Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Game Boy Advance - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Publisher Konami Published 2002-06-06 Platforms Game Boy Advance Genres Action-adventure, Beat 'em up, Exploration, Metroidvania, Platformer Themes Action, Adventure, Horror, Vampires Series Castlevania Distribution Commercial

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is a Metroidvania game developed by Konami Tokyo and published by Konami for the Game Boy Advance on 2002-06-06. It is one of many Castlevania games.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. Beat all three endings. Needed a hint for the best ending.
Finished	2016-09-07.

I didn't know anything about the game other than it was a later Castlevania game, and that was enough to get me to want to play it. Overall it's just an okay game; worth playing, but nothing new or exciting. I don't understand why this game is ranked as the best of the three GBA titles.

Review

6	7	6	6	8

Best Version: Game Boy Advance

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• Having a light and dark side of the castle was a clever way to add difficulty and length to the game as well as introduce some nice puzzles.
• Some of the backgrounds have amazing graphics.
• Some of the puzzles are challenging and took me several attempts, but none seemed unfair.
• I liked how your secondary weapon can be affected by the various spell books to create more special abilities.
• Some of the monsters had a lot of work put into them, like the level 3 skeleton dragon that curled around the columns.
• There is a fun Easter egg using the Konami Code which lets you play as an 8-bit Simon Belmont.

Bad

• The story is pretty garbage and none of the characters are interesting.
• A lot of the sprites are pretty bad, especially the character sprites.
• Most of the monsters were just repeats of earlier Castlevanias with very little originality.
• There are surprisingly few secrets.
• The game has a lot of backtracking.
• Needing to use Maxim's ring to unlock one of the castle's many locked doors took me forever to figure out.
• Why does Juste have an ethereal after-image right from the beginning? It doesn't feel earned, and it's visually distracting.
• The same weak enemies remain for most of the game making backtracking rather pointless.
• I wish the developers had come up with a better way to handle the secondary weapon. I kept accidentally picking up a weapon I didn't want.
• The cross is vastly superior to the other weapons, so, when you get it, all the others are obsolete.
• There aren't any decent hints for getting the good ending.
• The fact that this came out after Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, which is better in every way, is embarrassing for Konami!

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The original Japanese art is very well painted and certainly adds to the Gothic feel.

• 

  All other regions used a more-cropped version of the art with English, and a more tame Castlevania logo. Inferior.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - Japan.

• 

  Manual - USA.

• 

  Manual - USA - Revision.

Maps

• 

  Castle A.

• 

  Castle B.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

Game Boy Advance (Europe), Game Boy Advance (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	Lydie Erlanger is the only women with dialogue, but she's just a damsel in distress.
Bechdel test?	Fail	No women talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Everyone appears to be white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Japanese	キャッスルヴァニア 白夜の協奏曲	Kyassuruvania Byakuya no Koncheruto	Castlevania: Concerto of Midnight Sun

Links