3/5 ★ – fez219's review of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.

Maybe it’s because it was a launch GBA game, but this one was very underwhelming. Play the other Metroidvanias first, because you can do far better! I still had a mostly good time up until the end. Even the worst Metroidvania-style Castlevania game is still… pretty fun! Searching through the castle, upgrading along the way, is always a good time and CotM is no exception. Nathan could control better - he’s too slow before getting the dash, and the dash is annoying to use - but he’s still a satisfying Belmont. The enemy variety is also weak at the beginning, and the castle doesn’t have a ton of identity as its muddy areas mostly feel alike. But I couldn’t help enjoying the basic exploration and combat as I geeked out about what enemies were around the next corner. There’s a tough midboss, but nothing insurmountable. The game is mostly fair until it’s absolutely nightmarish endgame. That’s where all of the games’ flaws become apparent. Dracula’s second form is incredibly overpowered and cheap, with unpredictable moves and horrific damage output. The game’s DSS magic system is obtuse and little help if you don’t have the right cards - and you don’t know which cards are right without a guide. Worst of all, the DSS card drop rate is abysmal. So you probably don’t have the right cards! This basically forces the player into an awful grind, either to get cards or for exp its ill-conceived arena, where DSS is unavailable. It sucks to beat. There’s a fair amount missing from the game too, which I’m gonna chalk up to rushing to make it a launch title. There’s no enemy encyclopedia, equipment is undercooked, and the only items you find through exploration are stat max ups. SotN and later Metroidvania Castlevania games all have these features to my knowledge, making collecting and exploring much more fun for completionist types. At least in Advance Collection the emulator adds an external enemy encyclopedia and UI to somewhat alleviate this. The story is super minimal, with very little dialogue compared to SOTN. The characters are cool, but I wish we saw more of them. There are bonus modes, but you still play as Nathan, just with tweaks to his starting DSS and stats. Nothing sucked me back into the game after I suffered through the awful final boss. So I guess the short version is: the game is a serviceable and fun metroidvania until a massive difficulty spike at the very end, which puts into focus how bad the systems of the game are balanced. The story is extremely basic, so don’t play it just for that. I’d recommend skipping it.