/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9685715]

I liked Aria and Harmony but this game seems like a shittier version of the others. Is it worth playing?

[Anonymous No.9685724]

>>9685715
I like that game the best out of the three GBA ones, but it does have a different feel and opinions on it vary. I'd say play a little and see for yourself.

[Anonymous No.9685725]

>>9685715
It's mediocre for a Castlevania game. I'd give it a 5/10, solid enough, fun at times, just not very memorable or different.

[Anonymous No.9685729]

>>9685715
The whip forms a circle and it's called Circle

[Anonymous No.9685741]

>>9685715
You've already decided it's shitty, why ask other's if it's worth playing?

[Anonymous No.9685745]

>>9685724
The controls are filtering me. Having to double tap to run makes it really hard to dodge shit, and you move super slow if you don't run.

[Anonymous No.9685749]

>>9685741
Because I thought Harmony was shitty for the first 20 minutes but it eventually grew on me. This game has shit visuals, controls, everything so I'm wondering if it gets better like Harmony did.

[Anonymous No.9685787]

There are several awful design choices that drag the game down. Overall it's enjoyable due to the difficulty. It's leagues below Aria but it offers a very different experience. I didn't finish Harmony because it was too boring.
It's skippable. If you are hungry for more Castlevania it's alright.

[Anonymous No.9685802]

>>9685787
Is the first boss supposed to be super hard? I've died like 5 times already. It's that lion thing with 2 heads.

[Anonymous No.9685826]

>>9685802
Which of his attacks are you having the most trouble with?

[Anonymous No.9685838]

>>9685749
It's more fun when your DSS card options open up, but as those are RNG-based you're probably gonna have a weak hand all game, unless you start grinding enemies out.
>>9685802
The US release buffed the EXP requirement to level up, so that might be why it's giving you a hard time. I personally wish they'd done it for Harmony or Aria.

[Anonymous No.9685848]

>>9685745
It's kind of a slow game in general which is I think why some don't like it. I don't think it's incredible, it's more that I don't love the other two and played it first.

>>9685749
Funny here because the visuals are I think one of it's best points. I thought HoD was super ugly.

[Anonymous No.9685892]

>>9685848
Harmony's absolutely made for the original release of the GBA, but I kinda like its eye-searing aesthetic. If they'd toned it down a notch they could've really nailed the vivid colors of a 50's-60's horror film.

[Anonymous No.9685893]

I’d like this game a lot more if the running speed were default

[Anonymous No.9685909]

>>9685715
I think it's poorly designed and kind of mediocre all round but there are flashes of potential, in the grand scheme of all the games you'll play in your life it's probably worth one run through.

[Anonymous No.9685984]

>>9685745

[Anonymous No.9685992]

>>9685715
>Is it worth playing?
No, your assessment is correct.

[Anonymous No.9686056]

>>9685892
Yeah I appreciated it at the time, after playing CotM on the original system it was nice to have something I could play more comfortably. But once the SP came out, I thought it looked garish and Circle came out looking geat. There is a hack out there that tones the colors down though I think.

My biggest issue with it was where as Circle feels like it's own thing, Harmony comes off as trying too hard to replicate SotN and falls a little flat at it. With Aria I just got bored with soul grinding and never finished it, but was starting to burn out on the series at that point. Always meant yo go back but still haven't.

[Anonymous No.9686196]

>>9685715
One of the few games that needs a hack just to be playable. Higher drop rate + shoulder dash is an absolute necessity. Otherwise you're double tap dashing and wearing a hole in your thumb for 200+ hours to 100%, or at least 100+ just to get some decent armor and the cards so you can actually utilize the magic system.

[Anonymous No.9686198]

>>9685745
>>9685749
The controls and visuals are fine. There's a hack that adds auto dashing if you want that.

