<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>It's a very, very good game, a great reason to get a GBA. It took me about 8 1/2 hours at 89%, so it's not very long, but it's not very short either (by comparison, it took me 10:47 to beat 197% in Symphony). Of course, this doesn't include the number of times I died and restarted, which was more often than Symphony, so it's around the 10 hour range. Pretty good for a Gameboy game.
Graphically, you're talking SNES graphics, but not quite as good. About Dracula X quality graphics. I think this has to do as much with the screen as you really can't put a huge amount of detail without it getting lost on a screen that small. It isn't hard on the eyes at all. They're clean and fairly well-detailed. Sound is pretty good as well, again, about SNES quality, maybe a little worse. It's no Symphony (what is?) so don't even bother expecting it.
The game - along with every other good Castlevania game - shines in the gameplay department. It's basically Symphony with a few changes (not that it's a bad thing...). First of all, you don't get new weapons or shields, but you can still equip stuff on your arms and body. The selection is fairly varied, though not quite as much as Symphony. But you do get the DSS cards, which is a fairly new idea. For those of you who don't know, every once in a while, an enemy will drop a DSS cards. The cards are split into 2 categories: action and element. You combine one card of each type and you get a special power of some sort (pressing the L button activates it at which point your whip will turn into a new weapon if that's what you chose). You can get everything from increased defense, luck, or offense to a rose or fire sword or flaming whips. I even got a grab hold on one of my combos (don't ask me to name the combination, I didn't pay THAT much attention, just cared what the result was). Also, holding the attack button after whipping will cause the whip to twirl around you. This is FUCKING useful as it kills a lot of stuff that flies towards you, like damned irritating ice balls that freeze you. It's even useful at Dracula (no spoilers :-). The other new addition to the game is the "special action" button (the R button). After you beat certain bosses you receive special abilities, like wall jumping, the ramming technique (to break stone blocks) and the Roc Wing, which allows you to do a mega-jump. You use the R button in combination with an action (running, Up, or towards the wall as jumping) and you perform these special moves. Aside from the Roc Wing and the Double Jump, the techniques gained from the bosses are basically only useful to help you advance in the castle to a previously unattainable area, but that's a minor complaint. It's basically the same gameplay found in Symphony, with some omissions (mainly the librarian, which made the difficulty better) and the addition of the DSS cards and some extra techniques. Oh, there's also a Battle Arena, which is really great. It's just a bunch of rooms with powerful enemies that you have to beat in succession to receive a special weapon. You can't leave until you do. I never got around to it, but it was worth a mention.
One area where this game definetely beats Symphony is difficulty. I hardly had any difficulties in Symphony at all. There was only a few rooms I had remote trouble with and the bosses (aside from that fucking Lightning Rod guy and Beelzebub to a degree) were easy. In this one, unless you spent a lot of time roaming and gaining levels or using powerful DSS combos constantly, it provided much more of a challenge IMO, especially the bosses. I mean, they really felt like bosses. Very challenging for the most part, much harder than the areas they were in. You had to learn their patterns and dodge them fairly diligently. They took quite a beating too. On average, they have about 1200 or so hit points and each hit took around 30 off without using DSS combos and 40 hits is a lot for any boss (let's see how much fun you have when there's two :-). They weren't so hard that it was frustrating, but they were a challenge and you did have to try. Same with the new levels you reached. They did an excellent job of increasing the difficulty of the new areas enough to give you a nice challenge when you reached them. By the time you reached the bosses, you could go through the levels fairly well, but not too easily. Excellent balance. But there was one thing that tossed the balance of difficulty a bit off IMO: the cross. This was an unbelievably powerful weapon. Yes, it took 6 hearts to use, but when you have 150, it's not THAT big of a deal, and you can gain the hearts back fairly well. It also made the bosses a lot easier than they would otherwise have been, and they weren't that easy. It would do more damage than my whip (without a DSS combo) AND would the boss 4-5 times. You almost needed the cross or to build up your levels a lot (I was around level 45 when I beat it). Now, it's not the most readily available weapon, but you can see why I stopped using my whip at the bosses once I got it. I was crushing them with it. I could do the same damage with my rose sword, but that was a lot harder to hit with and you only hit once. Not nearly as good.
Overall, you end up with Symphony-lite. The quest isn't quite as long as you spend a lot of time backtracking and looking around as to where to go next in the first half of the game as it's not clearly obvious (you bascially have one of 3 or 4 choices after you beat your first 3 or 4 bosses, so it does get a bit tedious). This increases the time-frame of the game a bit (maybe an hour or so). The graphics are mid-generation SNES, music is slightly under SNES. Gameplay is about equal to Symphony, IMO, not quite as many options, but the difficulty level (particularly) and the addition of the DSS combos and twirling whip make for a better balance, aside from the cross. If there was one complaint about Symphony, it was the lack of difficulty. This one doesn't suffer from that. Excellent game, on of the main reasons to buy the system.</div>
Graphically, you're talking SNES graphics, but not quite as good. About Dracula X quality graphics. I think this has to do as much with the screen as you really can't put a huge amount of detail without it getting lost on a screen that small. It isn't hard on the eyes at all. They're clean and fairly well-detailed. Sound is pretty good as well, again, about SNES quality, maybe a little worse. It's no Symphony (what is?) so don't even bother expecting it.
