Boss fights take 10 seconds or 10 minutes based on card drop RNG, the platforming is as tedious as the Inverted Castle's, you have to double-tap every time you change direction, and changing direction in the air also changes the direction of your whip.91% on Metacritic????????????????
>>12905803You didn't even mention the worst part. The castle has nothing interesting to find. All the secrets are either HP or mana upgrades. I forget how you get other items, but this was like the #1 thing that I remember and could not believe how bad it was
>>12905803I found SotN to be pretty mid. Great art and music, but it's just really tedious, repetitive, very poorly balanced, bosses are an unmemorable pushover, literally zero interesting encounter design, movement is too slow for the massive castle and constant backtracking, inventory management and equipping some random junk for +1 to some arbitrary stat is clunky as hell, and the latter half is just copy-pasted and flipped, so lazy. Even at its best, it pales compared to classicvania.With that being my view, would there be any reason for me to play the GBA or DS games?
>>12905826Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance are bad even if you like SotN. Based on your criticism, Order of Ecclesia is probably the only one you'll enjoy.
>>12905826>>12905829You'd probably like Circle of the Shit, it's hard for no reason other than to keep you from beating it and to make you feel like le hardcore gaymer.It's nothing like the fluid, zen, kinographic experience of playing Symphony of the Night
>>12905803I'd be fine with bosses taking 10 minutes if they actually had tons of moves and multiple phases.But the problem with Igavanias is that their bosses have the moveset variety of a classicvania boss (3-5 moves on average) but with extremely bloated HP bars to compensate for all the RPG elements. I recently played Haunted Castle Revisited on the Castlevania Dominus Collection. One of the bosses was this crystal knight who had 4 moves. The difference being that you can kill him in like 30 seconds because of the classicvania nature of the game. If that boss was in an Igavania, the only difference he'd have is he'd have almost 10 times as much HP and would take me almost 3 minutes to kill him.
>>12905829OoE is not retro but it has awesome combat without being tedious
>>12905834I didn't say SotN is bad because it's too easy, I said it's really poorly balanced, in basically all aspects. It's still a decent game, but almost purely on vibes, art, music, the gameplay itself is pretty bad all things considered. >>12905831So all of the GBA and DS games double down on rpg grinding slop? I do like action RPGs, just not when they feel like shitty MMOs with poor balance and unsatisfying progression.
>>12905838you know, these games have been for 20 years. a simple google search would've told you that they are all metroidvanias
>>12905838>So all of the GBA and DS games double down on rpg grinding slop?Nah, all the GBA and DS games have totally fine balancing with the exception of Circle of the Moon. The EXP system is pretty much invisible after Circle.
>>12905842have been out*
>>12905803A big part of the reason so many people give Circle of the Moon a pass is because it was a day-1 launch title. So especially on places like Metacritic, they aren't judging it against Harmony of Dissonance or Aria of Sorrow or any other GBA game, they're judging it against Game Boy Color games. And in the pretend world that doesn't exist anymore where the only GBA games that exist are the 25-ish launch titles, Circle of the Moon's many flaws are maybe a lot more forgivable.This is a reason why you should take Metacritic scores with a nice fistful of salt.
>>12905847It's also many people's first Castlvania game. Much like Sonic Adventure 1/2, there's a certain subset of people who shall not be named whose first exposure was these specific games
>>12905842I don't inherently hate metroidvanias. Some games implement the design well, and some that don't are still good in spite of it.Most modern indie metroidvanias draw inspiration from SotN, just having a fuckhuge map and dropping progression gates randomly all over and just having you wander around and pingpong back and forth, compared to the much tigher, more intentional, and subtle invisible hand design of Super Metroid.
>>12905838>SotNToo easy and literally copypastes the castle>CotMToo hard>HoDDifficulty is not worth talking about because the game is boring. It literally copypastes the castle and this time it isn't even upside down>AoSSometimes hardish but mostly easy. No grinding and no copypasting>DoSSame as AoS>PoRHarder than the last two but not that hard. There's 4 levels that reuse backgrounds from earlier in the game but the layouts are new. No grinding.>OoEDoesn't even commit to the Metroidvania thing for most of the game as it's mostly linear levels. Harder than Rondo. No grinding needed, all skill baby.
