Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, known simply as Castlevania in the PAL region, is a video game created by Konami for the Game Boy Advance.

Plot
Taking place in 1830, Circle of the Moon is set in one of the fictional universes of the Castlevania series. The premise of the original series is the eternal conflict between the vampire hunters of the Belmont clan and the immortal vampire Dracula. Circle of the Moon 's protagonist, however, is Nathan Graves, whose parents died a decade ago to banish Dracula.[6] Morris Baldwin, who helped in Dracula's banishment, trained him to defeat Dracula and the monsters; Morris ultimately chose him as his successor and gave him the "Hunter Whip", to the displeasure of Hugh, Morris' son who trained alongside him.

At an old castle, Camilla, a minion of Dracula, revives him, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Morris, Nathan, and Hugh. Before they are able to banish him again, Dracula destroys the floor under Nathan and Hugh, causing them to plummet down a long tunnel. Surviving the fall and wishing to find his father, Hugh leaves Nathan behind. Nathan proceeds to search the castle for his mentor. Along the way, he learns that at the next full moon, Morris' soul will be used to return Dracula to full power. He also periodically encounters Hugh, who becomes more hostile as the game progresses.[7][10] Eventually, Nathan encounters Camilla, who hints that she and Dracula are responsible for the changes in his personality.[11] Nathan vanquishes Camilla in her true form and meets up with Hugh once more. Upon seeing him, Hugh immediately attacks him with the goal of proving himself to his father through Nathan's defeat; Nathan, however, realizes that Dracula is controlling Hugh. Nathan defeats him, and Dracula's control over Hugh breaks. Confessing that he doubted his self-worth when Nathan was chosen as successor, Hugh tasks him with Morris' rescue.

Arriving at the ceremonial room, Nathan confronts Dracula, who confirms that he had tampered with Hugh's soul to cause the changes in his personality. They begin to fight and halfway through, Dracula teleports away to gain his full power. Hugh then frees his father and tasks Nathan with Dracula's banishment. Nathan continues the battle and defeats Dracula; escaping the collapsing castle, he reunites with Morris and Hugh. Nathan is declared a master vampire hunter by Morris. Hugh vows to retrain under Morris due to his failure.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game includes many remixed music themes from the first Castlevania titles for the NES, some of which are absolutely amazing and even better than their original counterparts, like Nightmare and Vampire Killer.
 * 2) Explore one of the largest castles in the entire franchise (only losing to Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow), with an variety of areas like mazes, catacombs, underground tunnels, etc.
 * 3) Use the classic "Vampire Killer" (though it is actually called Hunter's Whip outside of the game) whip to attack and defeat enemies, alongside every secondary weapon you all know and love, such as: The axe, cross, holy water, dagger and stopwatch.
 * 4) Obtain a wide variety of abilities in an Metroidvania style, such as becoming able to run, double jump, and wall kick, etc.
 * 5) Awesome soundtrack, with some amazing songs line the Theme song, the Machine Tower song and more.
 * 6) Circle of the Moon incorporates elements found in role-playing games, much like Symphony of The Night, such as Hit points, Magic points, strength, luck, defense values, etc.
 * 7) Similar to Symphony of the Night (again), defeated enemies drop various items and equipment, and provide experience points.
 * 8) Unique to Circle of the Moon is the Dual Set-up System (DSS), based on magic cards found throughout the game that belong to one of two categories: Action and Attribute, with each category having 10 cards, resulting in 20 cards to find.
 * 9) *Action cards are pretty much magic cards which cagenerate a different type of effect based on the card, like Jupiter and Venus.
 * 10) *Attribute cards on the other hands are pretty much elementary cards that can generate an effect based on the element or monster of that card and also based on tha Action card, like Salamander and Mandragora.
 * 11) To produce a magical effect, the player combines one card from each of the two categories, for a total of one hundred different combinations.
 * 12) *Some of these combinations in special are very fun to play with like the Mars + any Action card which generate an entirely different weapon like an sword, hammer, and even an strong punch attack with an 3 attack combos and even an kick, or the Uranus + any Action card which generate summon spells who act a lot like the Item Crushes from Rondo of Blood, and like the latter, it also can melt down even the toughest bosses with ease.
 * 13) Castlevania: Circle of the Moon has four alternative modes of gameplay, which must be completed in order as completion of one mode unlocks the code for the next.
 * 14) There is also an area called Battle Arena, which is pretty much an colosseum with multiple rooms to clear with the toughest enemies as well as exclusive ones like White Armor, and beating it grants you the strongest armor in the game.
 * 15) The idea that you start already inside Dracula's Castle instead of the entrance or outisde of it is fairly unique for the franchise.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Graphics are insanely dark in brightness, making the game difficult to see on the original Game Boy Advance model.
 * 2) Although the DSS card system is great as mentioned above, it does have some major flaws.
 * 3) *First of all, the cards are ONLY dropped by enemies, and none are found on the map, which while may not sound so bad on paper, it becomes an absolute nightmare when trying to get some cards like the Aforementioned Uranus or the ones dropped by enemies exclusive to the battle arena, the latter (Uranus) in special is simply ridiculous to drop, as first you need to kill the Dragon Zombie, then go to the Machine Tower boss room and kill the enemies in it, and then the drop rate is ridiculously low.
 * 4) *Also some combinations and even cards as a whole are pretty much pointless, like the Mars + Golem combo, which attacks very slowly and barely deals an scratch to enemies.
 * 5) Speaking of drop rate, everything, again, LITERALLY EVERYTHING varying from the cards to even an normal potion has absurdly low drop rate, which makes going through some areas or bosses sometimes very difficult, especially without healing combos.
 * 6) The map, while huge, does suffer from some level design problems like an high amount of vertical rooms, and cheap enemy placement.
 * 7) *Not only that, but also exploring it to get upgrades (you know, the whole point of an METROIDVANIA), is not worth almost at all due to the cards only dropping from monsters as mentioned above. Heck, not even armor or any accessory or consumable you get from exploring the map.
 * 8) Due to all the problems mentioned above, the game suffers heavily from artificial difficulty due to the lack of healing and damage you deal without good cards or combinations.
 * 9) *Some bosses can be very difficult without specific cards like Dracula Phase 2nd.

Reception
Circle of the Moon was positively received, selling a total of one million copies in the month following its North American and European release, 500,000 of which in Japan.

It was rated the 108th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list. On the review aggregate site Metacritic, it is the twelfth-highest rated Game Boy Advance title.

Videos
SrBPQ8k5OTk zUzcjM2KuUg 2oh7CMEOysU de-Z1S50VBc