Topic: Harmony of Dissonance Appreciation Thread

[beingthehero]

I think that's because the levels are simply too huge, and begin to drag on. The design isn't all that inspired throughout the game, and yeah, by the second or third stage the game becomes a chore to slog through.

[Sumac]

Another thing that I diliked about HOD was lack of difficulty and useless magic subsystem. I used it only twice in the game - to beat Maxim and Dracula 2nd form. Maxim was annoying and I wanted to kill Dracula as fast as possible to finally finish this game and move to something more decent.

[KaZudra]

HoD is actually one of my favorites, even though it was clearly intended to be SoTN on GBA, I believe it was better on some levels.

Bosses weren't pushovers and the alternate castle was both superior and more well though of than that lazy-ass upside-down castle with areas that have tints.

where this game is flawed is that it was too much for GBA, therefore alot of elements had to suffer, if it were to be remade for the 3DS or PSP/Vita it could truly shine.

but then again I disliked CoTM, the mass amount of glitches and exploitations killed the game.

[shelverton.]

Another thing that I diliked about HOD was lack of difficulty and useless magic subsystem. I used it only twice in the game - to beat Maxim and Dracula 2nd form. Maxim was annoying and I wanted to kill Dracula as fast as possible to finally finish this game and move to something more decent.

Yeah, and this is the APPRECIATION thread, mmkay? We've already established that many people, such as yourself, don't like it. We're here to celebrate, not bash.

I think that Successor of Fate is the - dare I say it? - BEST entrance theme in the history of Castlevania. There, I said it. 

[crisis]

Yeah, and this is the APPRECIATION thread, mmkay? We've already established that many people, such as yourself, don't like it. We're here to celebrate, not bash.

LOL, I can't even see that guy's posts & he's still talking trash? Somebody needs to get over himself & stop complaining, or learn to read topic titles thoroughly.

but yeah, I think Successor of Fate is certainly one of the best, but.. I just love Alucard's entrance theme in Symphony. Damn near perfect. However the ending arrangement of SoF is just.. orgasmic

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - Successor of fate (credits)


Incarnation of Darkness is just down right EVIL SOUNDING

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - Incarnation Of Darkness (Dracula's Theme)

[KaZudra]

plus its the second to last handheld castlevania game that doesn't mass recycle.

[Nail_Bombed]

^ Not entirely sure about that, I mean there are a fair few enemies that were taken from or based on SOTN, like the JP Bonepillar and Big Skeleton, which were versions of the Scarecrow and Paranthopus respectively. But it definitely stood out for me as being a good solid Metroidvania. And I dug the music - it fit very nicely with the theme, this is Harmony Of DISSONANCE after all.

[VampirehunterB]

I loved the game, it was really genuine in its aura...but I got really frustrated the goddamn whip never changed its looks despite equipping different powers to it! the tunes were really good, as jorge can tell(really good arrangements there!) but the sound quality was pretty low valued.
The artwork is astonishing. 
one of my favorite games

[Sumac]

Yeah, and this is the APPRECIATION thread, mmkay? We've already established that many people, such as yourself, don't like it. We're here to celebrate, not bash.

As far as I remember I said few positive things about this game. So it was not entirely bashing.
Dual Castle was a good idea. Return of Belmont as main playable character was a good thing too. Dracula's second form was unique (not in entirely good way, but still). Destructable environment in the levels, though there were too less of it.

My first impressions of the game were very positive actually - I was impressed by return of multisegmented enemies and afforenmentioned destructable environmnets - a good start, impressive even. I hoped that further in the game there will be more of those things. And maybe some part of the Castle will entirely consist from destructable platforms and backgrounds, including traps and pits.
Sadly a bit later all my hopes were crushed.

LOL, I can't even see that guy's posts & he's still talking trash? Somebody needs to get over himself & stop complaining

You should take your own advice in the first place, poor thing.

[beingthehero]

Really? I found Dracula's second form to be quite interesting, in that it's all of his artifacts fused together on a massive scale. I just wish it was more aggressive, but that's my complaint for all of HoD's bosses.

Still, it was a great nod back to Simon's Quest. Until HoD, it was mostly forgotten other than the zillions of Bloody Tears arrangements and remixes, official and otherwise. Even having the Dracula Wraith return was great.

[beingthehero]

I'll also add that this game has two of my favorite areas of the recent CV titles, The Wailing Way and the Room of Illusions. The Wailing Way strongly reminded me of something that would have appeared in SCIV, given the ultra-somber music, the abandoned and crumbling buildings, and the mountains in the background. Back then, it was kind of nifty to be able to explore a little bit of an outdoor area.

