This is a big step up from Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance. Out of the big six Metroidvanias on GBA and DS that are Symphony-inspired, this is the one that I've always considered the best and the closest to topping Symphony.
The next one, Dawn of Sorrow, is probably also on the same level, I just dock it some points for stylus usage. I could see someone putting that one as the pinnacle of this group as well. And personally I liked Portrait of Ruin the most back when I first played all six (though I do think the Soma games have better world design). There's a lot of good stuff in these six once you get past the iffy first two games. After the next Soma game, there are two more in this Symphony-followup-hexology, and both of them have hot playable leads.
Portrait of Ruin? More like Simp-honey of the Night, am I right?
Order of Ecclesia? More like Ass-levania, am I right?
...........I'll show myself out.
Unlike the rest of the series, this game takes place in the future.
The future, Conan?
Your character is this hip badass Soma Cruz, a high school student who wears a trench coat and walks around brooding. His special power is...
...this, for some reason. He isn't a Belmont or affiliated with them, weirdly enough. While studying abroad, he finds himself in Dracula's Castle (Castlevania) which rose during an incredibly rare full eclipse (despite not being on the scheduled hundred year timeframe of Castlevania reappearing).
Here's Mina, who is the childhood friend/love interest. She gets yoinked into Dracula's Castle along with Soma, and stays behind at the entrance to chill with the totally-not-evil Genya.
Genya sends Soma on a mission to find out why the castle has risen. Who is this guy, you ask? Some sort of government agent investigating Castlevania. Now that we've got all that out of the way, the game:
Same as the others, you've got levels, equipment, etc. However this time you've also got equippable souls that can be obtained, and tons of them. They're a little bit like the DSS system in Circle of the Moon.
Not only does he wear a badass trench coat, Soma also swings a sword. He kinda reminds me of that Future Dude from X-Caliber 2097.
Look at this rad Billy Idol-lookin' sumbitch!
Defeat enemies and sometimes you'll get their soul. Every enemy has a soul, so there are like 60 of these to collect in the game, give or take. They're also rare drops. So 100%ing this one takes a LOT of farming, probably more than any other 'Vania. Some of the souls have interesting effects, like the one we see here. You've got 3 types of souls and can equip one in each of the 3 slots: Special attack (up+attack), special ability (activated powers like gliding), and passive (usually stat-related like this one). I usually equip the straight stat-increases for the passive slot.
In the second room, we encounter my nemesis, the Sahagin.
"Our time has co-GACK"
So much for that. Will the Sahagin's time EVER come?
Next, Soma enters...the Bone Zone. Moments after this picture was taken, the Smithsonian Institute arrived to cart off the monster's bones, never to be seen again.
I get the gliding power, which lets you...well, glide. Got kind of stuck at this point thinking it was a passive longer jump or something like that, but nope, it's triggerable by holding a shoulder button.
This very seedy and evil-looking individual who is definitely not Dracula's reincarnation now shows up to let Soma know that his favorite position is missionary. Not sure why Soma needed to know that. Soma doesn't have one because he's a Shonen Protagonist and girls are icky and strange.
"I also like the doggystyle. Well, see you later!"
Speaking of sex, next our hero meets noted church lady Yoko. She's the descendant of witches, and is here to suss out if Dracula has truly returned.
Fun Fact: If the name sounds familiar, it's because she's descended from Trevor and Alucard's old friend Sypha Belnades of Castlevania III.
She senses a darkness within Soma. However she's more concerned about Graham, who she is pretty sure is Dracula reincarnated.
She then gives him advice on talking to girls.
This game is lighter on afterimages than Harmony of Dissonance which went way overboard with them. However, you can see them a bit when Soma dashes to evade.
That giant suit of armor is surprisingly not a boss, just a regular foe. Manticore here IS a boss, and the toughest challenge yet for young Soma. I didn't level grind at all in this game like I did in the first two, so it was more of a challenge.
Next, Soma meets Julius Belmont, the latest in the line of vampire hunters. He also senses a dark power within Soma.
At this point I got a chain whip type weapon that ended up serving me well for a WHILE. Like probably the next quarter of the game. Felt more like 'Vania for a bit there.
This game has portal rooms to warp around the map, and unlike the previous two GBA games, it lets you actually choose your destination rather than having to warp through all of them manually.
The next boss is a sexy woman in a corset. Now we're talking. ...wait, why is she headless? .............and why does she have a wall of embalmed severed heads?
One of the heads flies onto her and she becomes this lizard-beast that looks like that one boss on that island near the beginning of Elden Ring.
Return to that room after the boss fight and it's now inhabited by a sexy witch.
The castle tower has this awesome, stormy sky in the background. Wait, I'm at the castle tower already? This game just flies by.
I get one of the most key passive souls in the game: The ability to walk on water as if it's solid floor. This is a big one for expanding the map.
