Let’s Talk About Castlevania Advanced Collection

Remember when Konami was good? Yeah, me neither. Oh, it was a thing at some point, but it was so long ago now it’s hard to remember a time when Konami developed actual games over pachinko machines. And one of the most popular of Konami’s franchises is the Castlevania series.

Starting off on the NES the Castlevania series was a unique mix of hardcore side scrolling action, emphasis on the hard because goddamn were they brutal, and classic gothic horror. The games on the 8- and 16-bit consoles are some of the best action titles of their generation. But once the 32-bit systems came around the series began to shift.

The series would appear on both Nintendo 64 and PlayStation with two radically different approaches. The N64 games would take the series into 3D in a very awkward manner, while the PlayStation would get the next 2D entry in Symphony of the Night. However, unlike the linear level by level style of the classic Castlevania titles, Symphony would take the series into a more explorative RPG style approach similar to Metroid.

The game was a massive success both critically and commercially with fans dubbing this style of game Metroidvania after the two franchises. Though personally I prefer the term Search Action as it’s a better description of the gameplay style. From that point on the Castlevania series would base itself more on Symphony of the Night than Dracula’s Curse, at least for the 2D entries.

For home consoles the series would stick to 3D, doing so much better than the original attempt, while the handheld entries would continue in the vein of Symphony of the Night. And since Konami is doing a good job of re-releasing their older games via the Classics Collection line, they decided to re-release all the Game Boy Advance titles in the form of the Castlevania Advanced Collection.

And since it’s October I thought it would be fun to look at this collection and see how each of the games hold up. Before we get to talking about the individual games let’s quickly go over what you get in this collection. You get all 3 Game Boy Advance games, the SNES game Dracula X, 3 different regional versions for each game, a music player, and an art gallery featuring previously unreleased concept art.

So already the collection is fairly robust. But none of that matters if the games themselves aren’t up to snuff. Let's go over each of the games and see whether or not they’re worth playing.

First up is Castlevania Circle of the Moon. For some reason the game is named Castlevania in Europe, yeah that won’t cause confusion or anything. This wasn’t just the first Castlevania game on GBA, it was also a launch title for the console. Yup, this game was released alongside the GBA all the way back in 2001. That was 20 years ago now, dear god do I feel old.

The game has a pretty basic set-up, you play as Nathan Graves, a trainee vampire hunter trying to defeat Dracula and save his master while dealing with his best friend/rival who is acting under Dracula’s control. Standard stuff for a game like this, which is a fitting description of the game.

Circle of the Moon is as standard a Search Action game can get. You explore a large environment, find upgrades to your abilities that let you explore more and try to make your way to the end. If you’ve played a Search Action game before, you’ve played this one.

It doesn’t try to shake up the formula, and that’s perfectly fine. It may be standard, but it’s done very well. The moment-to-moment gameplay is still solid, combat and exploration are both satisfying, and progression is mostly smooth sailing. It can be tricky knowing where exactly to go next after finding a new upgrade. It doesn’t help that the map doesn’t highlight the individual areas of the castle very well, though that’s mainly an issue when backtracking for things you missed.

It isn’t that hard to find the path forward, it’s simply a matter of checking incomplete areas of the map, it’s just a tad irritating. The areas of the castle are varied enough to keep exploration interesting, and there are plenty of optional power ups you can find that makes exploration rewarding.

One of the features of Circle of the Moon that helps it stand out is the Dual Set-Up System or DSS. You have a set of cards you can find that can find that can create different combinations. You have action cards that create the effect and attribute cards that change the elemental properties. For example, the Mercury card powers up your standard whip while Salamander represents the fire element, combine the two and you get a fire whip.

There are 10 cards in each category, so there are plenty of different combinations to play around with. The problem is that the different combinations are not created equal. Some are worthless while others break the game clean in two. It's a little unbalanced.

Despite how unbalanced the Dual Set-Up System is I do enjoy it. I love experimenting with different combinations and seeing what I can come up with. It's one of the reasons I enjoy job systems so much. However, while I enjoy it, DSS has issues that prevent it from being truly great.

For one thing, it kind of renders the sub-weapons useless. There's no reason to use them when certain DSS combinations do their job way better. The only sub-weapon really worth using is the cross and even that isn’t great. They do so little damage you’re better off sticking to your standard whip.

My second issue with DSS is that the game doesn’t tell you what different combinations do until after you’ve activated the effect for the first time. This isn’t so bad for some combinations, but others require Street Fighter style button inputs, which the game doesn’t tell you about until after you’ve already done it, I think you can see the problem there.

