Boss Keys Mini - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (Patreon)

So, after finishing Symphony of the Night for Boss Keys, I was left pretty curious about the other Metroidvania games in the franchise - like the three on GBA and three on DS. I’ve dipped in and out of them in the past, but haven’t finished any. And I definitely haven’t studied their level design.

So I decided to play the first game: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon for the GBA. And after sending Dracula back to the grave for the millionth time I realised that, yeah, I will probably want to talk about these games on the channel. I wanna map them out, make the graphs, and comment on their design.

More than likely it will be as two videos - one for the three GBA games, and one for the three DS games.

And with that being the case, I’m mindful of the fact that I’ll probably forget about my experience with Circle of the Moon by the time I finish the other two sometime next year. So it was important to write my thoughts down. And then I thought: Hey! Why not publish them for my favourite people in the world: my Patrons!

So. Here we go. Let’s start with the graph for the critical path through Circle of the Moon. 

And here's the legend:

So there’s an early section where you get the dash boots and double jump. This opens up to a large area of the castle where you have access to most areas in the game, from the Observation Tower up top to Dracula’s lair. They’re just locked behind various obstacles.

So you’ll need the tackle to get the wall kick. The wall kick to destroy the statues. Behind one statue is the heavy ring, which lets you get the cleansing pendant, so you can go through the poison behind the other statue, where you’ll get the roc’s feather. This lets you access the Observation Tower, get the last key, and open the door to Dracula’s lair.

It’s really quite simplistic, like one of the easier dungeons in a Zelda game. But this obviously isn’t the whole story.

Because in the actual game, these locked doors are hidden amongst a sea of, essentially, red herrings. Take, for example, the heavy ring. This lets you push boxes: one of which hides the cleansing pendant. But there are also nine more boxes littered through the castle, which just lead to inessential items like mana and health boosts.

So here’s the graph for Circle of the Moon when we take into account locked paths that just lead to power-ups (the green triangles). It’s a lot wider. A lot more complex.

And so that’s more interesting, but it’s a tricky balance to get right.

Because here’s the thing. Getting a power up in a Metroidvania should hopefully make you say “oh sweet, now I can go through that room I saw earlier!”. Think of getting the high jump boots in Super Metroid, and then realising that you can now leap up to the scary faced door to Kraid’s lair.

This is achieved through smart level design that will try to make sure you see the lock before you get the key, and really distinctive locks to seer them into your brain.

Circle of the Moon doesn’t have this. The box that you need to push to open the underground warehouse and grab the cleansing pendant looks identical to the nine other boxes in the game, and there’s no real guarantee that you’ll see it before you get the heavy ring.

So getting a power up in Circle of the Moon will make you say things like “oh man, where did I see those boxes?” or “oh god, how many boxes do I need to go push?”. And you’ll do what I call “map poking” where you simply go to dead ends on the map and see if you can now make forward progression - the Metroidvania equivalent of using every object on every object in a point and click adventure. A failure of the design team, in my opinion.

The other thing is: there’s basically just three different items you can get from behind these locks. A health potion, a mana potion, and a heart max. And that gets really boring.

Look: Circle is a hard game. Much harder than Symphony. So getting more health juice is a welcome sight, But after a while, it just becomes dispiriting. You’re hunting for the next part of the game, but end up finding an item: and it’s just another bloody blue potion.

And here’s the thing! The game has loads of cool items, like new armour sets, rings, and cards (which can be combined to make all sorts of wacky effects) which could treasures - but they are simply super rare random drops. If chasing down locked doors sometimes led to cards it could be fun, but after the 10th health/mana/heart boost, you get a bit bored. 

There’s only exception: if you push a box, and then use roc’s feather to jump up a tall tower you can end up in the super difficult battle arena. Beat that, and you can get the Shinning Armour.

Also, this isn’t super relevant, but many of these random drops are actually quite ridiculous to get. Like an enemy who rarely drops a really important card. Who only appears in a secret room. And only after you defeated a boss in an area later in the game. If you found this without a strategy guide I will eat my shoes.

