Topic: Harmony of Dissonance Appreciation Thread

[Opium]

...
To summarise I did enjoy the game to some extent ...

Are you sure?

[PFG9000]

Patashnik, that's a pretty well thought-out analysis.  Just a couple random thoughts you've inspired:

I know there's been complaints about Juste's sprite and color scheme, but they've honestly never bothered me.  Perhaps it's because I've never gotten into sprite-making, but more likely it's because I'm colorblind.  I probably don't see his sprite as vibrantly as most people, so to me it was never a problem.  My colorblindness also gives me problems in the map screen of this game.  I have trouble seeing which rooms are which color until I look really closely.

As far as the dead ends, I actually like that aspect of this game.  That's the part I like about the Metroidvanias; you can see just beyond where your way is blocked, and you know you can get over there eventually, but you have to explore more to do it.  So much more interesting than a locked door, but the function is the same.  Although it does make the game more confusing, especially once you have two separate castles to explore.  I can see how it's a kick in the pants to explore a big, new area, only to dead end at one spot with no new items of significance to make the trip worthwhile.  Probably the biggest offender is the first time you can explore the topmost portion of the chapel.  You trek all the way up there, pretty far from a save point, only to dead end at the locked door leading to the castle keep, erm, top floor.

I never thought about the teleporter thing, how there are two different types of teleports and how that really doesn't make any sense outside of gameplay confines.  But I never did like how the first time you go through a teleport, Juste says something to the effect of, "Something feels different about this place."  The game designers meant that to be a hint or a foreshadowing of the dual castle thing, but I just thought it was a big "duh" moment.  Anybody who knows anything about teleports should understand that going through one puts you in a different place.  I thought Juste was just stating the obvious, that he had just teleported to a different place within the castle, but I would have thought a little differently about the comment had the developers worded it more appropriately.

As far as the music goes, the general banner of the HoD soundtrack supporters is that the problem isn't with the compositions, it's with the sound quality.  And that's true to a point, but there are some tunes that, in my point, are just bad all around.  The Luminous Caverns theme is one of these.  The Wailing Way BGM is another, and the merchant theme is just trash.  But the good tunes are still good enough to redeem the soundtrack, at least to the point where it's not deserving of the criticism that is usually directed at it.

[Patashnik]

Opium: yep I am sure.. honest =P ... game play is fine and loved flaying them skeletons back to hell, with the occational wind book + holy water “HYDRO STORM!!!!” combo for good measure... ( tehehe >=) ).... just man while doing it I felt like I was running around like a headless chicken, but again it’s just my attention span really...


PFG9000: yea I guess I have a low patience threshold with exploration sometimes, as a game in itself, the exploration and backtracking its not a broken element by any stretch of imagination, but I do believe it comes down to how patient you are with these things as a whole. For me it did unfortunately irritate me quite abit, but again I think its down to personal thresholds..

Good example, one of my favourite games system shock 2 did this quite often and at one point where you have to back track from deck 6 ( command deck) to deck 4  then to deck 2 then all the way back to deck 6 again. This  really bugged ALOT of people, but not so much me, so yea these sort of things don’t really kill a game in terms of quality, but if you’re kind of the ADHD fidgety kind of person like I am, then yea might find it irritating.

You do have a very good point with the compositions though, I did kind of lump them all into one catorgory alittle.  There some really great compositions, just unfortunately given the tinny 8-bit make over, they don’t translate so well....  it’s fair to say If you look at the rehashed versions on you tube, you can defiately see what Soshiro Hokkai was aiming for ( and if they were included in the original in that form then yea would have no qualms at all), just it comes down to  not been given the right technical tools to give it more life.

Not sure this is a official arranged but still gives you a idea of what I mean:

Epic Castlevania Theme #31 - Successor of Fate / Sucesor del Destino


with teleporting I donno why they couldn't consolidate the warp rooms and the teleport room, when your given the option to use warp rooms (the ones that send you to a or b) gives you the option to move around the castle in a manner like the teleport rooms anyway ( with the kneeling down and all). if they did do that then access to the harder areas would be a bit to early I guess, but I guess maybe if they tinkered around with the map layout slightly then this might of not been a problem..

The Juste palette for me was abit ugly to look at... , I donno if any1 can relate but it just look cartoonish, and not right, not sure why. my comment doesn't really go into specifics to be fair but maybe it's just a personal thing.. but to be fair I did get used to it eventually, one of the rare instances where familiarity breed content instead XD.

[VladCT]

Not sure this is a official arranged but still gives you a idea of what I mean:
Epic Castlevania Theme #31 - Successor of Fate / Sucesor del Destino

Actually that's Jorge's arrangement, I could recognize those trumpet and violin synths anywhere.