The offensive ones aren’t too hard to figure out, but the defensive ones will sometimes require you to intentionally take a hit to see what they do, and that’s no fun. You could just look them up online, but you shouldn’t have to rely on outside sources to figure things out in the first place.

But my biggest issue with DSS is just getting the cards themselves. In order to get them you need to pick them up from specific enemies as a random item drop. 2 problems with this. First, the game doesn’t tell you which enemies drop cards. Now the Advanced Collection does include a feature that fixes this issue, but it’s not something the game tells you by default. I'll give probs to M2 for including that feature, it’s a massive quality of life improvement.

However, this is not a feature in the base game, and without that you’ll find yourself killing random enemies in the vein hope that one of them drops a card. At least give me an encyclopedia or something to tell me what enemies drop what. You know, something every other Castlevania game in this style has.

The second issue is the actual drop rates for the cards. The item drop rates in this game are insanely low, not just for the cards but for all items. You’ll often have to grind out enemies to find the item you want. I can understand this for the cards and equipment, but why are healing items like this? Hell, the healing items are rarer than most other items which makes no sense at all.

Unless you’re grinding for them, you’ll barely have any healing items at all. This makes the game way harder than it should be. I know Castlevania games are known for being difficult, but they’re usually a fair challenge. Symphony of the Night gave you plenty of healing items and that was still decently challenging, so why is this one so stingy with them?

But here’s my question, why are the cards item drops in the first place? Why can’t they be hidden around the castle like in other Castlevania games? The only thing you can find in the castle are boosts to your health, magic and hearts.

That's fine but individually they don’t do much. It's only when you collect a bunch of them that you start to notice any meaningful impact. I'd rather have fewer of them that give noticeable increases and have some of the locations be relegated to the cards.

Circle of the Moon suffers a bit from “first game syndrome”. I know it’s not the first game, or even the first in this style, but it was the first on the console so it counts. The gameplay is still good, it just has a lot of niggling design issues surrounding it.

I will say though that for a GBA launch title it's not a bad looking game. The characters aren’t the most detailed, but the backgrounds are nice to look at and have decent variety. Though apparently the game was criticized on release for being too dark. Apparently, it was hard to see anything when played on early Game Boy Advance models. Fortunately, that isn’t an issue when playing it on the advanced collection.

The music is decent as well. It's not particularly great but it’s competently done here. One thing about Castlevania is that they almost always have decent soundtracks.

Circle of the Moon is a decent start for the series on GBA. It is beginning to show its age a little bit, the controls are a little stiff compared to later titles and it can get very grindy when item hunting, but it’s still a solid title that paved the way for future Castlevania handheld adventures.

The next game in the collection is Harmony of Dissonance. Unlike Circle, this game was produced by Koji Igarashi, the same man who directed Symphony of the Night and who would shepherd the series until the Lords of Shadow reboot. As you would expect this game represents a transparent attempt by Igqarashi to make Symphony of the Night for a portable system.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose. I mean, Symphony of the Night was a critically acclaimed game, so it makes sense to copy that formula. And in a lot of ways Harmony of Dissonance is successful in that, but man does it have some crippling issues.

The story of this game follows Juste Belmont, the grandson of Simon Belmont, as he tries to stop the resurrection of Dracula and save his childhood friend while dealing with his best friend/rival who is acting under Dracula’s control... hang on a minute. Doesn't that sound familiar?

Yup, the plot is basically a carbon copy of Circle of the Moon’s, just replace the childhood friend for the master and they’re pretty much identical. This was intentional. Igarashi was not a fan of Circle of the Moon’s story and set out to one up it with this game. To his credit, the story is a tiny bit more interesting. The characters are more fleshed out and it does a better job of tying in to the greater Castlevania timeline.

Bu the story isn’t that much deeper than Circle of the Moon’s and comes across as a petty attempt to out do it. I know the story in Circle of the Moon wasn’t great, but it wasn’t so bad that it needed a redo. This comes off as more an attempt to satiate Igarashi’s ego than to push the series forward.

Fortunately, the gameplay is much better. Everything in Harmony of Dissonance feels much faster and snappier than in Circle. You have a dash in this game which makes getting around a lot more fun. Compared to how clunky the movement in Circle was, this is a huge improvement.

