Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance Hit or Miss?

So after having a awful time playing Castlevania Circle of the moon. which led me to start this whole blog, I decided that after writing the Payday 2 review I would go back and play the other gba Castlevanias to see how they compared. This review will be the next gba Castlevania released which was Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance. (Also i may have taken the time to be less lazy with this one and learned more about blogger to add images and such to make shit look less barren.)

Box Art

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance (which past here i will refer to as HoD) released on June 6, 2002 for the gba. HoD was developed and published by Konami and released to positive reviews and currently holds a 87 on metacritic. HoD was the second Castlevania game released for the gba.

The Story

HoD stars Juste Belmont and his friend Maxim who are looking for their childhood friend Lydie who was captured and taken to a castle. As soon as they get to the front gates however, Maxim remarks that the castle feels familiar and he and Juste split up to cover more ground faster. Juste runs into Death in the castle and he confirms that the castle is indeed Dracula's castle. Juste finds portals in the castle that seem to teleport him to other area's of the castle but, Juste notes that the atmosphere seems to change when he goes through the portals. Juste runs into Maxim again after his first trip through the portal and Maxim's entire personality seems to have changed as he seems openly antagonistic towards Juste before the two split up once again to continue their search.

Juste finds Death again in the top room of the clock tower in front of a different looking portal and Death reveals that he has been switching between two layers of the castle. The castle split into layers because when Maxim had gone on a quest to destroy the remains of Dracula but, when Maxim collected the final piece he lost all memory of the time between when he collected that piece and when he returned from his journey and told Juste of Lyie's capture. Juste meets up with Maxim who seems to be his old self again but, Maxim warns Juste that he can feel his second persona gnawing at his mid trying to take control and that Maxim was who kidnapped Lydie but, he wiped his memory to stop his second persona from knowing where she was. Maxim gives Juste his bracelet that gives him access to Lydie's location in the top floor of the castle and tells Juste to hurry. Juste reaches her only to have her stolen away by Death who plans to use here blood to untie the two layers of the castle by destroying Maxim's spirit leaving only the spirits of Dracula's remains in him. Juste tracks down Death and finishes him but, Maxim's Dracula persona has tracked Lydie to the center of the castle. Juste rushes there to confront him to see if he can save his friends from Dracula.

(From left to right) top row: Juste, Lydie, Maxim

Bottom row: Merchant, Dracula, Death

The Gameplay

HoD is a metriodvania title with all the bells and whistles you would expect from the genre. 2D side-scrolling platforming with progressive unlocks to movement options to access more of the castle. Armor and whip tips scattered though out the castle and a roaming merchant who appears in some room  if you meet the requirement. Some sub-weapons return to be used with hearts to give Juste some projectile attacks and HoD adds is spell books to the mix which can be combined with sub-weapons to cast spells with magic points.

Juste fusing the fire spell book and axe to cast a magic spell.

The good

I played HoD twice for this review, one Juste mode and one Juste hard mode, and got the best ending for both with 200% map completion. Now to answer the main question. Did I Like HoD or was it a painful slog and grind fest like Circle of the moon?  I ended up really enjoying  HoD actually. I only really intended to play it once in Juste mode and write my review with that but, after finishing it the first time and starting to write this review I ended up picking it up again and played it on hard mode.  I really liked that you started off with the dash which made movement much faster and dodging attacks easier.

Having armor and medicine static drops through the castle cuts the need to rely on farming enemies for HOURS to get a couple drops to have healing items in stock or have armor that doesn't suck. Spell books are also static items that are always in the same spot instead of farming one enemy for HOURS to get the enemy to drop the card for your spells. Having a merchant in the castle also means that you can just buy potions an armor instead of having to grind  for HOURS to get a few item drops off enemies to stock up on potions or get armor that doesn't suck.

What I'm saying is that HoD fixes pretty much every problem I had with Circle of the moon and thus made it a much more enjoyable experience for me. There is however, some problems that HoD has that subtracts from its experience.

The bad

HoD's magic is way too powerful for one. Specifically the axe fire combo, the lighting cross combo, and the wind cross combo. The fire axe combo has Juste create two flaming wyrms that seek out enemies and crawl around them dealing multiple high damage hits which easily cut down bosses health substantially.The lightning cross combo is basically a 2D grand cross, if you don't know what that means it's a move where you character with float in the air and have crosses come up from the ground circling you and the crosses deal massive damage to enemies that get hit by them, and the wind cross combo is a protective circle of crosses that deal moderate damage to enemies that come in contact with them and is great for traversing the castle with little effort. You can even cast the wind cross combo and then save to regen all of your magic and have the full cross circle up.

The second problem I have with HoD kind of stems from the overpowered magic. HoD is too easy in my opinion. I died once in the normal playthrough and only died 5 times on hard mode and only ONE of those deaths was too a boss. That one death was to the cyclops in hard mode which if he hits you with his hammer dealt like 1/4 of my max health. This ease I believe is from magic being way to powerful. The only thing hard mode does, if you're curious, is that enemies take less damage and you take more damage.

There is third small problem but, its so minor that it didn't really mean to much to me in terms of this review. Some of the bosses are really uninspired. There a a few bosses tat are just big versions of regular enemies and they even used the Minotaur TWICE. This idn't really mean too much to me however other than the fact that its obviously quite a bit lazy.

The Verdict

These problems however didn't end up souring the experience of playing HoD and there are even more modes you can play. Maxim mode puts you in control of Maxim instead of Juste. Maxim has all of the movement required to access all of the castle at the very start but, in exchange for that Maxim doesn't level up and can't use potions. No magic mode is exactly as it sounds, the spell books are removed from their locations meaning no spells for Juste to use, making Juste rely on his whip and sub-weapons. Lastly there is the standard boss rush mode and sound test mode which are what they sound like. All of those modes including hard mode are locked until you beat the game once on normal Juste mode. Sound test requires getting the best ending however.

Like other Metriodvania games HoD has multiple endings depending on how much of the game you played and how you fight the final boss. There are 3 (technically 4) endings to HoD:

Bad Ending: Collect all 6 pieces of Dracuala's remains and defeat Maxim in the castle B center.

Okay Ending: Using the crush boots open up the highest room in the castle A and destroy the hand statue, then go too the castle center in castle A  and defeat Maxim.

Best Ending:  Collect all 6 pieces of Dracula's remains equip JB's and Mk's bracelet before entering the castle center in castle B and confront Maxim (there is an alternate scene in this ending if you collected and put down all of the furniture in Juste;s room in the castle treasury.)

I really enjoyed playing HoD for this review. As i said i had only intended only laying it once for this review and ended up playing it twice instead. Sure it has it's issues but, at least in my opinion it FAR outclasses Circle of the Moon. For me it is indeed a Hit.

Harmony of Dissonance is currently available on the Wii U virtual Console or on game boy advance as a cartridge or a a dual pack cartridge packed together with Catlevania Aria of Sorrow.

Thanks for reading! See you next month for my next review.