Games I Played in 2026 - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

 

 

Console: GBA

Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe

Release Date: June 11th, 2001

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is a metroidvania with an equal focus on both combat and platforming, with a fairly hefty amount of exploration. This is the first Castlevania game following the legendary Symphony of the Night to adopt a similar structure to it. Most notably, Circle of the Moon is not only included in the Castlevania Advance Collection (which is what I played it on), but it's the only game in the collection represented on the cover art. Outside of playing the very first Castlevania on an NES emulator and using save states as a teenager and watching a playthrough of Symphony of the Night, this is my first actual Castlevania game, so I was quite excited to finally play one.

Hugh dismisses Nathan at the start of the game, declaring that he'd only get in the way.

Circle of the Moon's story is threadbare to say the least, with a handful of very basic dialogue scenes and that's it. A vampire, Camilla, is aiming to resurrect Dracula, and a group of three vampire hunters show up to stop her: Morris Baldwin, and trainees Hugh Baldwin and Nathan Graves. The aging Morris is taken captive by Camilla and Dracula,  leaving Hugh and player character Nathan to go rescue him, but Hugh is uncooperative and envious of the fact that Morris declared Nathan his successor, not him. From there, there's only one little story beat and the rest is just pure gameplay.

Therefore, by nature, Circle of the Moon's level design has to be very solid to accommodate the lack of narrative direction, and I think it very much is. The game naturally funnels the player towards bosses that guard upgrades by blocking other routes with various obstacles that require said upgrades. I never found myself lost at any point, which is an achievement in itself considering my terrible sense of direction in games. However, Camilla's Castle (the game's setting) is a bit too basic for my tastes; the castle itself has little personality or memorable aspects to it, which isn't helped by the fact that there's no clear indication of what area you're in outside of the first time you visit it. The map screen is basically featureless, making this even more blatant. Each area has different music and visuals, obviously, but it still never felt like there was enough unique about each one for me to really remember.

The game's map, about a third of it is discovered. Save points are in red and teleporters in yellow. Nathan's position is shown by a sparkle.

Nonetheless, traversing Camilla's Castle is pretty breezy, all things considered. Nathan is about as standard as a Castlevania protagonist can be: he could be replaced by Simon or Richter Belmont and nothing would feel out of place with his gameplay. His main weapon is a whip, complete with the expected wind-up that makes it feel great to swing, and he can jump and slide, the latter of which deals damage (I found this out by accident, actually). By holding the attack button, Nathan will swing the whip in a circle around him, dealing a small but rapid amount of damage. This seemed neat early on as I played, but it wound up being a novelty more than anything.

As you'd expect from a Castlevania game, there's also Sub-Weapons that consume Hearts with each use. Circle of the Moon has 5: the Knife, the Axe, the Holy Water, the Holy Cross, and the Stopwatch. Each one uses a different amount of Hearts, and they are found either randomly from torches, or from predetermined torches (or maybe they're all predetermined?). The input to use them felt a little awkward, being Up+Attack, but it was fine. To be honest, I saw no real use case for the Knife or the Axe, with them having very low damage, and the Stopwatch seemed cool but too Heart-hungry. I used the Holy Water in the early game to great effect and switched to the Holy Cross when I first found one about midway through the game.

Leveling up happens instantly upon killing an enemy, pausing the screen with a satisfying jingle. Like Symphony of the Night!

Similar to Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon has a few RPG mechanics, including leveling up. It's nothing special, but the game's four stats (Strength, Defense, Intelligence and Luck) aren't explained outright, which is fine since they're self-explanatory, except Intelligence: it only affects MP regeneration, not the damage done using magic or sub-weapons or anything. EXP isn't displayed when you kill enemies, so to figure things out you'd need to check your EXP in the pause menu before and after killing an enemy, which isn't ideal, but not a big deal. There's also equipment that can be randomly dropped by enemies; you can equip chest armor and two arm accessories that will each raise or lower some or all of Nathan's stats. It's all very basic and straightforward, but still nice to have. 

It's kind of annoying to have it all tied to RNG drops, though. This is also a problem for Circle of the Moon's most defining and interesting mechanic: the Dual Set-Up System (or DSS). The DSS is the game's magic system, and I love it, at least on paper: there are 10 Action Cards and 10 Attribute Cards that can be found in the game. You equip one of each, and get a different magical effect depending on the combination. The Action Card determines the kind of effect you'll get, while the Attribute Card will determine the effect itself. For example, the Mercury Action Card is all about imbuing Nathan's whip with an element, and the Salamander Attribute Card represents Fire, so using the DSS with them equipped will result in Nathan getting a fire whip that has deals higher damage up close. As a result, there's a whopping 100 different effects attainable with the DSS, with each Action Card allowing vastly different kinds of effects and playstyles. It's easily the highlight of the game for me.

A standard gameplay section taking place in a clock tower, a Castlevania staple. Nathan is glowing red since the DSS is active.

Except that the cards are almost all very rare drops, all under 3% except for the first two: Mercury and Salamander. Mercury and Salamander have a massive 20% drop rate from the very first enemies in the game, making it incredibly unlikely to never get them. With all the other DSS cards being so rare, it makes the coolest aspect of the game locked away behind not only RNG, but knowledge since most only drop from one specific kind of enemy each, with some being very obscure. It's a huge bummer to me, even with the Castlevania Advance Collection's added feature of telling you if an enemy you're hitting has a DSS card and if you have it yet.

