Full Review

Castlevania: Harmony Of Dissonance is the follow up to the successful Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon and a game I reviewed and enjoyed. This game has been in development for sometime and needless to say I was looking very much forward to it.

In keeping with Castlevania tradition, the storyline remains the same and therefore you are once expected to do battle with Dracula again while rescuing a female companion Lydie. Your friend Maxim who later in the game reveals a dark side important to the story aids you. While the storyline is unoriginal, the use of intermissions and character dialogue to some extent does help engage the player and establishing some sort of atmosphere.

Konami have certainly listened to the criticisms of the first game and the first thing you will notice is the vibrant colours of the game. Juste’s attacks whether it be the whip or a magic attack are followed by bright colours and effects. Unlike Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon where the dark nature of the graphics where on the verge of off-putting, this game in contrast utilises the gameboy advance colour palette to a good degree. Obviously some degree of light source will be needed to play this game but this stems from the gameboy advance lack of contrast rather then anything to do with the game itself.

The graphics in Harmony Of Dissonance are certainly impressive, though the character animation hasn’t really improved from the first game with just a few frames of animation for the main characters, Juste still looks remarkably cool and fits the bill of a vampire hunter going about his way. The backgrounds in the game are more impressive then the first game in particular the corridor of air stage with clouds scrolling intensely and impressively in the background. Likewise other stages like the cathedral have colour-glass windows that are generally pleasing to the eye. For a GBA game, this does impress. However the improved graphics have certainly come at a price and the music for a Castlevania game is immensely disappointing. The game sounds no better then a NES game at times and the selection and duration of the tracks are poor. The music in latter stages of the game in the build-up to Dracula does not even change dispelling any kind of ‘final battle’ type atmosphere. The music does have its moments but normally these are few and far between. The sound effects are adequate however and Juste’s grunts and groans when he does a magic attack suit the action well.

Like the first game, Castlevania: Harmony Of Dissonance follows a super Metroid game structure instead of stage format and what will amaze you is the sheer size of the levels. Konami have certainly made this game bigger then the last and early in the game you will find yourself visiting an alternate castle though you probably won’t notice at first. While it sounds confusing, it will make sense and you find yourself quite happy with the big game environment that Konami have created for you lending to a more open ended game. Save points are dotted round the game to help you and to normally warn you that a boss characters lies ahead.

Harmony Of Dissonance scraps the DSS card combo system from the first game and this is a simpler affair. Players can collect six sub-weapons along the game and different magic books. Combination of the two can lead to different magic effects being created. Experimentation will allow you to work out the best combination to use against the enemy and more importantly the bosses. Juste himself is a easy enough character to use and response times are just about perfect with Konami seemingly perfecting it since the release of the Playstation game: Symphony Of The Night. Pressing the shoulder buttons allows Juste to dash back and forth much like Alucard in Symphony Of The Night. Practise and you will find that you can dodge almost any attack.

There are numerous secrets in the game. Along the way you can collect items of furniture to decorate a room. There are around 20 collectables to customize your room and while there seems no reward, it is in someway strangely satisfying. Completing the game will unlock boss rush mode allowing you to take on the bosses one after another. You can play as the NES version of Simon Belmont in the mode complete with rigid controls and lousy jumping! You can also play the main game as Maxim who jumping and dashing techniques are superior to Juste but comprised by his lack of magic attacks.

While the game is a decent follow up to the first game, there are many issues with the game that I think the games player should take note before committing money to it. Firstly if you have seen any screenshots of this game or seen it in action, Konami have made Harmony Of Dissonance more reminiscence of Symphony Of The Night then the first game. Too reminiscence in fact and ultimately this leads to the game’s downfall. It seems like Konami just ran out of ideas and the lack of originality is apparent for all to see. From the start of the game to the eerie familiarity of the backgrounds, whole sections of the game seem to have been taken from the Playstation version right down to the save points. While one can’t really mark a game too drastically from being too similar, the game is genuinely not better then the Circle Of The Moon. The boss designs are very weak and some are just rehashes from Symphony Of The Night. They are also very easy to beat with the same tactics working on all bosses. Just a few attacks and dashing away from their simple attack patterns (which are so basic, they are an insult to Castlevania and gamers everywhere) will see you through the entire game. The dashing move that Juste has it just too good and attacks can be avoided easily. It also makes exploration fast and easy meaning you will breeze though sections of the game very fast indeed. It has to be said that both Death and Dracula are ridiculously easy to beat, the use of magic attacks and potions will kill him without you even have to move. This is a complete contrast from Dracula Circle Of The Moon where mastery of the moves and practice would only see you defeat him. The storyline is weak too, admittedly the first game was not exactly compelling but this is just lame. There is hardly any introduction to Dracula and the fact he only appears right at the end of the game means this seems like a Castlevania game in name only. The ending is also a waste of time and is immensely disappointing too. Also Juste himself is very much just an Alucard wannabe right down to the shadow moves left behind when he walk.

At the end of the day Harmony Of Dissonance is very much a rip-off of the superior Symphony Of The Nights and while this may sound strange considering that both games where made by Konami it seems apparent that playing the game was quite a soulless and unoriginal experience. With no battle arena from the first game or a hard challenge, Harmony Of Dissonance will not last you more then about 5 to 7 hours. Don’t get me wrong I loved this game in parts and if you are even remotely a Castlevania fan, you will definitely want to play this but trust me when I say this is overall a disappointing and unoriginal game which does little to push the genre or the series any further.