And so it’s out with Circle of the Moon, and in with Harmony of Dissonance. I’ve played it for almost an hour and a half already, and I’m enjoying it. There’s something not quite right about it, though. Maybe it’s the way Juste (your character) has a bizarre blue glow and shadow trails. Maybe it’s the fact I had to start again completely powerless. It could be that L and R perform dashes rather than special moves. Or perhaps it’s that you don’t have DSS (like Circle, which is effectively the same as the souls in Dawn of Sorrow for the DS). It could even be that you don’t feel like you’re actually in a castle for much of it (so far), with strange rooms and caves and caverns and things.
But in other ways, it’s more like Castlevania. Specifically, some of the baddies from Super Castlevania IV reappear, like the bone snake thing, and the bone towers (which were in Circle, bit in a bastardised form). You collect money too, and can manually “twirl” your whip.
And then it has bits like Dawn. Like a shop. And great added bits like the ability to quick save anywhere. You can sort of tell it was made between the SNES and DS games, anyway.
So to the game itself proper then. I’ve killed two bosses already. There was a bat cluster, and a big skeleton with a large sword who I whipped in the kneecaps. I’ve seen about 25% of the map, collected the Ice and Fire books, loads of armour upgrades, and assorted relics including Lizard Tail. I’m really missing the double-tap-to-run and double-jump powers though. I’m sure they’ll become available at some point.
I’m saved up near a boss door for now. That’s for next time’s play, though.
