Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance
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Video Game
(20 September, 2002)
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Reviews (39)
Fun but falls flat on its face.
Sure the graphics are much more colorful than the last GBA Castlevania but the graphics and enemies look downright like cartoons in most parts.
Plus whats the deal with your main characters blue shadow?
I think that was a bit of a overkill.
And the magic system has been severely, and badly, toned down from the Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.
And the two identical castle system really lacks imagination and makes the game very very tedius near its end.
Exploring every area of the game TWICE does make the game longer but it definitely doesnt make it funner...
Depressingly Dissapointing
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is Koji Igarashi's second take on the CV franchise (his first being the critically acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Playstation). While many have dubbed this as "heir apparent to Symphony of the Night," I beg to differ.Even as SotN is one of my favorite games ever, and even as I am a Castlevania fan, Harmony of Dissonance (HoD) has come across as an incredibly disappointing gaming experience in many respects.
Please read: I love Symphony of the Night to death.I hate Harmony of Dissonance.
Displaying different play mechanics, level layout, atmosphere, and many other traits, it is quite radically different from SotN, and pretty much any other Castlevania.Is this good, or bad?We'll take a look and see.
Let's start out with the story and the beginning of the game.Juste Belmont, grandson of Simon, decides to follow his friend, Maxim, to the area where Maxim saw a castle appear out of nowhere, and where he believes their friend, Lydie, is being held captive.Could it truly be the legendary Castle Dracula?
The characters certainly have some personality, such as Juste's "newcomer" characteristics as a Vampire Hunter, but, overall, it's nothing special or deep.The dialogue in HoD is quite mundane and forgettable. Castlevania has never really been about story, but after SotN's excellent plot and nearly "biblically-quotable" dialogue that was pure gold, I'd hoped to see better from Igarashi than what is here.Sadly, the girl, Lydie, is just another pretty face with basically no personality, and who is basically seen in less than 1% of your game playing time.
I've heard a lot of people praise this game's graphics, and say they are incredible step up from CotM's.I will indeed say that the graphics are more varied than CotM's, in that CotM's look was basically was comprised of brick-walls/pillars background, one after another.Oddly enough, though, CotM evoked so much more atmosphere than HoD does.With its huge rooms, and majestic and shadowy architecture, it truly gave off a sense of your smallness and its magnificence, and was quite unlike anything I'd ever experienced before in a game.In short, CotM pretty much got it right in making me feel like I was in a castle of darkness, mystery, and evil.HoD, unfortunately, leaves behind all notion of atmosphere in its more varied locales (except in the Entrance and the Chapel), something that is crucial in a video game, especially in a series such as Castlevania. The Castle Treasury is the first biggest piece of evidence for this subject.Offering us a mainly drab, gray background with various bits of unexceptional detail, it is randomly interspersed with unique, yet still unsatisfying, backgrounds, like the crystal filled hallways, which pale in comparison to CV4's lovely treasury, and are pretty much boring in their own right.There is no real level of progression.Rooms feel so randomly connected and unrelated that one sometimes gets an unnecessary feeling of confusion or longing for some type of continuity or relation.The lack of transition rooms between areas makes this more potent.
Numerous examples of HoD's boring level design can be seen in the "Aqueduct of Dragons," HoD's "sewer area."Besides the areas' rooms being basically 2 rooms repeated over and over, the lack of pretty much any details that catch our eye is depressing.The exceptions to HoD's dominant drab areas are the Corridor in the Air/Sky Walkway (HoD's chapel), and the Cave of Skeletons.The Chapel is such a breath of fresh air.Lovely, curvy architecture fleshes out this area, and there are all sorts of neat details all over, such as the statues.The scrolling clouds effect from SotN is back, though in a less impressive version, yet it's still nice, if a little disappointing that they so blatantly ripped something off from SotN and didn't come up with something new.In the "Alternate Castle" Chapel (more on this later), as you get farther and farther up in the towers, lightning will flash, and shadowy faces will randomly appear in the windows.Inversely, it also breaks my heart that more of this care to detail and beauty couldn't be dispersed throughout more of the Castle.The Cave of Skeletons isn't really pleasing as it is interesting in some parts, in that there are nods to other Castlevanias in the various backgrounds, such as the skeletons of Slogra and Gaibon displayed on a wall in the lower parts of the level.Other than that, it's another one of the forgettable places in HoD.In HoD, to put it simply, the "real castle" is too colorful, and the "alternate castle" is just way too gray and uninteresting.Areas like the Luminous Cavern and the Room of Illusion in the Marble Corridor are meretricious and colorful to the point of neon-vulgarity.Some may like this; I found it to be rather repulsive.HoD gives up the feeling of being in a true castle to the idea that certain aspects have to grab your attention, no matter how unattractive it is in its display, and in so, loses that subtle, wonderful progression of your realization of the surrounding environment, which SotN and CotM so excellently displayed.
