Harmony of Dissonance > Aria of Sorrow

Beat Dissonance like a week ago or so. Got frustrated because I got lost again, looked on gamefaqs to see where to go, felt like an idiot and just kinda rushed thru the second half.

The music is tits, when I'm on break and eating my lunch I go to the sound mode and listen to Juste's Theme, Marble Corridor, etc. Quality be damned, the composition is superb.

Sacred Fist + Wind book = the ki blast is way, way too powerful. I should've used something else, or maybe no subweapon, to make the Dracula Wraith fight last more than 5 seconds...


(also what happened to the merchant, poor guy I hope he got out)



Aria has a really excellent castle design. It definitely makes more...sense, I guess. The warp rooms are a big help as well. I think I skipped an area or two because I was level 18 and not halfway map percentage yet and I beat Death.

That said, the backgrounds and music aren't as interesting as Harmony's. There's also something about the sprites that make me prefer Harmony's..I don't know how to describe it. Yeah the graphics are 'better' and at the same time they aren't.


Also found out that Soma is Japanese in the Japanese version, not an exchange student in our version. Which finally makes more sense, since the beginning of the game says Soma is an exchange student AND childhood friends with Mina. Dur hur, Konami USA.


I wonder why people will bitch about Circle of the Moon not giving you the option to run from the get-go (despite getting it within the first five minutes), whereas in Aria you can't even backdash without gaining it. And I'm almost at 65% and Soma still can't dash/run.

I beat Aria.
Really solid game. Highlight was definitely the Julius fight, holy crap when he got serious and did that giant HOLY CROSS and fucking tore up Drac's castle by his sheer power, man that was excellent.

lol @ getting the dash at the end of the game. at least soma's walking animation made it seem like I was going faster than juste's walking animation. whatever.

I don't get what Chaos is, is that what makes Dracula evil? really I don't understand


Aria is definitely a more playable game than Harmony, but is it better...mmmmm. probably not.

I guess I'll tackle Dawn of Sorrow soon enough, which I kinda semi-hated like 4 years ago (wow it's been 4 years already)



edit: something of interest, I was level 47 in both circle and harmony when I beat the game and 46 in aria -- MERE COINCIDENCE, how uncanny

No way, man.

Circle is better than Harmony.

Shitty boss shitty boss giant shitty boss.

vs. Death in Maxim mode is a decent fight.

Yeah the bosses were shit.


Maxim and Dracula Wraith were pretty cool, though.

I like how Dracula was nothing but a giant heart and eyes and some other organs.

Played and beat Harmony about 2 months ago... Awesome game that keep me wanting more! As for Aria, played it for 10 minutes and never picked it back up.

Haven't really got into the DS ones any that are worth playing that match Harmony?

WinkWink said:

Played and beat Harmony about 2 months ago... Awesome game that keep me wanting more! As for Aria, played it for 10 minutes and never picked it back up.

Haven't really got into the DS ones any that are worth playing that match Harmony?

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Dawn of Sorrow was frickin great, the others a bit less so.

I also think that HoD is the best of the GBA trilogy--it felt the closest to SotN to me. Don't get me wrong, AoS and CotM are also good, but HoD is the one I come back to the most.

HoD did nothing for me. Just my opinion, though.

I love CotM and AoS.

HoD is hands down my favorite of the 3 GBA versions and the only one I played all the way through. I started playing Aria but got stuck and don't know where to go so I dropped it and haven't picked it up for a while. I don't mind Circle but once I got HoD I had trouble wanting to go back and continue playing. One of these days I'll pick it back up I'm sure.

Just beat Dawn of Sorrow, which I didn't like back in 2005.
I appreciate it a bit more now, since back then I didn't actively bother to get souls or upgrade weapons and such.

The final area, The Abyss, feels like such a Contra final level...so weird, so alien-looking.

I'd like to get PoR now but that's out-of-print. Might buy it online someday. Oh well.

What a rush, all these metroidvanias in such a short amount of time!

I found HoD to be the weakest of the GBA games. Juste was empty as a character. I swear that guy has a hard on for Simon. Always talks about the guy. Music sounds like an NES game. It wouldn't be bad but knowing that the GBA is capable of better sound it left a bad taste in my mouth. The conditions you needed to get sudden ending sucked ass too.

Circle of the Moon > all other GBA Castlevanias.

Hard to say which of the three is my favorite. I like them all.

If I HAD to choose it would be AoS, because the tactical soul system is cool. There's ton's of great abilities you can gain if you take the time to get them.

I think the music in HOD is shit to be honest. Horrible tinny effect to it. AOS had several great music track not least the main castle corridor theme.

moonwhistle said:

AOS had several great music track not least the main castle corridor theme.

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Only music from AOS that I can remember now is Julius's theme, "Heart of Fire". Which is lifted more from a Haunted Castle tune instead of the real Heart of Fire.

I enjoyed them all. I was a bit let down with HoD when I heard the music and noticed how stiff Juste and the other character sprites seemed. I also never really cared about the magic system in the game. I just whipped shit to death all the time.

AoS was great because it had a wonderful balance between music and sprite work. It had a fantastic magic system that was a ton of fun to mess with. I had no problem maxing my level in that game, I couldn't get enough. I also loved Julius mode. Man is he a badass.

DoS was a great follow up, and had the best secondary mode (story included and everything). However, I felt the touch screen stuff was forced, which made it annoying. And I hated the change to anime style. If it weren't for that it would have truly been amazing.

I find that AoS tends to be my favorite, partly because when I heard the story premise and everything else, I expected very little from the game, and it turned out that I absolutely loved it.

I'm a DoS guy myself. They greatly improved the music from the first two. IMO a Castlevania game with bad music is a hindrance. The controls also felt pretty spot on and I dug the later parts that felt like an homage to Contra.

Jedah Doma said:

I dug the later parts that felt like an homage to Contra.

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You mean the Subterranean Hell section that opened up after beating Death? Yeah, I noticed that too. I was thinking "Why does all this shit look so alien...OOOOH." Nice fanservice there.


I will say Dawn has the most depressing music in the series, which is something I didn't appreciate four years ago but do now. Just gives it a weird kind of atmosphere. Boss music was tops, as well.