Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

The Good
Gameboy Advance, I'm not sure if I love or hate the console. I've never been any person who like consoles, I think most of the games on the consoles are insanely weak, mindless 3d games pointed at the mainstream audience. And why are all the japanese RPGs released on consoles the exact same? There's sure one thing good about the Gameboy Advance, it's the perfect excuse for making good old fashioned 2D games again (even though I still get the feeling GBA games share a little of that dull console disease). The bad thing about the Gameboy Advance is it's low amount of power, here you get neat 2D games... but so "small" games, you just can't help but think how cool it would be if they made the game for a more powerful machine, so they can give more animations to the 2D sprites and things like that.

I'm sort of going offtrack here, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is exactly what the Castlevania fans have waited so long for. a good old 2D platform Castlevania game. And it's mighty good to see one after these years with these odd Castlevania 3D spinoff games. It's not entirely "good old" though, it's not in the same style of the very old Castlevania games though, it's like Symphony of the Night with the non-linear RPG gameplay. Which is definately a good thing, because it gives so much more life to the game (although for the purists there's a actually mode later in the game which give you the ability to play the game almost just like any super old Castlevania game).

There's not so very much to say about the game, it's just another step into the right direction with huge similarities from Sympony of the Night. It got great music, great graphics, great gameplay... it's just simply great.

The Bad
You just can't help but comparing the game with Symphony of the Night. SotN was released for the Playstation which is more powerful machine that the GBA, which means they could so much more for it. SotN is much longer, it's music with fantastic quality, the graphics are great. In this regard Circle of the Moon is lacking. It's just plain worse than SotN, although it's still a really great game.

The Bottom Line
Though SotN is generally much better than CotM, CotM has some better things than SotN, it's balanced, it's got no of those silly weapons which make you super powerful. And the game is actually hard. The game is still relatively short though.

As a final word, this is the perfect game for any 2D platform gamer who likes some good old fashioned gameplay. If you've played Sympony of the Night and enjoyed it, be sure it get this, just don't expect it to be better.