Not only does this help me reach a whole bunch of previously-inaccessible areas, it also looks very cool.
Fun Fact: "Undine Rising From The Waters" is an 1859 statue by Chauncey Ives, a master craftsman who spent countless hours carving this five foot tall statue out of marble. Can probably thank this statue for Undine's appearances in so many games as a water spirit.
The nefarious Graham reappears. Not sure if he's evil or just really high. He lets it be known that he isn't actually Dracula, but he does want Dracula's powers, if he can figure out how to get them out of this castle. Which is a big clue as to the true ending of the game.
Next is the ever-present annoying Clock Tower (now with spikes!) which can only mean one thing:
Time for the latest iteration of Death. This time around he's incorporeal, so you actually have to target the scythe to damage him.
Death hands me a bunch of...deaths, especially on his second form. Definitely the hardest fight in the game up to this point, and probably the second or third hardest overall. It's hard to believe, but this is only about the halfway point of the game. Yeah, these Symphony-likes are LONG. Not as long as Symphony having an entire second castle, but long enough.
I defeat him with my latest soul ability, an extremely OP lightning bolt zap that can hit a bunch of times at once if used at close range.
Next up is Legion, an infamous recurring boss. It has a massive amount of HP in this installment and takes ages to bring down, which is an ill omen for the rest of the game. Bosses having way too much HP becomes the norm towards the end and the fights can reach obnoxious lengths. Because of this, I'd say this game falls short of Symphony of the Night despite my remembering it as being up to that level. It's still better than the other two GBA games before it though, and likely my 2nd or 3rd favorite out of the GBA/DS hexology. Portrait of Ruin and maaaaybe Dawn of Sorrow are ahead of it.
I find the soul of Galamoth laying around. Unfortunately I don't get this one from defeating him, no Galamoth in this game.
Next is a legitimately freakish and unsettling boss that'd be at home in the Berserk manga. Not only do the bosses have a ton of HP at this point, they also hit extremely hard. It's a lot like the endgame of Metroid Dread, except at least you have the option to raise levels to make things easier. All of the boss fights are fun so far, as well. This one revolves around smacking his one eye while avoiding the fists...or trying to. It's more of an attrition war of who runs out of HP first.
Julius shows up again, still hunting Dracula to make sure he hasn't returned. Time for him to reveal where exactly he fits into this whole chronology:
It just me or does it seem like we're missing an entire game here? This 1999 Belmont game sounds pretty damn cool and I'm surprised they didn't make THAT game. Julius teamed up with Yoko Belnades and Alucard to defeat Dracula for the final time when Castlevania reappeared in Romania that year. This also makes Julius the final vampire hunter of the Belmont line, and 1999 is the final rise of Castlevania on its normal schedule. Very surprising that there isn't a game about this, since all the pieces are in play and it feels very much like a missing chapter of the story (the final chapter, no less).
Next I get the bat metamorphosis that lets me turn into a bat to reach the rest of the map that I couldn't already reach.
At the top of the castle, in Dracula's chamber...is Graham. He claims to now have the power of Dracula. Which makes this...the only game in the series up to this point to not have Dracula as a final boss, if I'm not mistaken.
Graham fights just like Dracula, teleporting around in columns of light and throwing out triple fireballs.
He's also got a rotating meteor attack that's pretty easy to dodge once you get the hang of it. The main threat on this fight is making mistakes from being tired due to how many damn HP he's got and how long the fight goes. Perhaps I should have level grinded more, but I'm level 40 and that should be sufficient to beat the game.
He's got a much-deadlier second form that's unsettling to look at. This one's also no problem once you get the hang of it, which involves ducking a lot to avoid the hand swipes.
And that...was the final boss, normally. It isn't the real ending. Since it's big and bad enough to be the final boss, most people who played the game probably fought that as their last battle, and that was it. Everyone goes home and lives happily ever after, and there's little indication this is a "bad ending" outside of it being a bit abrupt.
So how do you get the real ending, you ask? Well, you have to get and equip 3 very specific souls, two of which are rare drops (the other is Giant Bat, which is required to progress in the game).
The first is Succubus, which means tracking down these things (upper central part of the castle) and farming them for a while.
This is a useful soul regardless and gives you a small heal every time you strike. While I prefer +Attack for the passive soul slot, this certainly gives you more longevity.
The other rare drop is the Flame Demon soul. These things are hard to find and you have to go all the way to the bottom of the castle. Ideally, the player knows about this stuff in advance and farms both of these when they originally go through these areas. Having to go back and get them was a little tedious when I was so close to being done. Course, people going for 100% might have all of this well in advance if they stop and farm every enemy until they get a soul.
Equipping these three seemingly-random souls and fighting Graham again will get you the real ending.
