Why I love this silly little game, and why you should give it more of a chance!
Recently, I finished playing Harmony of Dissonance, a Gameboy Advance Castlevania game released in 2002. Now, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in the Castlevania series; the only other game I played before this was Castlevania for the NES and I did not get it. But, I have played a hell of a lot of Metroid, a series I also didn’t expect to like and became obsessed with, so I kinda get what makes a good Metroidvania game. And Harmony of Dissonance (HoD) may just be one of the best Metroidvania’s I’ve ever played.
People like to claim that HoD isn’t actually a Metroidvania because your weapon doesn’t evolve and you don’t really get upgrades to your suit, like in Metroid. But, to me, as long as movement options are locked, and you have to backtrack in order to unlock the movement option, it’s enough of a Metroidvania to me. But, like Metroid Zero Mission, I was kinda hesitant to get into HoD proper because I didn’t know if I’d like it. And Castlevania games have a much different vibe from Metroid games, especially with the genre being fantasy/magical realism versus sci-fi. But, man…man…the most important of a game for me is the first few minutes, and HoD sold me on those first few minutes perfectly.
And most of that is because of the movement options in HoD. Holy shit, the movement!! I wish Metroid had the movement options that HoD does! You got dashes, which are immediately incredibly convenient, but also slides, and double jumps, and the diagonal dashes?? Insane, truly. At some point, you really can just schmove through the corridors at alarming rates, slamming through levels like they’re nothing, I gotta watch a speedrun of this game. Like, look at this shit! (excuse my poor gaming)
The key thing here is that you unlock these movement options real early, if not coded directly into the game from the get-go like with dashes, and that helps immensely with not only the first impressions of the game, but also keeping excitement for the game high throughout the play-through. Which, is especially important when you learn midway through the game that there are two castles, and things start to slow down immeasurably.
The two castle thing is one of the biggest complaints of HoD, and I can’t defend HoD for it. It is genuinely egregious what they do here. Interesting mechanic, sure, but there are area unlocks here where you have to go between Castle A and B to find the right key, or unscrew the floor, or hit the guardian with the hammer at the right time, and like, I don’t think it’s very intuitive or obvious what you have to do at a given point. There are threads of people complaining on GameFAQs and Reddit about certain actions and where the hell you have to go next, especially for late game stuff, and it’s fully justified.
But, honestly? If you get the cross spell and the wind tomb, you can have a circle of crosses protect you, making it easy to fly through annoying enemies and explore the majority of the maps with ease, especially in late game when you have the highest armor upgrades. Also, with enough warp rooms, that also makes the backtracking much better to experience.
People also love to complain about the boss fights being “too easy” and, like, again, that’s subjective. This is Path of Radiance all over again; just because you find it easy doesn’t mean the majority of the public is going to find it easy.
Some boss fights are genuinely stupid easy, though. Like, Peeping Big and Max Slimer are incredibly simple fights because you can just sit and attack in one spot, and you likely won’t get hit by anything at all.
Some other fights like Minotaur and Giant Merman have you doing a bit more, and can be much more intensive fights, especially for the early game fights, but I don’t think these are specifically here to be incredibly challenging fights. In between your Talos’ and Golems, you also have fights like Shadow, and Devil, and Cyclops, and Pazuzu, where their movements are annoying and it’s frustratingly hard to understand their patterns. I think the balance between annoying and hard fights with easy and simple fights is perfect, and makes HoD an easy game to recommend for beginners of the series (like myself).
All of this escalates to the second to last boss fight (at least, for the True Ending), which is by far the hardest boss fight in the game, bar none, and the fact you have to fight him three times if you want to achieve all three endings in the game makes up for all of the easier fights in the mid- to late-game.
All in all, I love Harmony of Dissonance, regardless of how much it’s hated in the community. It’s genuinely a great game to get into the series with, but something that I definitely have to play more Metroidvania Castlevania’s to understand why it’s so universally disliked.
And that’s about it! I’m super curious about what y’all think of Harmony of Dissonance, because while it can be flawed, it was still quite a fun experience all in all for me. It’s also a really fun game to run in an Archipelago because of how chaotic and ultimately short it is. Lemme know your thoughts in the comments below!
Next SMS post will go live 2/8, where I finally get to ramble about how much I love Ghost Trick, thank god!! I promise I won’t spoil anything in it, so stay tuned for that!
And as always, see you next week!
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