Lay off the HoD hate, people. CotM should get all the hate since IGA had no part of it, was developed by KCE Nagoya, had crap character animations, and had castle level designs that Dracula himself would bulldoze over.
CotM = GENERIC BROWNIE MIX.
Harmony of Dissonance had interiors that approached Symphony of the Night, had BRIGHT and COLORFUL levels, a boost in character/enemy animations, and was just more fun. It had the IGA touch.
CotM was an extremely satisfying game. IGA had no part of it, sure, but he had no part of the first five either, and they turned out just fine, thanks. Three factors made its gameplay stand out in the canon:
1) Subweapons were essential. It's the only GBA game in which that's true. I like subweapons. Sure, Soma could get many of the classic subweapons, but rarely did I use anything other than the axe armor soul. And many others have noted just how useless the unmodified subweapons were in HoD.
2) The magic system was robust (many different functional spell types, many different effects you could apply to the core function), but limited: only one spell at a time meant you had to choose wisely. This limitation ensured that subweapons were an important part of combat.
3) The different character types really made the game last, despite the lack of boss rush and alternate characters. Nevertheless, that you could complete the game by concentrating on these different aspects of combat (all-around, strength, magic, subweapons, luck) is a testament to the game design. I don't recall having to do extreme level grinding to pass a section in any of the modes -- and the Battle Arena was (barely) doable in any mode. That's something special, dammit.
Pros:
- Gameplay rocked!
- General art direction was good.
- Battle Arena
- Small list of items: focus was on gameplay, not on killing umpteen enemies to get a drop
- Music composition was excellent
- Decent, if cliche, plot that lives up to series origins.
- Protagonist is recognizably male
- Decent if undistinguished castle design
- Whip! More or less the traditional 1-3+Bloodlines whip, at that! Cons:
- Bland personality
- Castle access controls are more Metroid-like than Castlevania
- Graphics showed their GBC origins.
- No bestiary
- None of the quirky humor of the IGA games
- Small list of items: I like cool/interesting/funny items
Harmony of Dissonance was a mess. The lead characters were obviously designed on one of Ayami Kojima's off days, and the whole menage a trois subtext, while very amusing, was somewhat off-putting. Besides that, the garish colors employed everywhere, the poorly redesigned enemy art, and the irritating and deficient aping of all things SotN (character trail, elevator, save rooms, etc.) pissed me off at a philosophical level. The castle design was terrible, the
"alternate castle"
a gimmick that was really uncalled for and confusing. Most irritating was the music composition, with non-remix tracks ranging from bad to, er, dissonant. The instrumentation hurt the tracks, too, but the composition wasn't much to start with. Pros:
- Much better asset quality than CotM
- Some really cool enemy-based environmental puzzles -- loved 'em and would love to see more
- Furniture collecting: Goofy but fun
- Bestiary
- Alternate character mode
-
Play as Simon in Boss Rush! Also, Simon wraith (though another SotN ripoff)
- Boss Rush
- Pretty decent bosses
- Whip! The IV/Rondo of Blood whip, at that! With customizations ala II!
- Personality reappears in item names/descriptions Cons:
- Otherwise bad/bland personality
- Alternate character mode sucked
- Furniture collecting: Really, really goofy
- Naked, embarrassing SotN ripoffs
- Play as Gumby! Wait, that's the main character?!
- Bestiary has no funny descriptions
- Magic system sucked
- Subweapons are made almost useless
- Castle design is terrible and maximizes running around
- Music composition (Themes of Maxim/Juste are decent, I'll grant). Typical: Shrine of the Apostates. Ech. Part of the problem stems from the inclusion of main character themes in pieces where they're not needed. Some of the music is better suited to, say, Sonic.
- Music arrangement/instrumentation. Everything sounds badly limited, nearly 8-bit
- Whip additions are also nearly useless
- Wastes shoulder buttons on dashes
Personally: I've logged embarrassingly long hours on SotM/CotM/AoS/DoS, but only played HoD long enough to complete the castle 100%, and I went into all of them without prejudice or preconception. I can't say I didn't enjoy HoD, and it's certainly leagues better than the GB/GBC games, but it is a disappointing blemish in a series of exceptional games.
CotM was actually kinda hard, like a real Castlevania game. You know, like the NES ones, where you actually could die really easily and had to overcome challenging platform elements. HoD was so easy and bland, I couldn't believe it. AoS was a huge step up, but I can't help that Iga spends more time stuffing random RPG elements into the games then balancing and refining the gameplay.
CotM was actually kinda hard, like a real Castlevania game. You know, like the NES ones, where you actually could die really easily and had to overcome challenging platform elements. HoD was so easy and bland, I couldn't believe it. AoS was a huge step up, but I can't help that Iga spends more time stuffing random RPG elements into the games then balancing and refining the gameplay.