Equipping these souls draws out one's latent Dracula ability. This actually does make some sense: Flame Demon fires 3 fireballs (like Dracula), Giant Bat lets you change forms into a bat, and Succubus drains enemy health...like a vampire. Still, doubt any players would notice all of this, figure it out, or happen to fight Graham again with this precise configuration unless a guide told them to.
Next I've gotta find the game's best weapon. This involves dashing through a waterfall using the Kali soul, which turns Soma into a giant Kali that dashes forward. I didn't get much use out of these summon-transformations and I kinda wish I had.
Here's the ultimate sword, Claimh Solais. It isn't stunningly OP like the Crissaegrims in Symphony, but it's still quite strong.
It's a giant Moonlight Greatsword type deal. It's cool to see an "ultimate weapon" concept get brought back for this game after the previous two on GBA were missing it.
Next stop, the merchant, to load up on heals (9 Potions and 9 High Potions) before the final battles. There's also the wildly-expensive Soul Eater Ring, which you need to 100% this game since it dramatically increases the drop rate of all those rare souls. After selling everything I don't need from the entire game, I'm only halfway to the amount needed, so chances are this requires a ton of grinding to get. Yeah, the item that cuts down soul grinding time...requires lots of money grinding. It's very much worth it though.
Future Note: Money-grinding protip: Farm the Mimic soul, then equip that and stand in spikes right outside the Clock Tower save point. Every time you do this you'll get like 4k gold (the Mimic soul gives you money when you take damage). Go back to the save point, repeat however many times it takes to get to 300k. Doesn't take too long with this method and in retrospect I didn't need to sell all my stuff either (a more manageable inventory is nice, though).
Go back with the right souls equipped and Graham's dialogue completely changes. Now it's Soma who has the "power of Dracula" instead of Graham.
And the reason this unlocks so much more latent Dracula-power in Soma compared to Graham...is that Soma is the actual reincarnation of Dracula.
After defeating Graham again, the game continues. I've got to find a portal to the "Chaos Realm" and defeat Chaos, whatever that is. However, standing in my way now is Julius. Since Soma is Dracula, Julius has to slay him before something bad happens.
And yes, this game culminates with the reincarnation of Dracula (...the good guy) facing off against a Belmont as the antagonist. What a tweest!
This has the potential to be the game's best fight, especially with me sporting Dracula's powers. It's certainly an awesome moment.
....until it goes on, and on, and on. I brought the max of 18 heal potions, plus had the small heals from Succubus' HP drain on attacks, and I still barely got through this fight. Burned though nearly all of the heals because the fight just went on and on. Seemed like it was around ten minutes long which was insanely excessive. Nothing else to the point had anywhere near the HP and defense of this guy, and he was way too fast to have any reliable pattern to exploit. Most of all, I started getting hand cramps from how long this fight was going, which is a testament to how ridiculous it was. This fight seems designed to end people's runs at the game.
Seriously. Soma explains to Julius that he may be Dracula's reincarnation, but he's not the same guy, and has no desire to take over the world or fight anyone. Julius steps off and lets Soma through, so that's good.
They're setting up some interesting characters with this game, wonder who'll be in the next one. Soma is the only protagonist from these six games to actually star in more than one of them. Which is also uncommon for this series in general. Simon and Christopher come to mind as having gotten a couple of games, but usually the protagonists are one and done.
Next is the Chaos Realm, which is a long, linear, boring area that seems to be in space.
It's boring because most of it is just greyscale swaps of earlier areas.
Get through that, and we reach the portal to the TRUE FINAL BOSS...
...Chaos, which is a completely bizarre amalgamation of shapes and limbs.
The key to defeating this bizarre angel-demon monstrosity is to target the various eyes. Generally four are around at a time. Then target the eclipse in the middle. Meanwhile all kinds of attacks are going off that need to be dodged. It's one of the most bizarre final battles in this entire series, and definitely something different.
Now we get the true ending, where Soma has saved the day from the mysterious eclipse, but we're not sure if the other shoe will drop in terms of him turning into Dracula more directly.
That's it for the GBA trio, to be continued on the DS. I'll say this, I wasn't planning to get to it just yet, but now I'm really intrigued to revisit Dawn of Sorrow and find out what exactly happens next with this crew.
This game has an alternate mode, like the others, where you can replay the game as Julius. He has set stats and doesn't use equipment or the soul system. This is basically "traditional Castlevania mode" for this game. It might be the closest we ever get to the 1999 game.
Unfortunately, this was the last Castlevania in this "Metroid arc" that we got the complex and recognizable classic art style for, as it switched to a simpler anime aesthetic after this. Ayami Kojima, the artist for the rest of the series up through this game, wasn't retained going forward, and that's a shame because I really liked her artwork in these games. From here on out, a lot of the anime art they used was generic in comparison without her input. Here are some of her better works:
The iconic Symphony boxart.
Rondo
Also she's hot.
::pours out a 40 for the artwork::
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