The control is so much smoother in this game, and it makes exploration and combat a lot more satisfying. Speaking of combat, it’s also been improved thanks to the revamped magic system. DSS was removed but was replaced by a much more streamlined magic system. Now you can find magic books that give you different magic attacks for each of the sub weapons.

You still have plenty of options to mix and match but without making the sub-weapons redundant. It's also nowhere near as broken. Some magic spells are better than others, but I never found any of them too overpowered, until the late game but that’s expected in a game like this.

But the best thing, you don’t find them as obscure item drop. All the spell books are obtained by exploring the castle, just as it always should be. There’s a lot more things to find in the castle this time around. You still have your life and heart increases, but you can also find healing items, armour pieces and special relics to help you out.

Exploring the castle is so much more rewarding than in Circle of the Moon. There's something behind every nook and cranny which incentivizes you to search the castle thoroughly. It's also a much more accessible game. It's nowhere near as difficult as Circle of the Moon, and healing items are far more abundant. Not only are they hidden in the castle, but you can also buy them from a friendly merchant.

Yes, there’s an actual shop in this game. There's money all over the place you can use to buy new items and equipment. I am so glad he’s back. This was sorely missed in Circle of the Moon.

Harmony of Dissonance is a major improvement on Circle of the Moon in a lot of different ways. The gameplay is faster, smoother and far more accessible than its predecessor. But all of that, all the major and minor improvements this game makes, are absolutely wasted thanks to this game’s infuriating level design and progression.

The game is fine for the first few hours. There are a lot of different paths to take but you always have a clear path forward. And then, about 3 hours into the game, it all falls apart. See, Harmony of Dissonance doesn’t just have the 1 castle, it has 2. Well kind of, it’s the same castle but with two sides.

Remember the inverted castle from Symphony of the Night? This is the same idea, only much worse. Unlike the inverted castle which you explored only after finishing up the main castle, here you need to swap between both castles in order to progress.

When you unlock the second castle and the game opens up, things get very convoluted very fast. You're constantly swapping between the two castles with no clear direction of what castle you should be in to progress. Even just backtracking is a hassle because some pathways aren’t open in one castle, or they won’t open until you do something in the other castle.

Once that second castle unlocked, I went from having a general idea of where to go, to having no clue where to go. I got so hopelessly lost in my first playthrough that I was forced to reset and use a guide just to see the ending.

There's just no clear direction in where you need to go or what I had to do. At least with Circle of the Moon I had a decent idea of where to look, here I'm wandering around aimlessly with no idea of what I'm doing. It's a goddamn mess.

Using the guide certainly helped, but that’s no fun. Games like these are all about the joy of discovery, of searching for secrets and uncovering new things. Playing with a guide spoils a lot of that fun, but a lot of you will probably need a guide in order to progress.

And that’s not all, the game also has a lot of obtuse bullshit it doesn’t properly explain. Take the merchant for example. He'll appear in many different rooms of the castle, but some of the rooms he appears in won’t have him in unless certain requirements are met.

Now the game does give you a small clue, but you’ll probably not know what those mean until after you accidentally activated it for the first time anyway. Some aren’t hard to figure out, most just require your hearts or level number to be a certain number, but that shouldn’t be in the game anyway.

If I find a merchant room he should always be there, why do I have to jump through hoops just to buy a potion. Also, some of the merchant locations require a specific item that can only be dropped from certain enemies and is super rare. Of course.

But I think the biggest issue with this game is that it lacks any real identity of its own. It copies so much from previous Castlevania games with little added of its own that it doesn’t really stand out. Even this games magic system is essentially just an evolution of the item crash mechanic from Symphony of the Night. Say what you want about Circle of the Moon, at least the Dual Set-Up System was unique.

Even Juste Belmont takes far too many visual cues from Alucard. He basically just looks like Alucard wearing a Dante jacket. Even the story doesn’t standout because it’s a carbon copy of Circle of the Moon with Simon’s Quest elements thrown in. Even the obtuse bullshit in this game could be seen as a weird throwback to Simon’s Quest.

This makes Harmony of Dissonance one of the more forgettable entries in the series. While playing it I was constantly reminded of other Castlevania game that are much more worthy of playing.

Graphically the game is ok. It's a lot brighter this time around which was done to address criticisms of how dark Circle of the Moon was, but it still works. The main character could look better, but it still has some creative and often times trippy visuals. It's not bad, I like the surreal vibe it goes for.

