Castlevania: Harmony Of Dissonance

SO MANY BOSSES, SO LITTLE TIME

» GAME BOY ADVANCE » 2002 KONAMI

I’ve always enjoyed Castlevania as a franchise and I have a real soft spot for the many handheld games that have been released. Sure, a lot of them often reuse sprites from past games, and sure they often do little to deviate from the template that Koji Igarashi perfected with

Symphony Of The Night. But so what?

All of the Game Boy Advance games are great fun, but I often feel that Harmony Of Dissonance gets the least amount of love, being awkwardly sandwiched between the 2001 launch game that most GBA owners have probably experienced and the critically acclaimed (and rightly so) Aria Of Sorrow that arrived in 2003.

Harmony’s story is quite conventional by

Castlevania standards and its gameplay doesn’t do much to break the mould set by previous games (although the ability to teleport between two castles is a nice touch) but it doesn’t really matter. Even though Juste Belmont’s jumping is a little floatier than previous games and the game’s colour palette can best be described as gaudy, the whip-based action at its heart remains pleasing.

Equally enjoyable are the many bosses you fight as you explore the twinned castles. They range from a giant bat that splits into a swarm of smaller bats, a gigantic sword-wielding knight, the shieldbearing Skull Knight shown here and a terrifying wraith form of Dracula. Every boss in the game has interesting attack patterns to learn and they all offer a stiff challenge which helps make their demise that little bit more satisfying. (You can tackle them again in a cool Boss Rush mode once you’ve completed the game.)

Unfortunately, the original GBA release is now quite costly, so unless you have a hundred pounds plus going spare you may want to invest in M2’s impressive Castlevania Advance Collection instead, which includes Harmony along with Circle Of The Moon, Aria Of Sorrow and Dracula X. »