Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - Part 2/3 - GBA - 悪魔城ドラキュラ サークル オブ ザ ムーン ~

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Retro Zen

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Published on January 10, 2023 3:50:01 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7QD4xFxFsg

Game:

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (2001)

Duration: 3:51:25

178 views

7

First game in the Castlevania "trilogy" on Game Boy Advance, Circle of the Moon is also the first Castlevania to be a carbon copy of Symphony of the Night and completely transform the franchise into Metroid-inspired games. Indeed, apart from the future 3D games, nearly every game in the franchise will now be a "metroidvania". Is that a good thing? I'll let you decide.

CotM is a great game, though. The music is fantastic (despite the soundtrack being mostly remakes of older tunes), the gameplay is tight, and it's a gorgeous-looking GBA game. CotM features cards you can get from enemy drops that will let you combine them to get different magic spells or abilities. You even get to summon cool beasts! Unfortunately, the grind to get every card is way too heavy. The drop rates are extremely low and unless you're looking for them, you'll probably finish the game with more cards missing than cards obtained. Fortunately, in the Switch port I'm playing here, there's a widget that lets you know which enemies actually drop cards. You weren't so lucky in the GBA original. Other than that, it plays pretty similarly to SotN. But this game isn't canon anymore. Go figure.

Beyond that, the game is just right in its challenge until you reach the final boss, who is stupidly difficult to beat unless you spam specific card combinations. There's also an extra arena challenge (which I haven't cleared) that throws a serious challenge your way, should you be wanting to test your mettle. Overall, I had a lot of fun.

The Japanese title, "Akumajou Dracula Circle of the Moon", translates to, "Demon Castle Dracula Circle of the Moon". Interestingly, for the first time ever, the Japanese subtitle is exactly the same as the English one. Huh.

Current playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjd3BsQQrwANyyosRRxTDskkjRsvywzTZ

I played all of the Castlevania games released before Symphony of the Night, too, and you can find them in this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbPO1AdRPwHtLsSDM3VtHNtUIPWqrruim

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