The Room of Illusions had some great detail, especially with the two ornate beast-statues at the bottom of the altar room with the giant's remains in the background, and that trippy wave effect.

[Ring_of_Varda]

I never did quite understand the hate for Harmony. I remember picking it up shortly after my birthday (8 days to be exact.) and being utterly enthralled with the game. still to this day it is the only castle, however brief that i have gotten lost in. As much as some may not agree, since the advent of the metroidvania style that has been my biggest enjoyment of the series is the exploration and HoD had it in spades.

The music suited the creepy nature of the castle quite well and the merchant theme still gets stuck in my head to this day.  The only real drawback of the game was that it was pretty easy but hey, for the most part the only real metroidvania since their inception with any shred of difficulty was OoE.

[Patashnik]

Had to delay my response a little just to give myself time to absorb every aspect of the game good and bad, and take a few things away  so I may digest them to form a “FAIR” account ( serving as a first impression really as I did not complete the game in its entirety which I will cast more light onto further into the post).

Well.... After completing the game to a satisfactory extent, yea.. I can see why this is such a divide among Castlevania fans, as enjoyment is quite relative to what a certain  type of player would constitute as  slight hang ups in a overall decent game or if said hang ups are considered to be so completely beyond the pale that it basically shades the entire colour your opinion of the game as a whole.  A certain type of player will either allow a few technical problems to go right over their heads while enjoying some arguably solid gaming mechanics, while others will just plainly find this game a massive travail in patience.  I on the other hand, to be frank, can see valid points on both sides of the table.

As this is a “appreciation thread”  I’ll try to tread lightly on how I express myself.  Not that I set out on a crusade to lambast this game in any way, as to be frank I do quite like this game, but I would still consider myself still quite middle road when it comes to how I feel about the game overall.

Just to defuse confusion on the overall tone of my opinion I might as well give a sort of overarching summary right now, just encase my tone doesn’t translate well ( or if you get bored with me prating on which is likely). Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance at its core is a GOOD game, but I think the overall enjoyment factor is essentially dependent on the level of patience you have as a gamer in general. Whether you like the sense of trial and error involved and enjoy the satisfaction of discovering where you need to go, ( like a few older games I’ve played , kind of like point and clicks but not quite in the same vein)  or if you hate feeling like a rat in a maze,  DESPISE Backtracking and feel the need of a  hint here and there on where to go for good measure, will make or break how you feel about this game as a whole.

k heres what I took from the whole experience ( post the positive and negative in separate posts)

[Patashnik]

Ok I will start with some positives:

Considering that this is the first Castlevania game on the GBA  where the original staff are at the reigns (while CoTM was  first with the namesake but was made by an entirely different department inside konami. though their attempt was still in-keeping with the orginal games ) this is a pretty decent first try. There is nothing outwardly wrong or broken with the game as a whole( save for the soundtrack) and in essence it's faithful to the general game mechanics of its predecessors. You have a whip, you have sub items, you have to go explore a decrepit castle, what more do you want?. it looks like a castlevania game, it plays like a castlevania game  and besides  assessing the more intrinsic problems with the game, there are no outlying problems in the game that ruin overall enjoyment ( in comparison to the albatross of the series Simon’s quest where it didn’t even feel like the game had even gone beyond the drawing board).  It may not be the apex of the series, but it’s still miles off being its low point (Simon’s quest is the game that kind of deserves the title “whipping boy” ) . 


it still maintains the right formula I think to be worthy of the castlevania name, the only problems start to arise when you compare it to other titles in many different ways ( music , bosses, map system , ect). Otherwise if you’re a new player and this is your first castlevania game (despite maybe the map layout getting under your skin) I think it would still be received pretty well.  It does do a few things differently but not to the point of becoming unrecognisable from the series as a whole.

From what I’ve played (only played seven of the  games thus far so please correct if I am out of my element) the Dashing mechanic is honestly for me the best implemented evasive mechanics (  makeshift magic evasive ones notwithstanding)  out of the castlevania series so far . even comparing Alucard’s semi –back dash in SOTN or Soma Cruz’s Dash in AoS, the sensitivity of the mechanic to evade sudden attacks are so responsive that is becomes a integral part of your dodging ( especially with bosses, though having said that it can also make a few of the  bosses a embarrassing cakewalk of a experience; so whether you think they removed the efficacy of the dash in future titles because of this is open for speculation.. ) . You may also dash in both directions which is also a plus. Slight gripe however would be how I feel slightly perplexed to why they didn’t just assign one shoulder button to be the dash feature while pressing a certain direction to be in conjunction to which direction you want to go,( leaving the designers a extra shoulder button to play around with , when designing extra moves and abilities) but then again this just a personal nitpick more than anything.

