I have no use for children. Be gone!

It's Castlevania week over here, it seems. I recently picked up and started playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon today. I've put about 45 minutes in, and I've already noticed some things worth talking about:

Nathan Graves moves insanely fast. He drops really fast, and (when you get the dash item) runs pretty fast too. Playing Harmony of Despair as I have made CotM seem like it's on speed.

The music is much better than I remember. This was a Game Boy Advance launch title and while the music definitely sounds "Game Boy Advance-y," it still sounds really good. The early themes are awesome, such as Catacombs, the Abyss, etc.

I've fought two bosses so far, I believe they were called Cerberus and The Necromancer. Both were really easy, yet enjoyably challenging. I know the bosses ramp up in difficulty pretty fast in this game, but that's okay because I don't know if I'll play through all the way to the end.

Speaking of the end, I've still been playing Harmony of Despair. I'm on Level 3, The End of Chaos (woo segue) in Hard Mode. I'm sure if I really tried, I could beat it fairly handily. It's just that this level is absolutely terrible, and easily the worst in the game. Let's enumerate its flaws:

Most of the level is this giant empty hole in the middle in which the boss sits. But wait, you say, there are enemies and platforms in there that you have to traverse to at least get to the boss! Ah, but there is no point to them, because there certainly are not treasure chests in there, nor are there any unique enemies, or really any interesting level design. It's just a bunch of random blocks that are put there to be destroyed by the boss when he wakes up.

The level was clearly designed around the boss. It's as if Konami said "Let's put a huge boss that takes up like two or three full screens in Harmony of Despair! Put that screen real estate to use! But... how do we design a level around it?" And some other guy went "Eh, fuck it. Just make it a big giant hole, throw some enemies in there, and call it good. People will eat that shit right up!"

Well, Konami Dude #2, fuck you. Your level is stupid. You also saw fit to put in two treasure chests only Shanoa can get to without waking the boss, and they're purple - which indicates they contain rarer (thus, better) items. Now, I'm all for character diversity and even areas that are only accessible by certain characters, but two purple chests for Shanoa only? Really? Thank you for making one player on this level completely and utterly pointless if you aren't Shanoa(not to mention boring and time consuming because of the huge stupid boss).

But, the rest of the game has really good levels. In fact, I enjoy all of them besides #3. Thinking about it now, I only beat level 3 that one time on Normal, because its a stupid level.

Anyway, back to CotM. Possibly more about that game later, if I don't get frustrated with it.