Why does nobody talk about this one? I actually really like the DSS, even if the drop rates are a bit too low...

nah fuck this game. first playthrough i reached the zombie dragons before getting a single card drop. thought the game was dumb then and still do after learning mechanics

I always found the jumping/gravity physics odd. iirc you fall super fast like a rock going down from a jump

I finished Symphony of the Night two days ago and I have conflicting thoughts about it
The music is great, the gameplay is cool and all but it's terribly balanced
Isn't the second castle supposed to be harder than the first one? why does every enemy deal 1 damage and you can kill bosses with 10 hits?

Best cross between classic and modern Castlevania out there. One of my favorite GBA titles. I've played this dozens of times. Thief mode is best mode, especially when you bypass the Underground Warehouse and go straight to the Underground Waterway without Cleansing.

A pipedream of mine is to port this badboy to SNES.

>double-tap to run sucks
no it doesn't, it's great

True, but when the SP came out, the eye effort put into the game was greatly appreciated. It was a launch title, so they hadn't figured out that they had to over saturate the colors to compensate.

all metrovanias are easy except ooe.
thats why its hated so much.

Wouldn't call this a favorite but yeah, it's a good game. I really like how it gets really hard from the mid-point forward, and has some nice music.
Even replaying it as an adult those dragons beat my ass.

>Even replaying it as an adult those dragons beat my ass.
it wouldn't be fun otherwise

Jesus Christ. What a shit list.

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BEST CARD COMING THROUGH, OUT OF THE WAY CARDLETS

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>Gayboy advance

For me, it is mercury + mandragora, just because I love how the thorny whip looks like

You have to ignore a lot of OP stuff to play SotN with challenge.

>why does every enemy deal 1 damage and you can kill bosses with 10 hits?
I like to play on luck mode taking the shortest path from boss to boss. you can get all the way up to Shaft without needing anything more than what you find along the way. You can get to Drac if you trick Death and keep your Alucart equipment, but I can't beat him. Playing like this made me realize that the game was not globally balanced at all, as in you can fight through almost any area with base stats, with a few exceptions. It's fucking ridiculous. But that's part of the charm of the game, in that it is really wonky.

mars + unicorn when I'm feeling pimp
jupiter + serpent at all other times

It quickly got tedious that you need to dash almost any time you're moving in order to have any horizontal jump travel. The movement in general felt clumsy and unpolished. The rest of it was great though, kind of a hybrid between classic CV and the SOTN style.

POR had some tougher parts. Beating Richter without spamming pies or grinding/minmaxing was a decent challenge.

Since it's so easy to go through the map in so many different orders, enemies were mostly made with an "Alucard can go through here with basic equipment" mindset, instead of the "if you get here and get wrecked, come back later" mindset.
As such when you get good gear the game gets too easy. Specially if you find one of the more broken weapons (Shield Rod, Mournerblade, Crissaegrim, etc)

I like it

There are maybe three bad Castelvanias tops not counting the reboots

the Sorrows are overrated boring grindfests

I appreciate this game decided to often try to integrate upgrades directly into moveset instead of requiring constant switching.
The tackle and sprint as an innate power were good choices.

First Castlevania bought on GBA. It was so dark, the image I mean, even with one of those peripherals that cast light on your Gameboy.

Upgraded to a GBA SP. Now I got to enjoy it. I just felt bad that I beat the game via cheating (the card exploit). But it was a good game. Not SotN but pretty solid.

Recently did a replay binge of all the metroidvania games in the series, when I got to the GBA ones I quickly remembered why Circle of the Moon was my least favorite of the 3 GBA games. The movement feels more like a classicvania than a metroidvania, which is sometimes jarring when the game expects you to navigate in and around a world using metroidvania game design rules, the control scheme is unintuitive and poorly thought out which makes the first few hours more frustrating than the opening hours of the other metroidvania entries, DSS is kind of a cool gimmick but not interesting enough to save an otherwise clunky feeling game. This may just be my personal opinion, but CotM feels like the most drab, uninspired metroidvania of the three GBA games and the clunkiness really doesn't help.
In my eyes, Harmony of Dissonance = Aria of Sorrow > Circle of the Moon. Aria of Sorrow is Aria of Sorrow, don't really think I have to go in depth on why it's a good game. I feel like Harmony of Dissonance stands on even ground with Aria of Sorrow, though, even though a lot of people seem to not like it. HoD feels like a much closer rendition of the "SotN on a Gameboy Advance!" goal the devs were trying to reach with the 3 GBA games than AoS. AoS is it's own thing and really good for that but HoD literally felt to me like a portable SotN and I really love it for that. The A+B castle system it had was so much better than AoS's chaos dimension, A+B system actually felt like a great counterpart to the inverted castle that pushed you to explore far more than you would've otherwise.