The visuals ( excluding Juste ofc)  are really stunning on this one and there’s so much going on in specific areas with a few animated background quirks included into the mix as some of the prior members to this post here have mentioned. It definitely outranks CoTM in this regard ( which was a bit static-tastic tbh, save for the machine tower) and it  also gives the castle a more claustrophobic feel imo, not in a bad way, but for me gives it more menace I guess.  Especially the skeleton  cave; yea I know not the most original of areas but I kind of liked how it was executed, and seeing those skeleton remains piled up in the background did make this castle feel like a viable threat.

SoTN is kind of seen as the main mover and shaker of the series in terms of shaping the castlevania format as a whole. There are influences from SOTN especially with some enemy palettes adopted from it, which might give the impression of HOD trying to ride the coattails of SOTN’s success,  however dubbing Harmony of Dissonsance  as a kitsch GBA counterpart to the SOTN is kind of cutting it’s unique qualities  short.  There’s are a few new additional semi puzzles or challenges in this one like the marble run ( no pun intended.. well alittle) challenge and the gigantic guardian armour room where you have to  push the blighter into those rotating cogs ( yea shamefully took me just over a minute to work out what i had to do, talk about me being slow on the uptake >.> ) which do indeed  make this game distinct from SoTN, as well as a plot deviating from Dracula being the main antagonist of the game ( well essentially he still is but only through influencing maxim... ) . 

In addition to this the save points are spread more evenly than in CoTM ( though this is more my personal impression than anything else though, your opinion might be at odds to this so don’t take this as gospel truth or absolute.), and in places of decent utility like next to boss rooms and very close to warp and teleport rooms ( unlike CoTM where the most memorable lack of a save point was right next to the frickin last boss, sure you could save inbetween each form , which was nice, but you still had to travel through 4-5 screens to get to it. though this is just a  gripe).

Now the spell book system, like the DSS ( which is also fun system to say the least) is ...decent if you , like the DSS system, are willing to put the time and effort in looking for the books and playing around with the combinations (echoing back to the principle factor of being a patient gamer). I guess it’s slightly annoying that you have to go on a treasure hunt to find the  correspondent sub weapon to fuse with the magic book equipped, but the combinations were kind of fun. However, the biggest complaint about this system is that it, for me, it ultimately rendered the heart gauge utterly useless. I rarely if ever , used any hearts once I got my first spell book ( which is quite early on, so it does render it quite a problem)and would just rely on expending mp for moves as opposed to  using hearts with the sub system. Why would you when the spell book fusion is so much more fun/effective in taking out opposition. I guess you could switch back once your mp gauge was completely exhausted but tbh the sub weapons where so weak as standalone pieces, I would just ether hack away at enemies with the  whip until it refilled, or  through sheer laziness throw a high mana prism my way when I wanted to speed things up a little..

I think now I mentioned the Spell book system, this would be a decent avenue to talk about the more negatives aspects of this game.. oh boy here we go..

[Patashnik]

negatives:

K, beside the music, the most frustrating element of this game ( for me), would be the map layout, which to be honest was the only factor that was a near deal breaker in enjoying the overall game. Again I think this is relative to the individual’s preference than being a crippling factor of the game as a whole, but still ... where do I begin.

Firstly  I stumbled on a lot of dead ends or closed off areas due to lack of a ability ( mainly the double jump)  . Now I know that this does happen alot in the other games ( especially SoTN) but at least in those games you felt that you could still accomplish or obtain something in the general area you were in ( hard to explain but if you’ve played the previous titles as well as this you will know what I mean), besides filling the map up. For example  my first time in luminous caverns, I remember I went in this one direction for a good 7-9 screens of a long and winding pathway, and all I had got at the end to show for it was a stupid mana prism item.
 
Also it doesn’t help that each section of the castle was not only huge but usually quite long and winding. Which meant if you wanted to check a area at the end of a certain section (be it useful or not)  even if you had the ability to access previously  inaccessible areas, these areas set for a later point in the game, would usually be right at the end of a certain area.  You could still complete 75% of a level/area but there would also be that little section in any given area that is unreachable cause of a need to double jump or something to that effect. Therefore  you would have to come back to that small part ( which probably only has something like a high potion or something ) which in essence, takes a good ten minutes to reach  when considering the layout of where the area starts and ends.  And usually even at the point in the game where you get the needed ability, there would only be really one way to get to the previously inaccessible area, as the more convenient way would be blocked off by another requisite for a different ability (tell me if I am going off on a limb here but this is at-least how it felt).