Level design...something very, very crucial in games.It can make or break a game.Sure, a game can have spectacular gameplay mechanics and other special features, but can be brought down significantly by shoddy level layout (Lament of Innocence, I'm looking at you).HoD has some parts that are just great and fun to traverse, like the Chapel area, but ends up failing miserably on almost all accounts with its extremely repetitious nature.80% of the time, the room you'll be in will be some straight corridor with nothing to do but pretty much run down it and kill the small number of enemies populating it.Without a doubt, the low point of HoD's level layout is its vertical rooms, which, unfortunately, make a lot of appearances, including the infamously bad "elevator rooms."A description of these rooms are as follows: a room, which basically consists of a vertical route with multiple levels which you reach by walking to the left to, jumping up, walking to the right, jumping, walking to the left, and so on to get to the top.These are just horrifically, mind-numbingly boring rooms, and really detract so much from the experience.You'd have to experience them to see what I am describing.The Clock Tower is chock full of these rooms, some of the biggest ones in the game, in fact, and, as such, is one of the most dull areas in HoD.Other things that come to mind are the "Skull Doors," doors that require a certain key in order to get past them, and which are placed in your way to, more or less, make backtracking to areas even more difficult and less convenient.They're not blocking anything interesting, like some helpful equipment or armor.They're merely there just to extend the game's playing time by making the player needlessly backtrack through areas the player does not want to go through again, since they block off entrances which would make transitioning from area to area much easier.I'm all for backtracking, as the previous "Castleroids" are full of it.But, HoD just has such a boring and strangely laid out Castle when compared to SotN and CotM that it's more of a chore than a pleasure.As a whole, Harmony of Dissonance feels very unfinished and unplanned in the execution of the castle's layout.It's impractical in its design.
HoD's alternate castle is not turned upside down like the one in SotN.It pretty much is the exact same thing, with slightly different enemies and color schemes.HoD's alternate castle has different items to collect in different places, and different bosses, and that's about it.This time, it's crucial to traverse through it in order to beat the game, whereas in SotN it's more of a joyful revelation.As HoD's castle was not interesting to me, finding out that I had another nearly identical castle to explore was more of an unpleasant surprise than a godsend.
Exploring the castle is closely tied in with gameplay, and how the game feels, so I'll move onto that, next.You'll instantly notice that Juste feels "airy" when compared to CotM's protagonist, Nathan.His jump is more "floaty," and right from the get-go, he already slightly runs.Each shoulder button on the Game Boy Advance is used for the new dash feature, which allows Juste to slide across the ground in a burst of speed, either to traverse through areas more quickly, or to dash back from an enemy's attack.However, I felt that the dash attribute really dumbed the game down to feel like you're ice-skating through the castle.That's not something you want to be reminded of when you want atmosphere.You will pretty much use the dash feature to go everywhere.Why walk when you can dash?It was just an unpleasant experience for me that felt overused.It was almost as if the developers wanted you to rush through all the areas in hopes that you wouldn't notice the startlingly unimpressive level design.Juste loses in terms of his whip-handling skills when compared to Nathan, as when you whip and jump, you cannot change your direction until you land.This, obviously, leads you to accidentally jump into the enemy more than you care for.A lot of the time I just felt like the character was controlling me, not him.Not a good thing.This game controls nothing like SotN, or CotM.Don't believe otherwise.
On to the designs of the main character and enemies.Again, Juste loses in terms of believability and fluidity when compared to Alucard and Nathan.His gait is quit humorous and graceless, comparable to someone doing a strange type of running workout.His falling animation is quite pathetic as well.Hair half turned up, as well as his coat, and his legs completely vertical, it's actually quite comedic to see in action.While he has more frames of animation than Nathan, his actions are much less believable, and look more outlandish.There is also the sense that parts of Juste are too large or goofy looking, such as his hands.Iga chose to put some type of blue glow around Juste, and give him an after-image, as well.I suppose this was to let the player see him easier, but this made me cringe; first of all, it's ripping off Alucard's trademark of essence trailing out behind him (though it is still a lot less graceful than Alucard's), and second of all, it just looks too bright and silly.It really just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.I would've been able to see him just fine without it.