[Patashnik]

yea sorry couldn't find a immediate official arranged version, but yea still if the soundtrack was done a manner likened to what Jorge did ( thanks Jorge =P) then yea it would have been a decent addition to the series.

[Harrycombs]

I love dashing.

That was a really cool feature.

I enjoyed HoD. I think Aria was a significant improvement over it and I played it first, so it was really hard for me to immediately appreciate HoD. The jumping feels really clunky compared to the other Metroidvanias, but you get used to it after a while. I still think Juste looks really ugly though. I think even Nathan looks better than him, but the backgrounds really are spectacular. Playing as Simon in boss rush mode was a blast, and I like how they gave Simon a unique screen when you finished it. Some bosses though, like the giant slime and giant peeping eye, were just really lazy though. I think CotM actually did the boss fights better. Anyways, its a good game, it grows on you after awhile. Better than most of the recent Castlevanias.

[Arma]

Harmony of Dissonance gets no love.  Between CotM and AoS, Harmony tends to be the whipping boy of the GBA games.  I think I see more CV hate directed toward that game than any other, except maybe for Legends and, recently, Harmony of Despair.

But lately I've been playing through Harmony again, probably for the tenth time or so.  I really love it.  The graphics are beautiful and far more detailed than in CotM or AoS.  The forward and backward dashing mechanic with the shoulder buttons makes navigating the castle quick and easy, and it gives the game's controls a feeling that no other CV has.  The music might get a lot of flack, but it really builds atmosphere in a lot of areas.  I can't imagine the Sky Walkway any other way.  And yet, I wonder if a soundtrack with higher-quality samples would make people appreciate the game more.  The low sound quality and the lack of difficulty are really the only flaws to the game, in my opinion.

I think the best thing about the game is the multitude of little quirks you can find.  There's that crazy painting in the Sky Walkway with one man stabbing another, and the blood drips down from the wound, to the picture frame, to the floor.  There's the giant Carmilla mask in the Skeleton Cave, and the two pinball racing rooms.  The game is so unique, but still absolutely Castlevania.

Any thoughts on Harmony of Dissonance, good or bad?  We're just a few months away from the game's ten year anniversary, so let's celebrate a bit.

Harmony of Dissonance is my favourite of the GBA Castlevanias. The tunes aren't bad just the quality.
One of the things I like of this game are the enhances for the whip and the spells you can get by combining the books with the sub weapons.
The great number of giant armor enemies is pretty amusing.

I still don't know what's the purpose of Juste's room though, I guess the point is just to collect all the furniture and that's it but still it's kinda fun to do it.

[X]

I still don't know what's the purpose of Juste's room though, I guess the point is just to collect all the furniture and that's it but still it's kinda fun to do it.

Doing this allows you to see the true ending. Which is Liddie leaning against Juste whilst conversing. That's about it, nothing truly special. Just some extra animations for the characters.

[Arma]

I see, that explains a lot.
I was told collecting all the furniture didn't have any effect in the game so I didn't notice I got the true ending because of it.

[Donoffrio]

Hum..To summarize,the game was pretty good!Considering the fact that it happened to be my first metroidvania..
And then i came across Circle of the moon.Which was a lot more difficult than i'd imagine lol

[Mooning Freddy]

Meh, I liked the warp rooms. They were a really cool idea. It took me some time to realize there are actually two separate castles. I liked the idea of exploring the castles in a parallel manner (unlike Symphony where you'd explore each separately)  and I think it's a shame they haven't reused the idea in another game.
People say Harmony is just a ripoff of Symphony but that's not so. Symphony just reversed the castle and let you explore it a second time, while in Harmony you have two versions of the castle which are quite different, one of which was altered by Maxim's memories (as far as I remember). This makes the castle a powerful entity which may be altered by different consequences.

Also, lol at the merchant theme! It sounds like crap. Literally, crap.

[Successor The Cruel]

One of my favorite Castlevania titles. The only thing I have a serious issue with is the difficulty level, which is too low. There are a couple other more minor things that could have been cleaned up, like the sprites of the main characters. I have no problem with the music; actually, I think it's great, and I would never suggest that it be changed. I like the castle layout. It can be confusing, but not to the point that it's a detriment to the game. The original Metroid also has a confusing and loose layout, and that's one of my favorite games, and has been for as long as I can remember. I don't like for EXPLORATION games to hold my hand and constantly point me in the right direction. I'd rather explore, get lost sometimes, and have fun finding my own way, and doing some things in my own order. To tell you the truth, I would like the layout to be looser than it is. Aside from the main character sprites, HoD has some of my favorite graphics in the whole series.