I think both the equipment and especially the DSS issues would've been fixed, or at least less noticeable, if Circle of the Moon had a shop and currency like Symphony of the Night in some way. As is, the game lacks both, so duplicates of equipment serve no purpose, which struck me as weird. Why can I get 9 copies of a chest armor when I can't discard or sell the extras? That's the biggest weakness of the game, in my opinion, but it's a game without many glaring flaws besides feeling a bit derivative and lacking in identity. Another option for the DSS cards would've been to make them rewards hidden in the Castle, similar to the HP, MP and Heart upgrades you can find.

Nathan fighting some lesser enemies with the Mercury+Salamander DSS combo that gives him a firey whip.

Combat and enemy variety is pretty good, with many areas having unique enemies and some weaker ones being replaced by stronger unique enemies in early areas as you progress through the game. They almost all feel properly beatable without using DSS or even sub-weapons, with only some of the later, tougher enemies not fitting that which is fair. The designs aren't anything to write home about, though, and mostly seem confined to what you'd expect from Castlevania. The enemies seem to mostly fall into two categories: pests that basically have 1HP, and actual enemies. It's a good little system that allows for more intimidating configurations of enemies without raising the difficulty too much. It helps that Nathan feels great to control in general; misinputs are rare and whenever I'd get hit, it was my fault.

The biggest problem with the enemies is tied to the game's level design. While it's made in a way that makes progression natural, the flipside is that a lot of the larger rooms end up being long hallways with the same enemies repeated three or four times with no variation to either the enemies or the environment, like it's the same parts copy-pasted a few times horizontally or vertically. It's fine at first, but gets pretty dull as the game goes on, especially as the enemies get more dangerous. Thankfully, another good point for the level design is that the save rooms are spaced just well enough that getting to them for the first time will almost always elicit a feeling of relief.

A boss fight somewhat early on against Adramelech, a giant green demon. With multiple projectiles, it's quite tough (but feasible) to dodge everything.

The game's boss battles are just right in terms of difficulty for the most part, feeling difficult but doable if you simply defeat every enemy you come across while exploring and play well. Save rooms are typically also fairly close, so Castlevania Advance Collection's save states were never very tempting except for one boss near the end. The bosses all follow a similar design philosophy: they are always vulnerable and have about 3 possible attacks, so the onus is on the player to find their own spots to deal damage while dealing with powerful attacks. I always find this kind of boss preferable to those where you have to wait for a weak point to become visible.

However, there's a boss late in the game where the difficulty spikes due to RNG, to the point that I tested with the Castlevania Advance Collection's rewind feature and found that his attacks were too random to properly react to, but I thankfully figured out a sort of cheese method for him. And then, unfortunately, the game's final boss is easily the worst fight in the game, with phase 1 being very easy but with an attack that feels borderline unavoidable, and a phase 2 with horribly overinflated damage and, again, an attack that is borderline unavoidable due to being RNG-reliant. It ended a game I was greatly enjoying for what it was with a bit of a flop.

A save room, a welcome respite from trawling through the castle.

Circle of the Moon's soundtrack was handled by Sotaro Tojima and Hiroshi Mitsuoka, and is pretty great for a GBA game, effortlessly invoking the Castlevania feel. However, that goes without saying since the majority of the soundtrack consists of arrangements of existing songs in the franchise. While I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the series, Circle of the Moon is early enough in its lineage that I recognised almost all of the reused tracks just from general video game music knowledge. However, there are a few new tracks in here, including the clear stand-out, "Awake," which serves as the first area's theme and seems the most associated with the game. I think the biggest compliment I can give is that unless you know all of the reused tracks, the soundtrack sounds truly cohesive with no weak entries.

PROS AND CONS

PROS

• Generally feels great to control.

• Looks pretty nice for a GBA game, even when upscaled through Castlevania Advance Collection.

• Solid soundtrack despite a lot of reused tracks from previous entries.

• The DSS is a fascinating mechanic.

• Good enemy variety with some changes as the game progresses to keep things fresh.

• Good boss fights overall.

• Good-to-great level design in general.

• Castlevania Advance Collection's additional features are welcome options.        

CONS

• Bad difficulty spike for the final boss.

• RNG-dependence for rare drops severely reduces the impact of the DSS.

• Overabundance of large rooms that are just a section copy-pasted a few times.

• Lack of overall identity makes the game feel forgettable despite being solid.

• Threadbare story means the characters don't stand out besides looking cool.

 

WORTH PLAYING?

As my first "real" Castlevania, I had a good time with Circle of the Moon outside of the unfortunate and unfun difficulty spike at the end of the game. I'm really bummed out by the amount of farming that'd be necessary to take full advantage of the DSS since that's easily the highlight of the game for me, but I still got to play with it a bit. The game also has separate "modes" that are unlocked by entering specific names for your file, so there's some variety there. I can imagine speedrunning this game can be quite fun due to some glitches from what I've seen as well.

It took me around 8-9 hours to beat in two sittings, so it's a pretty short experience overall, fitting for a GBA game. While I did enjoy it, the end soured me on it and it's ultimately a forgettable game. It's a neutrally solid game, and I wouldn't go out of my way to play it, nor would I get Castlevania Advance Collection for it, but as part of a package it's perfectly acceptable. Still, glad I played it, it's a fun time overall!