#playingHoD

[emblemxeno]

Playing Harmony of Dissonance! Part 1

For context, I just beat the Devil boss and am in the save room in the Sky Walkway.

-Guys I think it's just my fate to like divisive video games, cuz so far I'm having an extremely fun time lmaoooo

-To start of with the negatives, presentation definitely has aged a bit worse than Circle of the Moon. They made things brighter and intentionally made Juste's sprite stand out to avoid the lighting issues of its predecessors, but in modern era on a different system, it can come across a bit garish.

That said, sprite quality of monsters is still good, which was expected, cuz I think they reuse/remake a lot of monster sprites from Rondo and Symphony, which were incredible marvels in terms of sprite work

-The music is low hanging fruit from what I've researched in terms of reception. For me I quite like it. As someone who's been fairly inundated with music studies for the past 5+ years, including a jazz choir, a lot of these composition choices (dissonant chords, unorthodox bassline) are very familiar to me.

That said, the soundfont is clearly dated. A marvel were it on earlier hardward, but coming after Circle of the Moon's stellar sounds? Pretty washed. Similarly, while I love dissonance, it's at it's best when it's alongside standard melodies as well IMO. So having more of those would strengthen what's here, but it's still good at the end of the day.

Would I put it above the Castlevania staples or other original tracks? No. But saying "This Castlevania game's ost is on the lower end IMO" is like saying "this particular precious, expensive diamond is my least favorite." The games are that high quality.

Standout tracks: Successor of Fate (Juste's theme), Offense and Defense, Approach to Despair, and Chapel Sky

-You can do quick switches (meaning you don't have to pause and enter the menu) to your spellbooks by holding up and pressing L or R. You can turn spellbooks on and off to switch back and forth between regular sub-weapons by holding down and pressing both L and R at the same time.

The game NEVER tells you this. If you're not aware of this, then the most common thing to do with Harmony is to manually pause and go to the right menu. I'm still early in the game, doing that hasn't been a major pace breaker, but I anticipate more stuff to do and more backtracking later on, so knowing these quick switches helps a lot.

I found out about these on the internet, and figured out that they're also in the digital instruction booklet in the collection's gallery of all places. There's layouts for controls in these collections, so you'd think these combinations would be there, but they just aren't. Knowing these quick switches I imagine will become pretty essential to not add on time, so it sucks that it's never detailed to the player outside of very out-of-the-way means.

-On to the good stuff, I fucking love Juste, he's so weird (affectionate). He's strangely unbothered by his fate/duty as a Belmont, especially being the next notable one after Simon. He displays insane magical prowess, that Christopher and Simon didn't show before him, and Richter and Julius don't show after him. He looks like a bastard child of Alucard wearing Leon Belmont's coat. He picks up furniture around this dangerous and deadly castle, and arranges them in a secret room also in this same castle just because he wants to. He's my baby.

-Similar plot beat to Circle of the Moon where your friend is going off the deep end thanks to Dracula's/the castle's influence, and with another friend to save instead of a teacher. But what I like is that 1) there's more dialogue and instances of Juste and Maxim getting to talk compared to Nathan and Hugh, and 2) the approach is different.

Hugh's resentment was kind of standard. It was "rival is jealous of his partner -> rival tries to solo the challenges to prove himself better and more worthy -> rival gets his ass handed to him constantly requiring him to be saved by partner -> rival turns to the dark side after enought in story context corruption."

Maxim-at least so far-sees the Belmont legacy and duty as something of a curse, something that he feels Juste had no say in and yet is required of him to do. So he tries to remove that burden from Juste's shoulders by getting stronger and tackling the relic mission himself, but obviously SOMETHING happened to make him lose his memories and go from helpful to antagonistic. It's a sympathetic twist to what's expected, and I like that.

