If you can get past the punishing difficulty and lower end production values, then you can enjoy Circle of the Moon.
The story of the game has you playing as Nathan Groves, supposedly a descendant of the Belmont clan. Dracula seems to have been sporadically revived by a Follower named Camilla, and it is up to you to save your mentor before Dracula drains all of his blood and regains full power. Now, with what I just told you it should not be hard to imagine that this game has a throwaway story. Not that Castlevania games are known for being the pinnacle of narratives in the video gaming, but this one in particular is sloppily put together. It's not really the story that has loyal fans eager to play new installments, but it's the gameplay that sucks them in.
On that note, the gamplay is decent for the most part. There are some irritating flaws that can ruin some of the enjoyment of the game. Right at the beginning the movement of Nathan can lead gamers to grind their teeth with how slow his default walking is. It almost feels like mockery that the player receives the dash upgrade three screens into the game; there is simply no point to have it as an upgrade. Even after the dash skill is acquired the controls can get on your nerves of double tapping on the D-pad for which direction you want to dash in. The ground slide however is a skill that Nathan has from the get-go, This is a missed opportunity to use this as an upgrade to use as puzzles to limit the player early on in the game. Other upgrades received are a double jump, a skill to push boxes or to break blocks of stone, all given to you in the "Metroid-Vania" fashion.
The design of the game is good in many parts, the pace in which all the upgrade items are given too you seem to be nicely paced and the time between boss battles seem equally paced. The RPG elements of leveling up your character and equipping items to enhance strength and defense also seem to be paced pretty well. One area that isn't particularly well balanced is the difficulty. The difficulty of the game can feel really punishing at times and not for the easily frustrated. I found myself level grinding in order to overcome the games tough enemies and bosses, which would probably upset some common side-scroll gamers. Another sloppy aspect of the design is the overuse of break-away walls for secret rooms, more variety in puzzles for the games hidden power-ups would have made the game show more breadth. Another very complex and cumbersome layer added onto the gameplay is the Dual Set-up System, or the DSS. When you defeat certain enemies there is a chance that they will drop a card that goes either on the top or lower bracket in the DDS submenu. Cards have different effects when paired with different duel card combinations like creating a spinning ice barrier or turning your whip into a thorn filled vine. This system sounds great in theory but it becomes pretty cumbersome to keep track of and there are many combinations that turn out to be pretty useless and only a handful can be put to good use. This leads to another frustrating aspect of the game is how unlikely it is for enemies to drop important items. I ran around hoping enemies would drop spiced meat or certain DDS cards but it seems to never happen, like the chances for it are really miniscule. This also leads to another missing part that was a part of "Symphony of the Night" is the Merchant. You will get an abundant amount of prison garbs throughout the game and it feels like a jip that they just stack up with no means to sell them, or with no means to buy important items like potions or manna potions. It's hard to overlook these missed opportunities as well.
Also on note with missed opportunities with the game is the graphics. There are some cool details to it but with the lack of animation frames, but if some areas didn't have layered backgrounds I would have thought that much of this game looked like a SEGA Master System Game. Nathan only has three frames of animation when he is running and it just looks jerky, many of the enemies and boss characters also have this same lack of animation frames and it really brings down the quality of the package to have stiff moving characters. The color palate also suffers from this mix of browns and purples. If you are playing this game on the original GBA screen without the backlight then this game is almost on the border of being unplayable.
The standout part of the presentation of this game package is the music. The music capabilities on the GBA might be limited but man does the Castlevania team make it shine. Wile playing I actually found myself just stopped in the catacombs just to listen to the music in there. The game is also filled with some more ambient beats for the other areas of the game. The sound effect design is also done pretty well like the shrill shriek that harpies will do once you dispatch them or the sound of whirling your whip about. so this game has solid sound design all through out.
I'm not sure if this is due to it being rushed out the door to make launch, but the gameplay, design, and graphics could have taken a bit more time at the drawing board. There is so much more to be seen in a handheld open-ended side-scroller than what we are seeing in this one. There is a lot of creativity and inventiveness behind the Castlevania team for them to make a better game package than this one. Yet also with all that said this is a descent action adventure game. If you can get past the punishing difficulty and lower production values, then you can enjoy Circle of the Moon.
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 10
Tilt: 7
Value: 8
Score: 7.8