Castlevania Advanced collection hits College era nostalgia hard. These were the games I was playing when I was in college and remind me of a more innocent time. A time where Mom was alive and I was idealistic and naive.
Circle of the Moon is not a canon game... cue 2099 theme Spike! Also this game gets a lot of unnecessary flak. Mainly because it's almost unplayable on a normal GBA. Pop it on the gamecube or the NDS and it becomes a decent game. Controls can be a bit awkward. Personally, I like it a lot more now than I did 20 years ago.
On the other hand Harmony of Dissonance can be a weird experience. The game is actually Canon. No Spike we do not need the 2099 theme now! Juste can be weird to control at times and his usage of magic abilities can be a bit cumbersome. Maxim Mode is more annoying and difficult. Will try that some other time... same thing I said 20-ish years ago.
To be fair, the main issue is that I already have a bias towards those games since I played them roughly 20 years ago when I was in college. The only game I don't have any bias against is Aria of Sorrow. My main gripe with the game is the story it kind of doesn't make sense even for Castlevania standards. The gameplay is decent though. I still need to try the quote unquote hard mode, which is using a member of the Belmont clan.
Out of those three my favorite game I'd have to say it's Circle of the Moon then in second place I would put Aria of Sorrow and then third place Harmony of Dissonance. There's a fourth game in the entry but it's not a Game Boy Advance game, it's a SNES game, it's Dracula X, an adaptation of Rondo of Blood. It's not a faithful adaptation so it kinda counts as a game on of its own. People say that Dracula X is harder than Rondo of Blood. I don't see it. I would say it was a bit annoying trying to get the good ending. But I found the original Rondo of Blood a bit harder...
It's a shame that all the improvements that Castlevania received with Super Castlevania 4 were largely forgotten. What I would say is that Dracula X is a refreshing return to Classic NES era Castlevania one and three type of game. Closer to one but you know what I mean I hope.
Is the Anthology worth it? Honestly not a full price. It's only four games and three of them are Game Boy Advance games so they're not that big and the fourth game is an SNES game so it's not something huge. I find the NES game collection to have a bit more bang for your buck even if the games are shorter. And I think it would be more appropriate to get these for the Nintendo switch since they were meant originally to be portable games
No comments:
Post a Comment