on my top 20 of Castlevania tunes, and Vampire Killer 2k2 is my favorite Vampire Killer rendition.
 
0
The worst part of HoD is the map. The double castle gimmick sounds better on paper then it does in execution. Maybe once you know the game really well it's not an issue, but I spent a lot of my time running back and forth between both castles trying to find the single path forward.
 
0
Is this collection good for someone who has never played a Castlevania game but is interested in it?

I have the anniversary collection coming from limited run hopefully this month
 
Is this collection good for someone who has never played a Castlevania game but is interested in it?

I have the anniversary collection coming from limited run hopefully this month
It's a good entry point imo. Harmony and Aria are the most accessible Metroidvania games out there, and then Circle introduced the classic series difficulty and sensibilities.
 
Finished both Aria and HoD, and I really liked them both. I'd beaten Aria before but never got the best ending, so that was fun. And yes, HoD is really easy but I kinda like that. I just wish it had some form of fast travel.
 
Finished both Aria and HoD, and I really liked them both. I'd beaten Aria before but never got the best ending, so that was fun. And yes, HoD is really easy but I kinda like that. I just wish it had some form of fast travel.

Iirc, if you press down in the dimension shifting rooms It teleports you to the next one
 


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