Some of the enemies are reused from SotN, though they're all a little less impressive looking, as the graphics are being displayed on a system with Super Nintendo capabilities, not Playstation.Generally, though, the legion of enemies this time is much less impressive than SotN's and CotM's.Perhaps this is due to most of them being comprised of variations of a single enemy, such as the Skeleton enemy, or the Living Armor.I was left feeling unimpressed.The enemies' A.I. is stupid and non-aggressive for the most part, and they usually won't attack until you wait a few seconds, and when they do attack you, they hurt very little.There are no "super enemies" in this game, like the Guardians from SotN, and the Dark Armor from CotM.The bosses are equally lame, usually not moving around much, always extremely easy, and having uninspired designs, such as the "Biggie" enemies, like the Giant Merman, or Peeping Big.Only three bosses caught my eye.It's evident that all the bosses in HoD were made merely to show off the G.B.A.'s capabilities, rather than to present a fun or challenging fight.
HoD is quite possibly the easiest game I've ever played.SotN was easy, too, but made up for it by being pretty much perfect in all other aspects.CotM was going the right direction with its difficulty, exploration and combat-wise.For HoD, the only slight difficulty one may encounter during the travel through the castle is finding all of Dracula's Relics, and probably the final Spell Book.As far as status effects go, "Poison" basically has no effect in HoD, whereas CotM's poison status was a beast."Curse" status makes Juste walk slower and unable to use his dash move.As I mentioned before, the enemies are all very easy to defeat and don't require much thinking, if any.Bosses are complete pushovers.A majority of them are big, and, sadly, that's all they have going for them.Most boil down to you whipping them in one spot, dashing back from one of their slow attacks, and then coming back to whip them mindlessly.The worst boss of all is probably Max Slimer, who never has gotten an attack in on me.All one has to do is crouch right next to it and whip it until it dies.It's all very dull, and there is never any sense of accomplishment when you defeat a boss.It's all made more annoying by the fact that some have a lot of HP, but don't present any challenge.Don't think that it's easy just based on the enemies; you can find so many potions and healing items in rooms and from dead enemies that you'll never really worry about your condition.As this game is like an RPG in the leveling up aspect, it's disappointing that it's pretty much impossible to get past the level 50s, considering basically every monster gives only 1 EXP once you reach the levels near the 50s. This gives the player very little incentive to fight monsters later on.First of all, any item that en enemy may drop can be merely bought from the merchant or found in the castle in easy to find spots.Also, enemies won't drop weapons like they did in SotN, as your only weapon in HoD is a whip, so that is another reason to not kill them.Suddenly, the enemies become mere speed bumps.
Remember how you had to work really hard or get really lucky to get the best equipment in SotN and in CotM?Remember killing the 100th Guardian and finally getting the God's Garb, or beating the Battle Arena and getting the Shining Armor, and feeling that great sense of accomplishment or excitement?Well, not here.Merely get to a certain area by doing a special jump, and voila, there is one of the most powerful armors in the game.I can't tell how much this gave the game an anti-climactic feeling, especially when I got the best armor basically handed to me.There are many whip types; some are characterized by Elemental attributes, but this still doesn't make a difference.I switched up my Fire attachment for a Lightning attachment during the Giant Merman fight, and noticed only about a 5 or 10 damage difference.It's all very negligible and useless.The only helpful whip is the one that breaks apart the occasional cracked barrier that is in your way.Why does HoD have so many pointless things?Another thing that detracts from HoD's experience is that you won't be getting any cool items to use, like SotN's Power of Sire, or the Monster Vials.You'll find none of those great trinkets here in HoD.This game just gives you healing items as things to use.
There is a merchant this time around; unfortunately, he has absolutely no value in this game.The only things he'll ever sell to you that are remotely interesting are the Spring Boots, which let you jump forever, but even this is useless.You're handed so many potions and good armor during the course of the game, the merchant is rendered obsolete, ultimately.
