This Week In Retro: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (Patreon)

March 21, 2001: This castle is a creature of chaos—now in your pocket!

by Diamond Feit

Let's begin this conversation with a necessary linguistic declaration: "Metroidvania" is a perfectly appropriate descriptor for a video game. It may be an inelegant portmanteau of two brand names, yes, but as a succinct reference that generates an immediate image in the listener's head, it works. Anyone familiar with the Metroid or Castlevania franchises knows these games promise large, interconnected environments for players to root around in for hours and hours—the very thing promised by the word they birthed.

However, Castlevania games used to be more slanted towards linear action and only sort of dabbled in longer, exploration-based intrigue. 1997's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for PlayStation tilted the series' compass needle away from level-based challenge, but the two Nintendo 64 releases in 1999 and 2000 leaned back towards the classic, fixed-path style (even though they were in 3D).

20 years ago, Konami made a conscious choice to double-down on "one big castle" level design with the release of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for the Game Boy Advance. A launch title for Nintendo's new handheld, Circle eschewed the earlier convention of mobile Castlevania games existing as simpler siblings to their console counterparts. Circle of the Moon was clearly crafted to be a Symphony of the Night-like experience, only on a smaller screen, representing a major step for the future of the franchise—even if it fumbled a few fundamentals.

The premise of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon will sound familiar to even non-fans of the series: A vampire hunter arrives at a crumbling castle in order to battle Dracula to the death, as is their wont. In this case, no less than three hunters square off against the legendary vampire: Morris Baldwin, his son Hugh, and his protege Nathan Graves. They had hoped to prevent "Camilla" (not Carmilla) from resurrecting their ancient vampire nemesis, but they arrive too late to stop the ritual; Dracula appears and knocks the two younger heroes into a ludicrously deep pit. Players then take control of Nathan and must explore the castle to find a way back to the cursed chamber in order to rescue his master and fulfill his destiny.

In borrowing ideas from Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon does take steps to ground this new adventure with more traditional elements. Symphony starred Dracula's half-human son Alucard and abandoned the classic whip weapon in favor of a full slate of swords, rods, flails, shields, and even jeweled fists for players to collect and equip at their pleasure. Circle stars a fully-human vampire hunter who only sports a whip, one that is never replaced or enhanced during the story (though it can be temporarily enchanted; more on that later). This means that while players still have the freedom to equip armor and accessories to customize their play style, and have access to the full arsenal of classic Castlevania sub-weapons as well, they wield one main weapon for the entire game.

This choice represents what I see as Circle of the Moon's largest and most glaring flaw: Everything in the game feels "familiar" in the sense that it's all been done before—a major step down from the refreshing changes made by Symphony of the Night. Being part of a long-running series like Castlevania, some recurring elements are natural and even welcome, but Circle struck me as bland in 2001 when it was new, and subsequent attempts to revisit it always leave me underwhelmed.

Nowhere is this fault more evident than in Circle of the Moon's soundtrack, which consists almost entirely of remixed tunes from older Castlevania games. Again, this does not necessarily break from the series’ own tradition, as "Vampire Killer'' from the very first Castlevania had already become a popular anthem in multiple sequels. Yet Circle of the Moon's music plays like a "greatest hits'' CD with only a smattering of original tracks. The remixes are not all bad, but they're not exactly an improvement on the originals given the Game Boy Advance's limited audio capabilities; the pieces taken from Bloodlines and Rondo of Blood stand out as definite downgrades. As a fan who regularly listens to Castlevania music to pump myself up for mundane activities, I deliberately omit Circle of the Moon from my personal playlist.

Circle of the Moon does offer one brand-new mechanic: The Dual Set-up System, or DSS. Select monsters in the castle may drop one of 10 Action or 10 Attribute cards. The player can equip a pair of cards—one of each type—to produce different effects for the cost of a few magic points. These effects vary from powering up Nathan's whip, to increasing his stats, to casting both offensive and defensive magic spells. The most useful combination by far lets Nathan run at twice his normal pace, an essential upgrade given that the scale of the castle is quite large compared to Nathan's size. Without sprinting everywhere, traversing the halls of evil takes forever—especially since Nathan’s default walking speed could best be described as “leisurely,” and moving around efficiently normally requires players to double-tap the D-pad to make him dash.

One oddball DSS power is akin to suicide, but players willing to take the risk may be rewarded: Nathan can transform into a skeleton who dies in one hit and only throws bones. These bones do not have much range or power, but there is a random chance of a big bone appearing which deals massive damage capable of killing bosses instantly. This skeleton transformation saves the most time in tool-assisted speedruns where randomness can be manipulated; when you control the dice, it guarantees every bone toss is gargantuan.

Unfortunately, despite its innovation, the DSS doesn't add much to the Castlevania experience. First, players have to find the cards, nearly all of which are random drops (some rare at that). Only one set can be active at a time, so swapping the cards means stopping the action to futz around in the menu. The variety of the cards does offer 100 possible combinations, but few truly benefit players. One year after Circle of the Moon's release, longtime Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi told GameSpot he "wasn't happy with the dual-card system in Circle of the Moon, because it didn't really belong in the Castlevania world."

Koji Igarashi's words underlie the actual problem with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: The project was developed by a different team at Konami than the crew who created Symphony of the Night, and it shows. The entire game—the graphics, music, story, and characters—have an air of imitation to them. Call it internal politics or spite if you must, but I find it telling that nothing from Circle of the Moon would resurface in any subsequent Castlevania game. Furthermore, Igarashi has since designated Circle of the Moon as non-canon, a bold move for a franchise that actually has a public, definitive timeline for every game in the series' 35-year history. For all the Castlevania heroes whose legacy would continue forward, the Baldwins and Nathan would never be heard from again.

Unlike its protagonists, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon retains a legacy 20 years later. It has its faults, but it also has its fans. Even if I found it disappointing at the time, I am grateful it kept the Castlevania candles burning. Without Circle of the Moon being there at launch for the Game Boy Advance, Castlevania as a property would likely have continued to struggle to find its footing as a 3D action series on home consoles, possibly petering out into nothingness. Instead, Circle proved the 2D Metroidvania genre could be perfectly viable on handhelds, and every single pocket Castlevania that followed in its wake improved upon that formula.

With that in mind, I suppose I owe Nathan Graves an apology: He wasn't a particularly memorable vampire hunter, but he did what he had to do, when he had to do it. What more can be said of him—of any of us—than that?

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.