Castlevania Circle of the Moon was released in 2001 by Konami.
You play as Nathan Graves, one of three vampire hunters who come to stop Dracula's resurrection, but Dracula is revived by the time you enter the castle and you're thrown off to the side, falling into the catacombs. The game is officially non canon so an alternate timeline in the Castlevania universe.
This is an exploration style Castlevania like Castlevania 2 or Symphony of the Night. Nathan can't equip any weapons other than the whip, but he can equip armor, two accessories, use items, sub weapons, and magic through a system called the DSS. You acquire no money throughout the game, so any equipment, items, or DSS cards you receive will be enemy drops. Damage from sub weapons except for the holy water and cross are rather useless, especially the dagger unless you're playing shooter mode where the dagger is actually good.
After completing the game on Vampire Killer and subsequent modes, you'll unlock a new one, starting Nathan off with different stats and giving him certain bonuses. Fighter mode removes that ability for Nathan to acquire any DSS cards but his attack and defense are much higher. Magician mode starts Nathan with all DSS cards, starts him off with very high intelligence and MP, but all other stats are lower. Shooter mode gives Nathan the lowest stats but a high amount of hearts, sub weapons use half the amount of hearts they normally do, there's a dagger upgrade that makes the dagger homing if you collect a second dagger subweapon, and all sub weapons take far more damage than normal. Then finally thief mode which gives you the lowest stats and a very high luck stat.
The DSS, or Dual Set up System, allows for Nathan to activate a magic spell by combining two cards from two different categories, one primary category and then the secondary elemental category. There are 10 cards for each category giving you access to 100 different spells. For instance, while Nathan can only use the whip normally, the Mars card will allow Nathan to use one of 10 elemental weapons. While the DSS may sound pretty awesome, and it kind of is, most of what you'll have access to is rather useless, and the very best stuff you won't be able to get until the very end of the game. Other than the first two cards you receive, cards have an extremely low drop rate, at times you may get the drop from the first enemy you kill, but other times you might kill 100 or more before you get that drop. There's also knowing whether the enemy drops a card or not other than using a guide or killing the same enemy repeatedly until you get both their common and rare drop.
Being an exploration style Castlevania, as you progress you'll acquire upgrades that allow you to get to different areas or move around quicker and these upgrades actually come around pretty frequent in Circle of the Moon. There's actually a lot of different branching areas within the game, and really, maybe too much. On the off chance that you never go into the area where one statue is blocking your path, but you do another, and later in the game see the statues break, you could skip two complete areas, including bosses without even knowing it. It's a bit of a misdirection because there's so many points in the game where you can't progress towards one direction because you don't have the required skill, and even those these are mostly HP, MP, or Heart upgrades you can receive, when you get to a point that you see the statue breaking, you assume that's the way you're supposed to go regardless of how difficult it is. The game literally points you towards that area, and you might not realize there's an ability that stops water, which is along 90% of the floor in the area you skip to, from both damaging and poisons you.
Another issue with Circle of the Moon is that when playing through even normal mode there are way too many enemies as you progress through the game that are damage sponges, especially bosses. Here's a video I did of a low level boss run in magician mode. I may be low level, but the damage output is pretty high thanks to the spell I use at times in the video, but it still took over five minutes(don't watch unless you want to spoil a boss late in the game.) On normal mode you'll be able to take more damage with your regular attacks, but it's still going to take you a few minutes of constant damage against the boss. All other bosses are the same, and there are three that if you're underleveled and you don't have the cross, are going to be impossible for most players. Doesn't help those players that the nearest cross subweapon will be quite some ways away unless they like walking all the way back and forth. It doesn't help when you come back from defeating a boss with only a sliver of health and no orb drops from the sky, and any one hit will kill you unless you get to a save point which might be a decent ways away, forcing you to fight the damage sponge boss over again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve2DLhyyxKY
It's a good game with some good ideas and plays a lot like a traditional Castlevania mixed with exploration with the amount of platforming the game has, it just suffers from a few problems. Would have been nice if one of the ideas they had also allowed Hugh as a playable character.
Gameplay - 7
Design - 6
Presentation - 6
Balance - 6
Overall 6.25
Scoring system.
1-3 - bad
4 - 5 below average
5.5 - average
6 - 10 - good to excellent
The kuporeview inflation score. What the score would be if the average game was 7/10 like IGN, Gamespot, etc. Since I don't inflate scores and my scores are underrated compared to what people come to expect I came up with an equation to inflate my scores to make them similar to others. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=177193&page=1#1
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