Feeling he needed to best the DSS Card System from Circle of the Moon, Iga has implemented his own gameplay gimmick, the Spell Book Fusion system.As you traverse through the Castle, you'll come upon books of different Elemental qualities, such as the Wind Book.By equipping these books with certain sub-weapons (such as the Cross, Holy Water, Dagger), you can trigger certain spells.For instance, if you combine the Ice Book with the Bible, you can trigger a series of shockwaves to spread out on either side of you, damaging all enemies on the ground, and in the air, if they're low enough.While the Spell Book system sounds good on paper, in actuality, the Magic spells are simply too powerful, and there is no real "penalty" for exploiting the system. You regain MP at a quick rate, and you use little to no Hearts when you cast spells in combination with your Sub-Item. Most bosses fall within a few spell casts. Once you find the Wind Book and Cross combo, any challenge the game ever had (which is basically none at all) is gone. The worst part is that normal Sub-Items become entirely useless. One of the cornerstones of the series has suddenly become obsolete.On top of this is the fact that none of the Spell Books are hard to find; basically, you'll walk into a room, and it will be sitting right there.This also ties into the fact that HoD is nearly rid of any kinds of secrets, except for three.SotN was full of breakable walls, ceilings, and floors all over, and CotM had an incredible amount of hidden rooms, some that were truly very difficult to discover.Why HoD loses this aspect of exploration, I have no idea.
The music...yes, indeed.HoD sports what is probably the most controversial soundtrack ever in the series.The developers of HoD claimed that in order to achieve the certain graphics they got in the game, the sound department had to take a hit, rendering HoD's soundtrack on the same sound quality level of Gameboy or NES music.Having played Aria of Sorrow as well, I can't understand how this works, as AoS's graphics are notably better than HoD, yet the sound quality in AoS is significantly better sounding, quality wise, than Harmony's.As a side note, let me say that I rather enjoy the Castlevania NES soundtracks.Though they're chock full of the "beeps" and "boops" of the glory days, Castlevania 1, 2, and 3 all manage to produce probably the best soundtracks for any games on the Nintendo Entertainment System.The sound wizards at Konami managed to pump out some seriously fitting tunes for the games.
Now comes HoD, more than a decade later.As I've mentioned before, the songs for the Entrance and Marble Corridor are both pretty good.HoD is a departure from the preceding recent Castlevanias, in that it has a very action oriented soundtrack.While SotN had a wide variety of music, it mostly was melancholy.The N64 games were atmospheric forays into the world of music for Castlevania, and CotM brought back a lot of the old tunes, and demonstrated a very majestic and "large" score.As I've also pointed out, the music begins to take a dip when one reaches the Castle Treasury.While it could be said that the early Castlevanias were action soundtracks, too, they beat out HoD in every aspect, as HoD fails in presenting fitting songs, and even some awfully composed ones.The bottom of the proverbial barrel in HoD's soundtrack is the Clock Tower theme, which is odd, considering most Castlevanias' Clock Tower themes are usually one of the highlights of the games' scores.Starting off interestingly for perhaps the first few seconds, it slowly morphs into a sea of depressing sounds.The climax is truly something that needs to be heard in order to comprehend its horror; ripe with squeals, whines, and, funny enough, dissonance, it's the main song that makes me turn off the sound of my GBA when it comes on.Castlevania shouldn't make one turn off the sound; rather, it should make one turn it up.The Luminous Cavern's song apparently is trying to go for a dark and mysterious feel, and starts out interestingly enough, but it ends up being extremely repetitive.In the Chapel, like some others, the melody starts off very originally and beautifully, sounding almost like a Gameboy quality SotN-grade song with its almost sad, ebbing notes.Sadly, it degenerates into a speedy mix of opposing beats and melodies about halfway in, which really is out of place for an area such as the Chapel.It just feels too fast-paced and un-focused.Those are a few examples, but overall, I wasn't that impressed with the score.It was too drab and out of place, and even depressing.Castlevania 4 perfected the "depressing" music of a Castlevania game, but still maintained an incredible amount of atmosphere and beauty in its soundtrack.Again, I'm not taking points off because of the sound quality (which doesn't help, either), but because the songs failed to evoke very much emotion with me and weren't memorable.It had too much of a fast and active feeling soundtrack for such an empty feeling castle.Experimental?Yes, very.Good?Depends on your tastes.
In trying to emulate SotN, HoD merely lets itself down by displaying itself as an inferior rip-off of an incredible game.It seems as though Iga thought he could throw in a bunch of stolen ideas from SotN and automatically make the game brilliant.However, these ideas weren't realized to their full potential, and, thus, create the feeling that the game is somehow incomplete, like a test version of a Castlevania game.Gone is the challenge; gone is the wide array of cool items; gone is the incredible music Castlevania is known for; gone is the genius level design; gone is the atmosphere; gone is that "Castlevania magic" that makes this series so endearing; gone are a lot of aspects, which ultimately make HoD a failure of a Castlevania game, and a very, very mediocre game on its own.
A great adventure at times obscured by myriad blemishes.
