Sotaro Tojima & Hiroshi Mitsuoka - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (2001)

 

Composer: Sotaro Tojima & Hiroshi Mitsuoka

Console: GBA

Game Release Date: 2001-03-21

Bootleg Release Date: 2022-08-29

Ripper: Someone on KHInsider

Runtime: 35:00, 20 Tracks

The 'Igavanias' are among some of my favourite games. Dawn and Aria of Sorrow are two perfect, 10/10 games. I have tried to play all of them back to when I regularly used my GBA, to my NDS, to my handheld gaming tablet thing (GPD), to my Ouya and then finally to now. Back in 2017 summer I found out that someone had made an Aria of Sorrow randomizer. I gave that a shot and it re-invigorated my love for the series. Then I proceeded to replay all the games in the series at about 2-3 a summer since then. 

Flash forward now and there are still a few I haven't played. One of the ones I never touched was today's post, Circle of the Moon. 

Circle of the Moon is the second game in the series, released sometime after Symphony of the Night. I used to say it was a bad game and the worst in the series. Tried playing it back in, I think 2018 but gave up facing multiple issues with it. And there the game sat for a few years until now. 

Nathan ran too slow, enemies took too much damage, there wasn't many places to go, no shop, very little customization (compared to Symphony and Aria), a plot I didn't really care for, the card system seemed utterly pointless and he was too slow. Yeah, the fact that Nathan walked so slow compared to ALL the other games in the series was a major issue. There was a running option but I had double tapping to run, especially when I will need to be running 99.8% of the time. Off on a tangent but I hate that Minecraft and Megaman & Bass GBA do the same double-tap thing. It's so stupid. Thankfully both those games have dedicated run buttons (Megaman only on the SNES version) but still. There's fuck-all reason to go THAT slow in a Castlevania game. Maybe in the older, linear ones but not this one where I will be running all over the place. 

Rant aside, at some point someone made a randomizer for it. Now, during my replays I had done them all randomized. Hell, there being no randomizer for CotM was one of the reasons I abandoned the run. Now that one was made I decided to give it another shot. 

This would probably by my fifth or sixth time really sitting down with the game. And thankfully the randomizer fixed the biggest issue I had. It had an option for autorun. Soon as I enabled that it didn't matter how hard the game was it would at least be playable. 

I'm sorry, I just really don't like moving slow in those kinds of games. I won't mention it again for the rest of this post. 

Circle of the Moon is a metroidvania wherein you play as Nathan Graves, the current bearer of the vampire killer. Having been separated from your teacher and your best friend having run off it's up to you to stop Dracula. 

So, in basic castlevania style, run about the castle collecting stuff to eventually face off against Dracula. Though this time I had a randomizer on. The only things I really had on were item randomization and autorun. There was no enemy randomization though I would have activated if there were. 

I think, had I just played the another game in the series recently I may have found flaws with it but I think because it had been so long I was starved for some classic Igavania. Maybe that's why I liked it so much. 

Either by pure luck or design I was able to get like 70% of the way through the game without killing a single boss. Nearly none of the progression power-ups were behind bosses. I feel I could actually have made it all the way to Dracula but there was a part where I felt I was stuck and then decided the progress must be behind a boss door. Had I looked at the map closer I would have seen I could have progressed but whatever. By that point most bosses were a cakewalk. 

Definitely the hardest part of the game was the sewer. Now normally you are supposed to come here with the ability to purify water. This being my first run this deep I had no idea such an item existed. I also never found it. So in the end I cleared the entire sewers without purifying it. I had to do it with tons of moon jumps and quick movements. Definitely the highlight of the run. I still haven't found it. It's likely behind some door I never found. 

The Arena was also insane. Of all the 'boss rushes' and monster gauntlets in all the series this was by FAR the hardest one. With no shop your only option is to grind enemies for potions and play extremely careful. I don't remember what the reward was but it wasn't anything worth mentioning. 

The card combo I used the most was the healing combination. With no shop I had to conserve what items I did. The only option at that point was to just spam heal. I did occasionally also use the holy sword but mostly to run through bosses quicker. Both the healing and sword were absolutely essential to the final fight. I legit can't see how it's even winnable without those. 

Thinking of which, the Dracula fight was pretty cool too. Definitely one of, if not the hardest Dracula fight across the games. This is also the only one that actually required the moon jump to use. While he was in his 'charging' form the only way I could even dodge he charges was to hide up in the top corners. 

While we were camping I brought it up for my little sister to play (also randomized) and to this day we're still stuck on the final boss for her, even adding it to her hardest bosses list. It's a brutal game. She managed to clear the arena (though we did have to use save states, don't hate, better than her just raging). 

All in all, I had a great time playing this. The randomizer and community love I saw for the game made me re-think my opinion on it. Who knew that by just making the character run faster I would like it so much? Although, it still is possible I have just been hungry for an Igavania so long that I would take anything but w/e. 

My opinion on Circle of the Moon used to be 'the worst of the Igavanias and all around a bad game, unplayable'. It is not 'still the worst in the Igavanias but definitely worth a play for completionists and an overall enjoyable experience'. I will defend that Circle is the worst of the Igavanias. But then again, that's a hard bar. Aria, Dawn, Symphony, Order, Portrait, Harmony I and Harmony II are all phenomenal games. Just by order there has to be a 'bad' one.

So yeah, i'll admit I was wrong about Circle. I misjudged it. I will still maintain that without that randomizer it's a shit game but that's an argument for another time. It felt good to finally play another Castlevania. 

As for the Igavanias the only ones still remaining for me are Harmony 2 (though this isn't technically one it has all the sprites and characters), Bloodstained (ehn, not really a fan of the graphics) and Grimoire (the one I am most excited for, please PLEASE Konami port this to Steam or something! I can't play it on iOS/Apple's BS). 

For the next Metroidvania I was considering the Overlord game, despite knowing nothing about the book or anime. 

As for the music it was composed by Sotaro Tojima & Hiroshi Mitsuoka. Aside from Sotaro's contributions to the Konami Krazy Racers there isn't much about these two composers. Both have done work exclusively for Konami. No idea where they are now. 

The music is like Aria's, making full use of the GBA's sound chip. I found a lot of the songs were catchy (maybe just because I ran through those areas so much) and even without song titles I can easily remember where they appear. The best songs were Fate to Despair, Awake and The Sinking Old Sanctuary. Really, it was the main area themes I like a lot. Though I have been critical of the game, at least the soundtrack is alright. 

Looking around there are two 'rips' of this soundtrack floating around. One of them is a direct rip from the game. The other is an official release from Konami that also includes the entire soundtrack from Harmony of Dissonance. The quality of both rips are pretty close that there really isn't any benefit one over the other. Both rips also suffer from the 'tracks too short' syndrome I have seen a lot of soundtracks have. Just loop the song a few times. Is that so hard? 

Since one of the versions is on streaming sites I will link the one that isn't (and hopefully Konami won't care). 

Btw, this will be the final post before we do GOTY and conclude the blog for good. 

Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUvdUVZeUZCTGIjUFFkV25zLWJ3WkNlWlRZNm9EWVFqRGpDT0l5UkZTQXA0c3UyaXAxc2lZWQ==

p@ss: usetherandomizer