>Filtered by CotM, thread #9842*Yawn*
>>12905847Yeah it's interesting how much Metacritic scores are basically just chasing/predicting trends and sucking off graphics/technical elements. Just look at RE2, a 30 point drop just in the span in <5 years, yet most people still consider that a masterpiece even today.The issue is most of these journo fags don't actually organically play and enjoy games, they can't see that magic, that invisible spark, that makes some games so fun and timeless, it's just a clinical analysis to them. Instead of reviewing like >X game is fun, 10/10. Y game is not fun 3/10they review like>X game is probably fun but I don't enjoy gaming so I have no original opinions, 10/10, Y game is probably not fun but I don't actually enjoy games as a whole anyways 3/10
>>12905829Aria of Sorrow and the DS vanias have vastly better gameplay, people circlejerk SOTN for the home console visuals and audio. And a heavy dose of nostalgia.Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance are just bad low budget games though.
>>12905819The card mod makes it so that the cards are on the alters, giving the castle something to find>>12905803>>12905831>double tapuse the run hack>>12905831harmony is also a lot more fun if you play romhacks instead of caring about vanilla bullshit>>12905854>Metroid>boring setting>boring enemies>bomb every single fucking square in the game>muh "ambient" (boring) ost
>>12905803CotM part of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow universehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZbrsOnN2bk
Love how Circle of the Moon keeps filtering shitters even after 25 years. It'd be my favorite for this reason alone, but it's also a great game.
>>12906028>Love how Circle of the Moon keeps filtering shitters even after 25 yearsI don't know, the filtering seems to be a pretty recent to me. All the "issues" the game has were always there but only in recent years I have seen people make a big deal out of it. It's mostly just modern gaming retards who played all the trendy modern memetroidvania, who all play the fucking same, and don't know anything else.
>>12906030 circles quirks feel pretty well tread to me as someone who played it at release.
pros:-vaguely has the traits that made symphony good.-isn't too easy-has depth for advanced players willing to mine it.cons:-basic control is somewhat tedious. walk and walk-jump are too weak for close range utility, every useful movement requires a double tap.-the scale of the game leads to many long repetitive chasms and corridors that make backtracking more of a chore than it should be -low drop rat can heavily distort the viability of dss on a regular fresh playthrough, a slightly unlucky player that doesn't grind excessively could end up with a meager whip attack and a couple paltry gimmicks>you need to replay it a bunch of times. it's not particularly good enough to replay.Ultimately I think it's fine in the context of a gba launch title, its aggressive super fans can grate but that's not the game's fault.
>>12906030>It's mostly just modern gaming retards who played all the trendy modern memetroidvaniaOr maybe we're comparing it to SotN, retard?
>>12906030>Only in recent yearsMaybe if you're a zoomer
>>12905803I agree - very shitty game. Looks like shit, no fun/soulful stuff like in others, either
>>12905803I've literally been farming the Saturn card for over an hour and it won't fucking drop no matter what. I don't even hate the game, but fuck the farming to hell and back
>>12906205>to hell and backand back to hell, and back, and back to hell, and back...
>>12906205Have fun getting the Unicorn and Black Dog cards. They're only rarely dropped by White/Black Armors in the battle arena near the very end.
>>12905803by far the worst game out of the GBA trilogy
>>12906205In my utopia, any game designer that puts RNG drop rates in their games gets the rope.
>>12906534sovlless utopia
>>12905967which harmony romhacks do you recommend?
>>12906585not a romhack but entering hardgame for the character name saves it from being stupidly easy.
>>12905803Play instead aria of sorrow, is better.
>>12905967Card mod and auto-run hack are essential to replaying CotM, I don't think I could replay it vanilla.The grind for card drops is too blind (since you don't know which enemies have the good shit unless you're using a guide or playing the Advance collection version), and even then the drop rates are just too low.DSS glitch to use any combo exists, but is inconvenient.Fun fact about that auto-run hack is that due to how to alters mid-air controls, it makes single-wall scaling possible when you have the wall jump upgrade. This enables a major sequence break with the Underground Waterway where you can go in through the exit and face Camilla early.You can do a similar sequence break using glitches in vanilla anyway.
