Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance was released in 2002 by Konami.
A friend of Juste Belmont comes to his home, wounded, telling Juste that their friend Lydie has been kidnapped. Maxim remembers the way to the castle she was brought to and it turns out to be Dracula's castle. They split up in search for her.
As Juste Belmont, you can only play using the whip, but to somewhat allow the player to change weapons, Juste is able to equip an accessory which can add attack power, an element, or a special ability. Juste can also equip four pieces of equipment, whether it's multiple accessories or one piece each of armor, helmet, gauntlet, or boots. There is an item shop in the game, and there are multiple areas in the game that it can be located at, but each location sells different more valuable items and those locations are only available at certain times.
Juste can also cast magic spells by combining one of five spell books you acquire as you progress through the game with any of the sub weapons in the game resulting in a wide variety of different attacks. The subweapons in the game consist of the dagger, fist, holy water, axe, cross, and book. While it won't be until the end of the game, if you have all the spell books, you'll have the sub weapon plus five different spells at any time, most of them useful at different times. You can turn the spell books on and off at any time so you can switch from using spells to subweapons if you need to. There are some accessories that you can acquire that increase damage and effect of the sub weapons as well.
How Juste controls I don't like much. He moves at a decents speed while walking, but they added a quick dash with L and R that cancels out your whip attack. The ability to cancel out your attack is good, yeah, but they add a dashing feature into the game where the character moves about 10 times his normal speed and you expect me not to use it 99% of the time? Juste also has this terribly floaty moon jump making which takes all the enjoyment away from the platforming the game offers. You can do a short hop, but if you whip mid jump, the full jump always takes effect. You can do a backwards dash jump them move forward as you whip which seems to work best if you want to be in the air while you whip or whip as you come down instead.
If you've played through Symphony of the Night, you may have found out how to progress further through the game, unlocking the inverted castle with a completely new map to explore, adding additional content to the game. In Harmony of Despair it's really not the same this time around. Sure you have two identical castles that you can explore, but repeatedly throughout the game you have to travel back and forth between them, so at times you'll backtrack through one portion of one castle, and then again the exact same portion in the other castle. Atleast with the extra castle tacked on at the end I'm not going back and forth between castles to one area, then back to the same area on the other. I can complete that castle in one go through without having to repeatedly backtrack through areas I've already been. However, it's really not just that. If the difficult didn't complete drop off after you got half way through the game, then it would have continued to be enjoyable, as it's actually good up until that point. Whether you play on hard or normal, hard obviously being a bit harder, the game is actually of decent difficult up to around half way through the game, then your level just ends up getting high enough and decent equipment where enemy damage just seems to drop off completely. Another problem with the difficulty is that throughout the game, they'll reintroduce the exact same enemies that you fought earlier, and no, these aren't pallette swaps, these are the exact same enemies. Problem is, these enemies which were more powerful enemies back when you saw them, take 1HP in damage off you at that point. What's the point in putting arch demons, giant skulls, sword lord, lizard men, or any enemy that I fought a few areas ago in the last area when they take next to no damage from my character? Just because they were harder earlier on at the beginning of the game doesn't mean they'll be harder without without some sort of increase in stats.
Now after you complete the game it unlocks boss rush and the ability to play as Maxim. Maxim can only gain HP and Hearts as you acquire items for such. Maxim only gets one sub weapon, the boomerang, can triple jump, or holding up and repeatedly hitting jump he'll do something like Samus' screw attack which can jump infinite amount of times and damages enemies, can do his doppleganger summon attack with one button combination, and restore full health with another button combination.
Boss rush is my favorite part of this game, and I actually thought about it while writing this review, but I actually can't think of any other game before Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance that has had boss rush. Does anyone know anything earlier or could this be the very first game with boss rush? I know games like Mega Man and other games have had parts where you fight the bosses at the end of the game all at once, but I can't think of anything early than this that's had a boss rush mode specifically. Anyways. Juste has a static level in boss rush mode, so it's more balanced and based on the player. Additionally, you can play as Maxim in boss rush by holding L and R while choosing the difficulty. You can also play as 8bit Simon Belmont by entering the Konami code when the game is starting, and beating the boss rush with Simon shows you the ending screen to the original Castlevania .
There's a few things I've mentioned above about it, like 8bit Simon Belmont, etc, and while Harmony of Dissonance is a decent game, it's also pretty cool seeing all the Castlevania references that are hidden inside. There are several bosses from Castlevania 3, there are six hint cards that are like the hidden hint books in Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest that help you find some of Dracula's body parts, there's a statue of Camilla from Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest, a statue of Dracula from Castlevania 3, the invincibility potions of the classic games, bullet tip which shoots out a ball like Christopher from the Castlevania Adventure series, etc.
Gameplay - 7
Design - 6
Presentation - 7
Balance - 4
Overall - 6
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