-So far, the geography of Harmony is just a lot more fun to interact with. The locales are all distinct and have great set pieces. Shout out to the skeleton cave for its moveable monster skulls to serve as platforms, the blue skies and clouds in the sky chapel, and that one room in the Luminous Cave where you unknowingly crush a giant monster to death to have its blood flood the room to make the platform rise to the top. Cool stuff, will have nightmares! But the good kind!

-Juste feels really good to play. Brightness of his sprite aside, he moves fluidly, he's fast thanks to his front and back dashes as well as his air drop, and it's good to maneuver in both the ground and the air. So far, I've gotten the double jump and the slide, which makes all of that even better.

-THE BOSSES, OOOOOH, THE BOSSES. They're really fun so far. They haven't been completely braindead, but just manageable enough that I don't expend too potions. They seem perfectly suited to the level the player is at (I think Harmony has dynamic experience?) and are just fun to fight! They have cool attacks and patterns, and so far don't feel like HP walls. It's just sooooo good!

-By far my favorite thing in this game and the reason why I'm having so much fun playing it, is the spell system and its combat. By combining spell books with subweapons, you gain access to attacks that consume MP, and they're so fucking FUN!!! Experimenting with them has been awesome, because the game sets a perfect pace at switching subweapons so you get to see what does what.

And you get your first spellbook at the exact time where you might feel a bit tired of just whipping enemies (provided you do the appropriate backtracking to previous areas), that's Good Game Design 101! Just the Ice book alone opened so many opportunities, like the Magic Missile homing in on enemies, the Ice Cubic's burst damage, the Hail Stone hitting enemies above, and the Water of Judgment being a ground level screen kill.

The best part? I don't dread fighting the regular enemies compared to Circle of the Moon. Because my options for combat are set rather than randomly occurring, I feel like I'm getting stronger all the time and don't have to worry about enemies just feeling like a drag or a big roadblock to the next save room.

Playing a magic focused character in a Castlevania game has always been fun, and nothing has changed here. Everything feels so right when I'm playing this game.

----

Anyway that's it for the first part. I know of the common criticism for the game, in that it's very much trying to be Symphony of the Night again, so I expect a second castle to explore. The lack of warp points for now does seem to kind of indicate some more tedious backtracking, so I'll be open to criticizing that if it gets to that point.

But still, the game at a core level is just a lot more fun to interact with, from the combat, to the exploration, and to the story. Just a great time.

[emblemxeno]

Finished Harmony of Dissonance!

-Saw all endings and got 200% map completion

-Story was pretty good, I very much enjoy the game tackles the angle of how the Belmonts are cursed to eternally hunt down Dracula and inevitably their loved ones get dragged into it and they suffer yet still press on.

Again, Maxim's portrayal was handled really well as a sympathetic figure. He wanted to help Juste escape a torturous existence and ended up biting off more than he could chew, not really knowing just how soaked with evil the relics of Dracula are. Part of that was arrogance to prove himself better than Juste, but the two actually feel like proper friendly rivals compared to Hugh and Nathan.

-For a criticism, Lydie was certainly a character that was there. Igavanias have this issue that, due to how they're structured, sometimes characters just aren't developed or consequential. I don't really know what she was there for, other than to provide a second emotional crutch for Juste and Maxim. To the game's credit, Death does have a line where he says "When something is dear to you, its effect upon you becomes immeasurable" which becomes applicable to Juste just as much as it does Maxim, especially if you see all the endings. Technically, you could also argue that this same theme affects Death himself to the same degree given how many times he dies and comes back, all in service of Dracula.

It just doesn't reach Lydie the same way, unfortunately. I don't know how one would improve that (given how Mina in the next game kind of has the same issues iirc, it's clear that it's something to grow out of lol) but as it stands, her presence is pretty weak.

-Presentationwise, again, it definitely has aged in the graphics department EXCEPT the enemy sprites. What a marvel it was that such detailed sprites, especially the bosses, were put on the GBA. They were always a sight to behold.