[Anonymous No.9686351]

>>9685715
It is worth playing, but it's a lot more fun if you skip the Battle Arena. Most of the grinding comes from trying to get the OP super-rare drops to make the Arena manageable without farming healing items.

Unless you're playing Fighter mode of course, in which case you steamroll the Arena like you steamroll everything else.

[Anonymous No.9686359]

>>9685745
>Having to double tap to run
There's a patch for that, works with the Steam version too.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6230/

[Anonymous No.9686529]

>>9685802
CoTM just simply doesn't fuck around like SoTN and the other two GBA games. Like maybe you shouldn't have that much trouble, but Cerberus is a much harder first boss in comparison and a show of what's to come.

That all said, yeah, like another anon said, if you're not at something like level 6 yet, you might want to beat on enemies for a bit, and if you yourself think it's a skill issue, consider practicing on Earth Demons, I think those give more experience AND potentially drop the icy Leviathan card.

Here's something that can maybe help your spacing and timing that I learned recently. If you have the flame whip turned on, not only does it give a small boost in attack power in general, but for some reason, hitting an enemy real fucking close, I suppose like as if you're hitting them with Nathan's fist rather than the whip, and you'll deal even double of that. Real neat and gives me more of an appreciation for the flame whip and kind of CoTM in general.
>Verification not required

[Anonymous No.9686541]

>>9685715
download the patch that places the cards around the map instead of farming for 1% droprate

yes even if the patch has some bad placements its better than not getting cards at all simply because u didnt get lucky and dont want to spend ur time farming

oh yeah and the auto dasher

[Anonymous No.9686546]

>>9686196
>Higher drop rate + shoulder dash is an absolute necessity

no it isn't I've beat the vanilla game multiple times and I'm hardly the only. I don't know what it is about the double tap that brings out the whiny little bitch in people but it's not that hard to do.

And as far as getting 100%: first of all it's not the developer's fault you have autism. That's a completely optional self-imposed challenge and there's no reason to do it in your first playthrough anyway. You want all the DSS combos? Unlock magician mode and you'll start the game with all of them. And if you want a higher drop rate, that's literally what thief mode does. You're using cheats to get what the game would give you legitimately if you just fucking played it instead of crying about it

[Anonymous No.9686615]

>>9686546
the problem isn't so much 100% it's that engaging with the system in any meaningful way is basically prohibitive. You have no idea which enemies are going to drop anything and the drop rates are so low it's completely realistic you'll go through the majority of the game with maybe 3 or 4 combinations some of which are probably going to be worthless. perhaps that wouldn't be a problem if the basic castlevania fundamentals were rock solid but they kind of feel like ass. sluggish walk speed, poor horizontal reach on your jump, slow whip windup, and spongey enemies.

[Anonymous No.9686632]

>genre inherently based on exploration
>tie all of your most rewarding content to enemy spawn grinding
I can never truely consider myself a fan of these games for this reason, they offend on me a primordial level.

[Anonymous No.9686714]

>>9686615
The drop rates were lower than they really should have been but a lot of the DSS combinations aren't terribly useful and as far as I can remember zero of them are mandatory. They're not like relics or key items, just extra content that you receive at random

Complaining that you can't get certain combos without a lot of grinding is like complaining that you had to farm for the crissaegrim in SOTN. You only have to do that if you're determined to have something you don't actually need. You will get some cards by dumb luck even if you put zero effort into it. If you don't want to grind any of them then work with whatever you get. And, again, magician mode will let you play from start to finish with every combo unlocked with zero grinding and it's honestly easier to just beat the game once and unlock that mode than grind every DSS card in first playthrough

[Anonymous No.9686746]

>>9686615
To play devil's advocate as someone who played it at the time, I think that was kind of the intention. That each person's playthrough, or subsequent one might be a little different from the last. It was made at a time before 100%ing games was such a universal thing as it is now. It was present of course, but I think the idea of making a game like that would seemed not as crazy as it does now.