Anyway. This graph also doesn’t take into account areas with Brain Floats. These are enemies that are stacked up in a vertical column and if you freeze them you can use them as stepping stones to reach high areas. Just like Metroid and the ice beam. This is kind of cool because you can do it as soon as you find a DSS card combination that allows freezing (or turning to stone). Or you can just wait until you get the roc. Either way, they only ever lead to inessential items. And, again, it’s more health, mana, and hearts.

Other thoughts

Circle of the Moon’s castle is not as elegantly put together as Symphony of the Night. 

Consider the Chapel in Symphony. It’s got that massive staircase, which leads up to a giant room of stained glass windows. And then bell towers, one of which juts off to a confessional room. It feels almost like a real space, and has distinct, memorable sections.

Circle’s chapel is just some random maze of repeated sections and tiles. It’s distinctly gamey and looks like nothing real whatsoever. It’s hard to navigate and leaves no impression on the mind other than confusion. 

It also doesn’t have that nice organised structure of Symphony where everything cascades off that central pathway. In Circle, areas randomly spill off from each other and the entrance to key areas are hidden in odd places. The closest the game has to a central area is a vertical shaft on the right which connects up to a few places. I didn’t feel I had a particularly strong grasp on the environment by the end. 

The game also likes to have largely linear sections, that feel more like classic Castlevania levels. Take the Machine Tower. It’s a mostly straightforward section through a mechanised clocktower, filled with medusa heads. Just like an old Castlevania stage. 

And that has advantages: it gives the game a bit of forward propulsion for a while, and adds some linear flavour to an otherwise open game. But it can also be annoying: locked doors in the middle of this area are a pain to get to, and it makes the castle feel like lots of one-use areas that are stitched together in a jumbled fashion, rather than a truly interconnected map that you zig zag through.

Luckily, the game is quite smart about offering paths out of these sections - so you don’t have to simply walk all the way back to the start. After defeating Camilla in the underground waterway, you get the roc’s feather and can simply jump up a nearby shaft to return to the castle proper. 

Another thing of note: the game adds new enemies into old areas as you advance through the story. This kinda takes away from that thrill of utterly stomping through old areas, now you’re all powered up. But it does keep things fresh, so I’m in favour of it.

The game also does an annoying thing at the end where it stops putting save rooms near the boss fights. This doesn’t make them harder, it just puts annoying legwork in as you must use one of the fast travel rooms to teleport back to an earlier area to save. Don’t do this, it’s aggravating.

I kind of feel the same way about the fact that there’s no candles (the best way to get ammo for sub weapons) in the waterway. Makes sense, I guess, and it does make the game harder. But in the end I just decided to backtrack to the castle, refill my ammo, and then walk all the way back to the boss room. Not super fun.

The poison room is a tough one. It’s a bit like the superheated rooms in Super Metroid where you immediately start dying and know you can’t get through without an item (the varia suit). But the poison doesn’t kill you very fast, so some players might think that they just need to play better to get through that area, and not realise they need to go get the cleansing pendant.

I mean, yeah, of course you CAN get through that area without the cleansing pendant. Lots of speedrunners do. So that’s nifty. But for most players, they’ll just be confused whether this is the route or if they need to get some item. This is why soft locks (locking content behind walls that aren’t impossible to breach, but just very hard) is risky.

And finally: I have a new term. Lock blocked. Lock blocked is when you finally unlock an area, only to immediately find another lock behind it. This happens in Super Metroid’s Ridley room, it happens in Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple, and it can happen in Circle (smash the statue, only to find a heavy box directly behind it). It’s a bad look. Avoid it.

Conclusion

So I think that’s my thoughts on Castlevania: Circle of the Moon.

It’s a very simplistic Metroidvania, but they tried to make it more difficult just by massively obfuscating the path through the game. This leads to lots of random hunting, map poking, and - if you get bored of that - GameFAQs visiting.

And finding treasures is fun for a while - the game is hard, so extra health and hearts is great. But the lack of imagination in treasures makes this hunting feel bland and uneventful.

The castle is just not very well laid out, and there’s loads of tricky bits of design that just don’t quite work.

This game is pretty weak, to be honest. Definitely one of the lesser Castlevania games. Wonder how the other GBA games will fare. I’ll let you know how I get on!