>>12907312the card mod pisses me off desu>one specific gripe with the game, card drops>I'll add in a ridiculous amount of health drops that break the game on the sidewhy do they think it's a good idea to randomly balloon the scope of their hacks?
>>12906585Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance (Visual Improvement v1.2.9)[Chain][Reharmonized][Better Fast Travel]https://retrogametalk.com/repo/gba-roms/castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance-visual-improvement-hack/
>muh double tap to runFiltered by Kirby's Dream Land.
Fun fact: Richter mode in Portrait of Ruin renders COTM and HOD both obsolete. That mode is the best of both worlds. You get to control a whip character in a big non-linear map you can explore (and you need to in order to find HP and MP upgrades) with tons of movement options available right from the get go. You have all your standard sub-weapons simultaneously available to use alongside Maria accompanying you with her own array of sub-weapons. If you want a challenge, you can literally set the game to cap your level at LV1 and play at Hard mode. Good luck with that. The final boss alone is guaranteed to take you at least 10 minutes to beat.
>>12908971>if you want a challenge, just play the mode where you die in one hit and enemies take 200 hits
>>12908971I think I beat Richter mode lv cap 25 on real hardware, but yeah it's bullshit for these reasons >>12908996Even at lv 25 the DPS check attack (the crushing hands) is barely doable, I believe you must switch to Maria and alternate hitting both hands due to how her doves work.Play lv cap 50 if you want an actually fair challenge.
>>12908996Even if you don't want to do it, Hard/LV1 with Richter is just an option for those who think Hard with a a higher level cap is somehow "easy". You can still play Hard mode with a LV50 cap and it's still challenging since you have zero access to near-infinite healing items you can stock up on with Jonathan/Charlotte, nor do you have access to broken equipment like Miser Ring combined with Berserker Mail to make your damage output utterly ridiculous.Of course, there's also an arguably even harder way of playing with Old Axe Armor mode with the same difficulty settings. I'm just saying all of this to show that POR has a very high skill ceiling for those who want to really conquer and master it. >>12909004Yeah, that's how people do it. Bring both Richter and Maria out and also using the red bird sub-weapon because of its helix like vertical hitbox.https://youtu.be/nac4sT3-COc?si=SffL7svzZBJIDtja&t=3198
The cardshit was the precursor to the pokemonshit, weapons were always more kino than some spoop soul
>>129080052nd this
>>12908005>
>>12907343It's a side effect of how the DSS card drop rate for specific early enemies is very, very high.If you want to grind for health drops in vanilla, it's excruciating and the grind itself will give you EXP for levels and defense.So really it's over-compensating for the dogshit grinding.
no u
>>12910023>use 10minmailwooooow so hard
>>12905831Order of ecclesian was not bad, but i prefered aria of sorrow and portrait of ruin.
>>12910829>don't force people to sign up to read drivelwoooow so hard
>>12905803Why no one understands, Circle of the Moon is a mix between Sotn and the old Castlevania games, thats why more emphasis is put on the fights and surviving through while exploring
Why does one mention the MAGICIAN mode in Circle of the moon? If you finish the game once, you can play the mage mode, your stats are weaker but you have access to all the cards from the very beginning
>>12915469Because there's an easy to do glitch that gives you all cards instantly and barely anyone plays those NG+ modes.
>>12915469>just play this mediocre game again>no we couldn't coherently balance the system with limitations, just have everything at once
>>12910937I've been replaying all the DS games recently and I'm starting to think Ecclesia is the peak Iga game. Challenge feels just right (hard mode) and I think it matches and even surpasses SotN at times graphically. Portrait is cool too but Dawn is kinda stock.
>>12905803All you have to do is hold the button down and not let go while running and you can change directions and jump keep running without having to re-input the double tap.
>>12915935Or just use the auto-run patch, there's no reason to ever walk in this game. Even Konami realized this and made Richter auto-run in Portrait of Ruin where he appears as a bonus character with his SOTN moveset.
