Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

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I have a lot of nostalgia for this game, as the first GBA game I ever owned, and it should be good as a Castlevania game. However, it sucks, and is definitely the worst GBA Castlevania.

The core controls are horrible, because you default to walking at a stupid slow pace and have to double tap the d-pad to run at a good speed. This hampers the game throughout. It's full of unfun design. Multiple different forms of enemies that freeze you in place. Enemies that make you unable to attack for a really long time, like a minute, on contact. Crappy bosses that are only hard due to a combination of constant random projectiles and the poor controls. Boring level design with big rooms filled with many copies of the same enemy over and over. A levelling system that will make you fall behind if you don't grind through all the enemies leaving you doing piddly damage to enemies and bosses. Hearts that don't get refilled at save points and you have to grind torches to refill them. DSS cards that are gained by pure RNG, without any indication of which enemies drop them.

I stalled for a long time as I didn't want to give up on this, but I didn't have a lot of fun. Sick music and good graphics though. Ultimately I got to the last phase of the last boss before realising it was too cheap to beat without grinding up a lot of levels.