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Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Developed by: Konami

I don't think in the history of this journal or any of my past journals have I talked about my absolute favorite Castlevania game, being Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I recently got the collection of Castlevania games on Xbox and have since played through all of them which was not the case prior to the collection being released. Hell, Circle of the Moon was the only one I actually had played out of all of them. But they are all fun in their own ways, however I still think I had some of the most fun with Circle of the Moon.

Growing up, I had played this game for the first time on Game Boy Advance, and I think I may have spent hundreds of hours getting through it because, as a kid I didn't really understand the concept of what was going on in some cases, but I understood overall that you have to fill up the map and find secrets etc. But to the extent of what I know now, the game is such a fun experience to go through and doing so once I got older just made that even more fun. The whole concept of playing a character with a whip and can upgrade with certain abilities found throughout your playthrough is a really cool way to present a game like this. I found the card system to be quite interesting however if you know this game well enough, you know about the exploit that is super easy to pull off with said card system, thus making it completely pointless to get cards in the first place.

While the other games are certainly of high caliber when it comes to quality, and while I did actually enjoy my time immensely with the other games, I think the nostalgia for the music and everything in Circle of the Moon is why I tend to go back to it more than the others. I'll always remember the music that starts when you first fall down in the hole into the cave and you start your journey. It just lets you know right off the bat that your in this alone and you have to figure out how to traverse this castle. Most of my fun in these types of games is the unknowing part, where every path you take is something fresh and new, and it certainly was back then as well as when I played it recently. Playing it on next gen consoles as well makes the experience even better since I can now play it on my big screen as opposed to a small Game Boy Advance screen. But, that was what it was for the time so it worked.

Even talking about it in this journal makes me want to boot up Circle of the Moon and just do a full on playthrough again, while using that little exploit to make the game a bit more interesting. Hell, I may do that actually.