The teleportation rooms for the first part of the game were really silly. Teleports in castle a or b respectively would only teleport in two directions ( even if you’ve visited the other ones) which means you would have to still travel a fair distance to reach a teleporter that would send you to the second respective teleport room.  However near the end of the game when you find the rooms that warp you between A and B you have the option to kneel down which then warps you to the next warp room in the respective castle as opposed to either castle A or B, which in effect allows you to warp around the castle without need of travelling long distances, or between castle A or B.  however this  only available is near the end of the game where,  for the most part , you need a lure key and a skull key to access the more usefully placed warp rooms anyway.

In general the map layout got so irritating that I will be the first to admit, after ¾ into the game I just decided to refer to a walkthrough to quicken the completion rather than turn up every stone of possibility left for me.   I even realised I missed out the ring of vlad ( which  I will be doing again) after completion . I think if I played the game again as I know now where I generally need to go, I would find the game a lot more enjoyable, as besides this and the music, even the shifty boss fights were fun in its own respect.
The music However .. I am sorry to say was quite bad..., and probably the only justifiable reason for hate on this game.   I am really sorry for those more forgivable or if you really liked the music, but I am going to have to succumb to the negative partiality of the haters, as there were moments where I felt my ear canals were becoming cisterns for blood.  I know it was to sacrificed to free up memory to give the graphics that extra polish, and harkening back to that 8 bit chip tone might be nostalgia fuel for some, but right after the vibrant and lively score from CoTM I felt it was quite underwhelming as a follow up, and because it sometimes to little more than analogue farting noises there was little distinction between them. Ergo, it makes the score as a whole very forgettable.

One track especially that made my acoustic centres want to commit suicide, was the luminous caverns . It just sounded like it was lingering in the background floundering about not knowing what direction to go in sound. If I was to anthropomorphises the luminous caverns ost it would be this rather dazed fellow staring at me blankly, shrugging every 5 seconds on the basis that it didn’t know how to climate the area it was set in.  Eventually, after the second return into the luminous caverns ,  I just had to turn the sound of completely.. it just irked me that much..

The boss battles weren’t too bad, but did lack the epicness of the prior and even successive titles to follow.  One could argue that the effectiveness of the dashing was what could have killed a few of the bosses difficulty, but to be honest I think a lot of the bosses as a whole had really simple attack patterns and one trick ponies available to pull out of their sleeves.  The more damaging moves (  the minotaur  gets special mention here)  usually had enough downtime when charging a powerful strike to give you unduly time to get out of the way.  Legion/Grandfaloon was the most disappointing for me. What happened to the usually imposing gestalt of damned bodies found in the previous games? Again when talking about one trick ponies this one ( or these two including its corpse form) really took the cake. First form only replicated small pint sized copies of itself in your general direction, whereas the second just drops these small goblets of goo at a snail’s pace, still allowing amble time to hack away at it’s core....  I Wasn’t impressed...


And finally Juste character palette...... urgh, is there any room for refute on how bad this character looks in game( probably the only thing lovers/haters must be able to agree on).  I mean the out of game character design from Ayami Kojima looks pretty boss in that vermilion trenchcoat ( even with a few “Alucard” overtones with the hair and pale complexion , but still had enough to make Jjuste distinct) but in game, where do I begin.

I know the blue outline is to compensate for the poor visibility of the original gba, so can’t blame the game for trying to facilitate a inherent flaw of the console it was on at the time ( though the after-image  that similar to alucard’s felt a bit awry, but again personal nitpick) but the overall body proportion is laughably cartoonish, for some reason , when in his whipping frame of animation it looks like his hands and feet are really disproportioned  to a normal human being...


To summarise I did enjoy the game to some extent but when I hit the four hour mark I  did get itchy feet from exhausting  every possible nook and cranny and cheated a little. I think if I played this game a second time around I would definitely like it more as at least I have the memory from the first playthrough to know the general direction I am supposed to go.  Whether you’ll enjoy it is based on how you feel on retracing a lot of steps and back tracking to be honest, as that might start to wear a bit thin on patience. Other than that, fun game.  ( sorry if this was way too long but I wanted to address all of the positives and negatives I could think of in equal measure in the game )