But the music? What the fuck happened here? I know a lot of the problems with the music is down to the GBA sound chip, which was notoriously bad, but even forgiving that, these compositions are bland and forgettable. There's a couple of standout tracks, but the majority of them are little more than background music, poorly produced and very scratchy background music.

And this is just outright unforgivable. Castlevania is a series well regarded for its excellent music. Even the worst games in the series at least had a handful of decent tracks. So to see this games soundtrack be this bad is baffling.

Even Igarashi has said that the quality of the music was sacrificed to make the game look better visually but that’s no excuse. You shouldn’t sacrifice the music just to make things look better. The presentation should be perfectly balanced as all things should be.

Harmony of Dissonance is widely considered to be the weakest Castlevania game on Game Boy Advance and it’s easy to see why. The fast-paced combat and improved exploration is ultimately let down by confusing level design and convoluted progression. I wouldn’t call the game outright bad, trust me there’s way worse Castlevania games out there, but it’s one of the series weakest entries.

Ok, before we move on to the third and final GBA title I want to quickly go over Dracula X. For those unaware of this game's history, allow me to illuminate. Dracula X is the SNES port/reworking of another Castlevania game called Rondo of Blood.

Rondo is widely considered by many to be among the best Castlevania games, especially the classic era. That game was released on the TurboGrafx-CD system, which was not popular in western territories. So, Rondo remained a Japan exclusive, and Konami decided to rework the game for the far more popular SNES.

Now the TurboGrafx-CD was a fair bit more powerful than the SNES, so a lot of features had to be cut. Gone were the branching paths, multiple playable characters and endings, the FMV anime sequences, all of which were features that make fans consider Rondo a classic.

All of that is perfectly understandable giving the hardware limitations, but Konami also decided to rework the level design. I don’t know why when the original levels were just fine, but they did and completely fucked it up.

Dracula X has some of the worst trial and error level design I've ever experienced in my life. I know that Castlevania has always had an element of that in its design, but it always felt fair and never got in the way of the fun factor. This does and it cripples the game.

To make matters worse you have very little invincibility frames and can get stun locked easily, so you can die incredibly easy. This game is hard as balls but it'sfor all the wrong reasons. It takes what would have already been a sub-standard port and turns it into a mediocre mess.

The only good thing I can say about it is that the visuals and music are both excellent. Sure, it’s not as good as Rondo’s presentation, but it’s still good stuff. I don’t recommend this one, if you want a good SNES Castlevania game, stick to Castlevania IV.

I’m not even sure why Dracula X is on this collection in the first place. It wasn’t released on Game Boy Advanced and doesn’t tie in with any of the other games. It sticks out like a sore thumb here. Maybe they threw it in as a bonus to add more value, but honestly, I think they took away value by adding it in.

And so, we move on to Aria of Sorrow. And I saved it for last for a reason, it’s the best game in this collection by a county mile. Combat is more enjoyable thanks to a wider selection of skills and abilities, exploration and progression are far smoother, and its presentation is among the best on the console.

Even the story is far more engaging. Aria of Sorrow take place in the not-too-distant year of 2035. The plot revolves around a young man named Soma Cruz, a student currently studying in Japan. During a solar eclipse, both he and his best friend are mysteriously transported to Dracula’s castle.

He soon finds that he has the strange ability to absorb the souls of any enemy he kills and must venture through the castle to find a way to escape and uncover the secrets of his awakened dark powers.

It’s a shake-up from the core narrative of the series. Unlike previous games, Dracula doesn’t have as big a presence, mainly because he’s no longer around. Yes, this game takes place sometime after the ultimate defeat of Dracula, with most of the story centering on the mystery on why the castle suddenly appeared and the origin of Soma’s powers.

Soma himself is a very likable character and there’s a much larger supporting cast that he interacts with. It's still not that deep a story, this is still a gameplay first story second kind of game, but it is a lot more fleshed out than the other GBA titles.

The gameplay is where Aria of Sorrow truly shines. First, the level design is much improved over the convoluted mess that was Harmony of Dissonance. At no point did I ever get lost or have no clue of where to go. Progression was smooth and I always felt like I was making some sort of forward momentum.

Even backtracking is made far easier thanks to having more frequent and much better placed warp points. Even the map does a better job of highlighting places you haven’t been to yet, which makes backtracking to get things you’ve missed so much easier.

You won’t be finding any life or magic power ups this time. You’ll still find equipment but life and magic increases via leveling up. I don’t mind this so much because it makes leveling up more impactful, and the weapons and equipment are a great reward anyway.

