User Rating: 8.9 | Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance GBA
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is a game that manages to take a big step forwards and a small step backwards at the same time. Of course, despite it's problems it's still a lot of fun, and it'll last you a good long time if you decide to make the effort to play through it. The plot of the game goes something like this: Juste Belmont is a blood descendant of the legendary vampire killer Simon Belmont who defeated Dracula in the original NES Castlevania games. He inherited the title of "Vampire Slayer" when he was sixteen and holds the whip which his family has used for ages to kill vampires. One day his rival Maxim returns from a long training expedition covered in wounds. He tells Maxim that their friend Lydie has been kidnapped, and so they both set out to save her. After a trek through the woods, they come upon a mysterious castle that is not charted on any map. And so the game begins. It plays out a lot like a standard action platformer. The difference is, the entire game takes place in one continuous world. There are no "stages" here per se, although the game will briefly identify the different areas of the castle. You can travel wherever your abilities will allow you to go within the walls of the structure. You're pretty much in charge of finding everything for yourself. The game does give out a hint or two at times in the form of certain items, but this usually doesn't give direct instructions on where to go and what to look for. You do have a map to use, but unfortunately it doesn't give you much detail. As a matter of fact, more often than not it can send you to a dozen dead ends before you finally manage to find a way into a new area. Sometimes this can be a bit aggravating, and you may wish that they had added a bit more detail to the map so that you could at least tell which passages were impassable and which ones would give you a way through. This actually becomes a bigger problem than you might like, but it doesn't totally wreck the game. Also, you normally have to save the game by finding one of the “save rooms” that are located throughout the castle. However, on the pause menu you will also find a “Quick Save” option that will allow you to save without visiting a save room. By doing so, you will reappear in the save room that you last used before the quick save when you restart the game. It may be a bit easy to abuse this system when backtracking however, and this does contribute a small bit to the game’s difficulty factor. Your main weapon is your whip, which will serve you very well throughout the game despite it’s short range. Along with the whip, you will also get a number of secondary weapons, such as knives to throw at your enemies or Holy Water to create a flame that travels along the floor. Normally, these weapons will cost hearts to use. You can replenish your ammunition by destroying the different light fixtures around the castle or defeating enemies. However, you can also gain the ability to create new magical attacks by combining the secondary weapons with different magic books that you'll find around the castle. With them, you may gain the ability to send a fireball flying across the floor, or send lightning bolts through the room. Doing so causes you to use up Mana Points instead of hearts, although mana tends to disappear a lot faster than your hearts will. Fortunately mana regenerates on it’s own, and can be completely replenished in a save room. Also, you may feel that the game is a bit easy. Defeating enemies grants you with experience points that you can use to level-up Juste, much the same as in an RPG. Thanks to this, you may find that you're able to level up until you can defeat most of the normal enemies with ease. Also, a lot of the boss characters are very easy to defeat as well, often you can bring some of them down by using the same basic strategy over and over. This can be a bit of a disappointment at times, especially considering how intimidating some of the bosses can look, but it doesn't hurt things that much. There are still some awesome fights in this game, and it’s well worth seeing all of them. It’s just that you may just be a bit upset with the fact that a lot of this game's biggest fights may not be any tougher than fights with some of the common monsters. Graphically, this game is almost unparalleled on the Game Boy Advance. Everything is drawn in exquisite detail, and all of the characters move perfectly. Most areas have wonderfully drawn backgrounds that move along with the main screen, giving everything a wonderful atmosphere. Juste even has shadow versions of himself that follow behind him when he moves around. The graphics in this game are practically perfect. The only complaint that I could come up with was that, as I mentioned before, the map is sort of bland and uninformative. But that's more of a gameplay issue. The game's sound however is lacking. To put it simply enough, the music sounds like it came from an 8-bit game. The music isn't that bad though. It's all been composed reasonably well, and you may remember some of the songs for some time. But still, it can be a bit disappointing that the music sounds so out-of-date. The sound effects all work well for what they are. There are a few voice samples for when Juste jumps or makes an attack, but these are usually limited to a few of his actions. The rest of the sound effects work well, such as the crack of Juste's whip or the sound of an enemy's footsteps. The sound in this game is sort of marginal overall, but you won't have that much of a problem with it. So to conclude, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is a great buy for the Game Boy Advance. It boasts some of the best graphics and gameplay that have ever been seen on the system. You might be a little upset with how the music lags behind a little, but that shouldn't ruin the game for you at all. I highly recommend that you pick it up if you have a GBA.