The game - along with every other good Castlevania game - shines in the gameplay department. It's basically Symphony with a few changes (not that it's a bad thing...). First of all, you don't get new weapons or shields, but you can still equip stuff on your arms and body. The selection is fairly varied, though not quite as much as Symphony. But you do get the DSS cards, which is a fairly new idea. For those of you who don't know, every once in a while, an enemy will drop a DSS cards. The cards are split into 2 categories: action and element. You combine one card of each type and you get a special power of some sort (pressing the L button activates it at which point your whip will turn into a new weapon if that's what you chose). You can get everything from increased defense, luck, or offense to a rose or fire sword or flaming whips. I even got a grab hold on one of my combos (don't ask me to name the combination, I didn't pay THAT much attention, just cared what the result was). Also, holding the attack button after whipping will cause the whip to twirl around you. This is FUCKING useful as it kills a lot of stuff that flies towards you, like damned irritating ice balls that freeze you. It's even useful at Dracula (no spoilers :-). The other new addition to the game is the "special action" button (the R button). After you beat certain bosses you receive special abilities, like wall jumping, the ramming technique (to break stone blocks) and the Roc Wing, which allows you to do a mega-jump. You use the R button in combination with an action (running, Up, or towards the wall as jumping) and you perform these special moves. Aside from the Roc Wing and the Double Jump, the techniques gained from the bosses are basically only useful to help you advance in the castle to a previously unattainable area, but that's a minor complaint. It's basically the same gameplay found in Symphony, with some omissions (mainly the librarian, which made the difficulty better) and the addition of the DSS cards and some extra techniques. Oh, there's also a Battle Arena, which is really great. It's just a bunch of rooms with powerful enemies that you have to beat in succession to receive a special weapon. You can't leave until you do. I never got around to it, but it was worth a mention.
One area where this game definetely beats Symphony is difficulty. I hardly had any difficulties in Symphony at all. There was only a few rooms I had remote trouble with and the bosses (aside from that fucking Lightning Rod guy and Beelzebub to a degree) were easy. In this one, unless you spent a lot of time roaming and gaining levels or using powerful DSS combos constantly, it provided much more of a challenge IMO, especially the bosses. I mean, they really felt like bosses. Very challenging for the most part, much harder than the areas they were in. You had to learn their patterns and dodge them fairly diligently. They took quite a beating too. On average, they have about 1200 or so hit points and each hit took around 30 off without using DSS combos and 40 hits is a lot for any boss (let's see how much fun you have when there's two :-). They weren't so hard that it was frustrating, but they were a challenge and you did have to try. Same with the new levels you reached. They did an excellent job of increasing the difficulty of the new areas enough to give you a nice challenge when you reached them. By the time you reached the bosses, you could go through the levels fairly well, but not too easily. Excellent balance. But there was one thing that tossed the balance of difficulty a bit off IMO: the cross. This was an unbelievably powerful weapon. Yes, it took 6 hearts to use, but when you have 150, it's not THAT big of a deal, and you can gain the hearts back fairly well. It also made the bosses a lot easier than they would otherwise have been, and they weren't that easy. It would do more damage than my whip (without a DSS combo) AND would the boss 4-5 times. You almost needed the cross or to build up your levels a lot (I was around level 45 when I beat it). Now, it's not the most readily available weapon, but you can see why I stopped using my whip at the bosses once I got it. I was crushing them with it. I could do the same damage with my rose sword, but that was a lot harder to hit with and you only hit once. Not nearly as good.
Overall, you end up with Symphony-lite. The quest isn't quite as long as you spend a lot of time backtracking and looking around as to where to go next in the first half of the game as it's not clearly obvious (you bascially have one of 3 or 4 choices after you beat your first 3 or 4 bosses, so it does get a bit tedious). This increases the time-frame of the game a bit (maybe an hour or so). The graphics are mid-generation SNES, music is slightly under SNES. Gameplay is about equal to Symphony, IMO, not quite as many options, but the difficulty level (particularly) and the addition of the DSS combos and twirling whip make for a better balance, aside from the cross. If there was one complaint about Symphony, it was the lack of difficulty. This one doesn't suffer from that. Excellent game, on of the main reasons to buy the system.</div>
I was there on that fateful day, were you?