Speaking of weapons, you have a lot more to pick from. You don’t have the whip, you now have a variety of knives, swords, axes and hammers each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Equipment has been streamlined to only allow one armour piece and one accessory, though they still give you plenty of options for customization.

Combat is not as fast paced as it was in Harmony of Dissonance, no dash this time sadly, but it still a lot of fun. The better weapon and enemy variety help keep things fresh throughout the game, and it offers a better challenge overall. It's still an accessible game, but it put up a better fight than Harmony did.

The biggest addition to the game is the Tactical Soul system. Remember when I said Soma could absorb the souls of the enemies he kills? This is where that comes into play. Every enemy you kill has the chance of dropping their soul, and upon absorbing it you’ll be granted a new ability.

This is where the game truly shines. Being able to use the abilities of the enemies you’ve killed is a lot of fun and the sheer amount of them gives you a ton to mess around with. Aria of sorrow does not have traditional sub-weapons, instead your secondary attacks are made up of moves gained from absorbing enemies' souls.

It isn’t just new attacks you’ll get from enemies either. Some give you a summon ability, or a transformation, or a movement upgrade or even a boost to your stats. There is a decent variety of them and it’s always satisfying to get one because it gives you something new to play with.

Now obviously some abilities are going to be better than others, but it is a well-balanced system. Most of the powerful ones are very rare and hard to get, you’ll often have to grind in order to get them while weaker ones are more common. I don’t mind the souls being random drops in this game, because it’s designed in a way that actually makes sense.

I didn’t bother grinding to get every soul in the game and even then I still had plenty to use. The drop rate is a lot fairer and there’s a special item you can get that makes the drop rates of souls more likely. This is what DSS should have been. I still enjoy DSS, but the Tactical Soul system just blows it out of the water in almost every single way.

This game is just an absolute blast to play. And its presentation is superb. Visually it’s the best looking Castlevania game on GBA. It keeps the more vibrant colour palette of Harmony but does a better job of keeping the traditional Castlevania atmosphere. The environments have better visually variety and the character animations are much more fluid. This is one of the best looking GBA games I've played.

Musically, it’s ok. It's a far cry from the train wreck that was Harmony of Dissonance, but I wouldn’t rank it among the best soundtracks in the series. I don’t remember that much from the soundtrack here but I do remember liking what I heard. I also noticed there was a bit more variety in the tracks this time which was nice to hear. That was something I always loved about the Symphony of the Night soundtrack.

Aria of Sorrow is magnificent. It does just about everything right. It's not a perfect game by any means, but my issues with it are minor nitpicks at best. The only major flaw I can find is the lack of invincibility frames on getting hit, but that only becomes a problem in the late game where I had a lot of health anyway. So it isn’t that big of a deal.

Aria of Sorrow isn’t just the best Castlevania game on Game Boy Advance, it might just be the best Game Boy Advance game period. No joke, I enjoyed the game so much that I would put in my top 3 GBA games of all time. Were it not for Astro Boy the Omega Factor it probably would be my number 1. It’s so close in fact that I could go either way. Unequivocally recommended.

And that’s it for the games on Castlevania Advanced collection. Overall, it’s a solid line-up of games. Aria of Sorrow is the highlight of the collection, it’s an excellent game that represents some of the best that the Search Action genre has to offer.

Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance are a bit more of a mixed bag though I wouldn’t call either of them bad. They can still be a good time even if they are rough around the edges. And as for Dracula X, it really shouldn’t be here. It's a mediocre port of an excellent game with little to offer of its own. It's here as a bonus and best left ignored.

In terms of content, all 3 GBA games should take you roughly 7 hours to complete. However, each game offers a variety of additional modes and playable characters upon completion which add some replay value. I haven’t tried them out yet, but they offer more hours of content for those who want it.

You're getting your money’s worth in this collection which makes it worth a purchase. And if you’re a newcomer then this is the best way to try them out. The addition of save states and a rewind feature makes this the most accessible way to experience these classic titles.

Castlevania Advanced collection is an excellent way to experience this era of the franchise. And given how expensive these games have gotten, also the most cost effective. It's a great collection and worth picking up for newcomers and series veterans alike. I would even argue that Aria of Sorrow is worth the price of admission alone.

And if you enjoyed this collection, might I also recommend the Anniversary Collection if you want some classic Castlevania action. I mean it’s even got some of the oldest Castlevania handheld game like Castlevania the Adventure, which is one of the worst games I've ever played in my life. Ok maybe don’t buy it for that one.