Harmony of Dissonance (HoD, for the contraction) begs to be compared with any and every Castlevania game that has appeared since the series began in 1986, but despite the large number of cameos and overall classic feel it is best to ultimately judge this title on its own merits, providing comparisons merely for reference. It accomplishes what it sets out to in providing a gameplay experience that has some incredibly strong points and a variety of goals, but tastes as though it has had some artifical extenders added into the mix.
The GBA's shoulder buttons allow you to dash left or right at nearly any time, setting an emphasis early in the game on making an attack quickly and dashing away. Tellingly, there aren't any poisoned waters you will be collecting a necklace to treat; while many upgrades will be familiar from Circle of the Moon (CotM, Konami's 2001 GBA Castlevania), Harmony of Dissonance adds some of these essential items as whip upgrades and effectively integrates them into the game. In place of CotM's DSS card system is a new Spell Fusion system which allows the player to use only the classic subweapons (a dash of holy water or a thrown axe in your enemy's face) or to pair a subweapon with a particular type of elemental magic to great effect. Inscrutable enemy tolerance/weakness come into play once again, but an Encyclopedia of fallen enemies will help you figure out what's helpful - though the trouble of changing your whip upgrade or Spell Fusion combo is usually greater than simply whipping away at the enemy would be. As a bit of a spoiler, at least one combination allows you to rotate your d-pad to get something extra out of the attack, and it's also possible to use one type of music by itself (though you must lose the subweapon first - can you figure that one out?)
The magic and item systems are responsible for the wealth of "bosses are easy" comments. Played in a traditional fashion without magic or using healing items during battle, Harmony of Dissonance is indeed challenging. Even with some use of the Spell Fusion system against bosses, they absorb many hits before you can finally vanquish them and their attacks often deplete a fourth of your life meter or more.
HoD also differs from Circle of the Moon in that characters are is much larger than in CotM, while areas are smaller in scale and don't feature the same panoramic vistas of that other title. HoD provides, pixel for pixel, more variety and actual content in all areas despite this.
At release, HoD was considered to be a significant step up from CotM in terms of graphics with many highly detailed backgrounds taking the place of CotM's usually repetitive ones (in addition both games have paralax scrolling in many areas). Visibility is now less of an issue with the introduction of the GBA SP and the GB Player, but at the time the "neon castle" approach was very appropriate (it reminds one of the original Rastan arcade game in a way), and fans were relieved for the reprieve against visits to the eye doctor and purchasing Afterburner kits. Harmony goes overboard with tons of large artwork pieces to be found that fill a good section of the screen and many large details filling in parts of the environment - it actually manages to compete with the third GBA Castlevania, Aria of Sorrow. Unfortunately, this game also contains some amazingly ugly and repetitive areas; a few of the game's tallest shafts are nothing but a series of floors to jump onto over and over, with a slow elevator in the middle. Harmony would have been served better to have some of these less interesting areas spruced up a bit; a few superfluous elements to the game should've been axed to make it happen. The save rooms in particular simply look pathetic, with a silly bouncing ball in the middle. The sprites for the three main characters also aren't anything to look at; your hero's running animation is comical. Overall, though, many of the trippy graphical ideas come off excellently.
HoD has taken a severe pounding for its music. Notably lower in quality than Circle of the Moon's neat music which at times sounded on par with the SNES; the reasoning here is that to provide the (usually) incredible graphics they had to fall back to PGM sound - basically back to programming sound for the Game Boy Color. Given this, the music sounds very good, with some incredibly strong tracks such as Successor of Fate (the Entrance theme), Offense and Defense (the next area BGM), and Chapel of Dissonance (the Sky Walkway area BGM) is rather nice as well. That said, some of it might be favorably described as a strange attempt to set the mood (the Luminous Caverns track)...or simply unpleasant to listen to and even depressing. This is a mixed bag, but Juste's Theme (the Entrance Theme again) has become a personal favorite from not only the game but the series.
There are some other minor quirks, and the game employs a trick to allow more of the same castle to be visited (along the lines of SotN). I felt that this idea was executed brilliantly overall; sometimes the changes are quite stunning and unexpected. On the down side, some interesting references to previous Castlevania games in the item list were botched for the English translation - Sypha (the female magician from Castlevania III) became Cipher, and a curious item that allows you to fling fireballs from your whip when at full health is no longer called Christoper's Soul. There's also a bit of (humorous!) unedited translation in the script that should keep you chuckling. The "true endgame" is very hard to find and figure out, but the pieces are all within your reach early on.
This is a great game - not great enough to make one a fan of bangles and room decoration, but it's a solid game overall with some incredible moments that few other games have.
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