Summary
Worse than Circle of the Moon
The Good
Harmony of Dissonance is the second game of the Castlevania series for the Game Boy Advance system. It has many new features, bigger sprites, a new magic spell system based on spell books instead of the DSS system seen in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and two castles (which are the same one with a different look).
Bigger sprites usually means better graphics in a game like that, and there are many castle details. Each room is different from the others, and the enemies are tough. That's an important new feature, here you can face some enemies so big that they look like big bosses, but they aren't. Beside that, there are many bosses during the game, and you can find one of them every five or six rooms. Here you have much big bosses than in the previous game, in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon you faced a boss who's guarding some specific object/power to progress in the game, here you will face bosses only to get pass, and nothing more.
A new control system uses the L-R buttons to dash. It will take some time to get used to that, but when you've mastered it you'll realize that it was a good choice. It makes the game faster and spectacular.
Circle of the Moon has a good music, it used some epic songs of the series, on the other side, Harmony of Dissonance hasn't such as good songs, but there are all new. So, you decide what you prefer. FX's good too.
The best thing of the game is the fact that it's Castlevania. You play that and you don't have to know the name of the game because it has the essence of the series. It's not easy to keep that essence in all the games, but it looks that they have the way. That mixture of action, RPG, and exploring the whole castle makes the game really funny, and you'll play it a long time because it's not short. Also, you have a Boss Rush mode when you've finished the game to make the game much longer.
The Bad
The androgynous main character Juste Belmont suits with the essence of the game, but the story is a bit stupid. Dracula's presence is only available if you do some specific tasks, if you don't you won't see him, facing a final big boss a bit disappointing. Anyway, Dracula as the final boss is disappointing too, far from the evil boss of the other games of the series.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is a better game than this one. It has many interesting new features but the previous one was better. In Circle of the Moon you can modify the direction of your jump in the air, here you can't, and don't tell me that "it makes the game more realistic" because you can still make special power jumps as you were flying, which is not something realistic...
To collect the furniture is good, but it gives you nothing special. Something similar happens with the endings. There are three different endings available, but there are no important differences between them, who survives is the only change.
If you're trying to complete your monster encyclopedia you'll need to be really patience. The encyclopedia tells you which objects drop the enemies when they die once you've picked them, and if you want to complete your monster book you'll need to kill the same enemy a lot of times, because they won't drop the object that you want once you've killed him. Sometimes you need a few minutes, but there are many others that needs a lot of time with a ratio of 1/50 or so. It's really boring to achieve that objective and you've got nothing special if you do.
To finish with.. where are the breakable walls?! That's a classic! Instead of that we have invisible walls. Prepare to look like a stupid rubbing with all the walls in every room...
The Bottom Line
Castlevania's second game for the Game Boy Advance is a good game, but not better than the previous one. You'll enjoy exploring an enormous castle, taking all the relics and collectibles of the game and all the things that you usually do in a game like this. Don't expect too much or you'll be disappointed (specially if you've played Castlevania: Circle of the Moon). Take away Dracula's ambition... again.