But I know the reason why they were able to do that is by sacrificing space, and the thing that took the hit was the music. I mentioned it in the first post, but it bears repeating. I don't think it's the compositions that are that bad bad, but it's the lower quality soundfont and the lack of musical variety that hurts the score.

There are, I think, two tracks in the game that use a higher quality soundfont, and those are the title theme and the credits theme. Those two tracks are incredibly high quality, and exceptionally lift up the compositions. Were the rest of the soundtrack like that, I have little doubt that it'd be received much better, if still paling in comparison to other tracks in the series.

-Figured there were two castles lol. It does seem unoriginal, but given that Iga explicitly wanted "Symphony of the Night but again" I can't really knock the game too much.

I will knock the game for its environments not being too distinct between the two castles, with the major differences being color schemes and subtle vibes (Castle B has red skies while Castle A has normal ones). If the game had a worse map system, it'd be a real drag to try and explore since I wouldn't otherwise remember which castle I was in. Thankfully, each Castle has a separate map with different colors, and one combined map of yet another color that does a neat layering trick to best show the player what rooms in which castle have been cleared.

That also made going for 200% completion much easier, though that goes into my next point.

-Warp points kind of came a bit too late to have the most meaningful effect. Of course, given that you have to explore two different castles, you're not warping with the intent to backtrack too much until the endgame, but it does bring a layer of tedium that otherwise wouldn't have existed.

This includes how warping from one point to another within the same castle is locked to the player until you get the appropriate hint card. I'd rather that ability just be unlocked from the start, with the player being told so directly.

This all kind of culminates in my last criticism, which is the grind for 200%, since a lot of things just aren't made clear to you where they are. The crushing boots, the various keys, and even some of the Dracula relics-the latter of which are required for the best ending I think-are all in locations that, to my knowledge aren't explained or hinted at, some even being behind invisible walls. I love exploring in Igavanias, but to me, part of the process and the fun is seeing clearly what you're missing, remembering that and coming back later when you have it and are much stronger. For some of these items, that wasn't the case, since I couldn't visibly see what I was missing or could do in order to get to the rooms. Not good design when I have to look up online where to find certain things I'm missing.

-That said, the overall flow of the game is still incredibly fun. I never once felt like I was just trying to get the game over with, and that's because I actually liked interacting with the systems the game put in place. Juste is strong and moves fast, has a typical RPG inventory of healing items, and has access to magic that isn't just screen nukes to pile on damage, many spells have incredible utitlity, like shields, taking care of grounded or air enemies the best, or cornering enemies to a part of the screen.

It's varied and fun, and promotes experimentation to figure out what suits your playstyle. Me personally, I like blitzing through rooms with shields like the Wind Cross spell, Wind Holy Book spell, or Thunder Holy Book spell; targeting enemies with Ice Dagger, Ice Axe and Ice Holy Water; and separating enemies from me with Thunder Holy Water and Fire Fist.

There's also the typical high damage high MP cost spells, like Grand Cross and Hydro Storm, but also basicaly a fucking Hadoken when using the Wind Fist spell which is cheap on MP and incredibly strong.

There's just a lot of stuff that feels good to use. The only thing that got a bit of snag to it is the high jump, where to use it you have to hold down then press up and jump at the same time, which is like, a fighting game maneuver? But in a platformer, it doesn't feel as good, and a big downgrade from the high jump in Circle of the Moon in terms of controlling it and the ease of motion it gives you.

-Overall, I had a really, really good time with Harmony of Dissonance. There were times where I felt it was pretty easy (the final boss in particular seems like a big overcorrection from Circle of the Moon, to give an example), but that was only about 10% of the time, and the rest of it I feel was curved pretty well.

I definitely forsee myself coming back to this one in the future, especially since there's Maxim mode, so trying a different gameplay style would be on the top of the list.

Aria of Sorrow is next, and I'm so excited to see my confused diva babygirl Soma Cruz again 🥺🥺🥺