[Anonymous No.9686769]

>>9685715
One of my favourite OST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq7lg6hjoM4

[Anonymous No.9686865]

>>9686746
>That each person's playthrough, or subsequent one might be a little different from the last

This, but with particular emphasis on subsequent playthroughs. You are clearly NOT supposed to 100% the game in one go. It goes normal > magician > fighter > shooter > thief.

So the first playthrough you get normal stats, and some of the cards via luck or grinding. But presumably not all of them, because the game quite intentionally makes this difficult and laborious. And it's unnecessary. You're supposed to beat the game without doing so which should be made fairly clear by the fact that you never need a specific card combo to beat any particular boss or reach any specific area. Then, after you bet the game you're GIVEN all the DSS cards the next playthrough as a reward and you can enjoy trying out the combos you never got to use. And then if you're a real autist you can do the challenge modes (magician is easy, fighter and shooter less so) and then you're rewarded again with thief mode, which is both a challenge and a reward because you have low stats but a drastically improved drop rate.

If you want every DSS card, every item, a full 100%, that's entirely possible. But you're supposed to gain the ability to do that at the end, AFTER you've played through the game every other way. You're supposed to git gud, not just beat the RNG into submission through sheer stubbornness. Doing it all the first time is the most frustrating way you could choose and every hump that chooses to do it that way then turns around and screeches about how frustrating it was. Stop swimming against the tide and maybe you'd have an easier time, morons

[Anonymous No.9686886]

My least favorite of the GBA/DS games, but still worth playing if you're a fan of the series imo.

[Anonymous No.9687361]

>>9685715
My opinion was that it gets better. It's been decades since I played it, I just remember the start being tedious, but I finished it so it can't be too bad.

[Anonymous No.9687409]

>>9685715
>likes harmony more than CotM
Kek, like clockwork the contrarians come out

[Anonymous No.9687412]

>>9685729
Also there is a moon

[Anonymous No.9687434]

>>9685715
People swear this one is SO good and such a good blend of classic and Metroidvania style but fuck that. CotM is redundant, forgettable and ugly with the most stupid augment system found in any other Castelvania game.

[Anonymous No.9687645]

>>9685715
It's not as good as Aria, but I admit I'm biased. It was my first Metroidvania, and I got it at launch with the GBA.

[Anonymous No.9687870]

>>9687412
And there's a castle in the background

[Anonymous No.9687914]

>>9685892
the problem with harmony isn't the psychadelic visuals it's the gamma, a lot of areas that should have been popping with color just look terrible.

[Anonymous No.9687960]

>>9686865
Yeah the whole concept of replaying games has mostly gone away. SotN was similarly designed for replay too. But these days people want to pick up a game and breeze through getting 100% of every bit of content. A very similar attitude has almost destroyed the entire genre of roguelikes because the basic idea caught on, but most gamers can't handle the concept of perma death. So almost every "roguelike" now is saddled with all kinds of grindy progression elements that kills the core of what makes the genre work.

[Anonymous No.9688023]

>>9687960
>breeze through getting 100% of every bit of content
this is such a bullshit argument in the context of cotm. people want more than incoherent scraps when they play a game, who would have guessed?

[Anonymous No.9688027]

>>9687434
What's your favorite classic Castlevania game?

[Anonymous No.9688032]

>>9688023
This guy who I was replying to >>9686865 lays it out very well.

[Anonymous No.9688036]

>>9685715
CotM is the only challenging Castlevania compared to HoD and AoS

[Anonymous No.9688070]

>>9687412
The moon looks like a circle when it's full.

[Anonymous No.9688101]

>>9687960

[Anonymous No.9688383]

>>9687409
well I've been playing for a few hours and yeah, harmony is better. It was ok for the most part and had a few good things. CoTM is just completely generic with nothing good going for it so far other than higher difficulty.

[Anonymous No.9688442]

>>9685715
The controls take some getting used to but I really enjoyed it.