Forgot to say- I replayed all of them on classic hardware using a GBA whose screen I swapped for a GBA SP backlit screen I got off amazon- pic related was the final product after I reassembled it. Would highly recommend this modification to any anons who still play GBA games, it's relatively cheap/straightforward to do and it boosts enjoyment of GBA titles so, so much more. You get the great handheld ergonomics of the original GBA (SP is just way too uncomfortable for me, my hands are a bit too large to get a good grip on it for fast paced gameplay) with the crisp, backlit screen that GBA spritework is meant to be enjoyed on.

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Sometimes I think I'm the only person who has Portrait of Ruin as their favorite Metroidvania
Also, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen anything even remotely negative about Order of Ecclesia

The walking and running in this one really bothers me

Can someone who is of the opinion that SOTN and Portrait of Ruin are the two best Metroidvanias rate Order of Ecclesia for me? Worth a playthrough? Does it have any sort of Belmont mode?

As someone that shares in hating the ergonomics of the SP, I gotta say: that is awesome and I am extremely jealous.

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CotM is actually really good, it's just that the level design isn't exceptional and final Dracula is the worst boss fight in the entire series.

what's your absolute favorite metroidvania soundtrack, anons? and what's your favorite classicvania soundtrack?
mine would have to be this for the GBA metroidvanias, such a hype track once the guitars kick in, really gets you pumped up to just smack the absolute shit out of drac's minions
youtube.com/watch?v=yQ-0O-f_e4M
followed by this one as my favorite non-GBA metroidvania track
youtube.com/watch?v=PS8ALhXLrPg
something about dance of pales is so beautifully haunting, I can listen to it for fucking hours. they really nailed the music atmosphere for SotN, the music evokes such strong, melancholy feelings of the mystique of exploring a castle like that

Why not do it yourself, user? It's a pretty easy process, anyone could do it, really. You just take the GBA shell off, remove the board, disconnect the original screen cable, trim the original screen holder in the shell with a razor blade or dremel tool, connect the new screen to the cable and pop it in, then close the whole thing back up. Takes all of 20 minutes to do and the end result is absolutely incredible. I still hold to this day that the GBA had one of the greatest handheld lineups of any portable console. So many classics that hold up even today and feel great to revisit. A GBA + the SP screen mod + a GBA flash cart so that you can play ROMs on original hardware will give you literally hundreds of hours of comfy classic games to enjoy, all with great controller-esque ergonomics and (finally) the ability to play in bed with the lights off like you always dreamed of in your childhood. I would very highly recommend it to any GBA enthusiasts that are still around today, even if they've already got their hands on an SP. SP's button layout just will never compare to the original.

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It's a power trip. Alucard can Soul Steal the entire screen anytime, remember? Embrace that Alucard is supposed to be hella powerful and just have fun.

>the ability to play in bed with the lights off like you always dreamed of in your childhood
Fuck I forgot how I would stay up past bedtime playing on my SP, volume off so I could hear if my parents were coming upstairs to check if I was actually asleep.

I don't get why it gets shit on. It's easily my favorite GBA Castlevania game. AoS is a close second, followed by a pile of dog shit, followed by HoD.

>One of the greatest lineups.
More like the greatest. Legacy of Goku games, the Red & Blue remakes, 2 solid Castlevanias, Metroid Fusion, Advance Wars, FFT Advance, Zoids Legacy, Golden Sun, Megaman Zero, etc.

DS is good, PSP is good. But GBA was a fucking treasure trove of quality. I still browse through romsets and find a new gem, here and there.