If Castlevania Circle of the Moon elevated my perception of post-Symphony Castlevania, Harmony of Dissonance immediately kicked that perception right back down. Not because of any inherent flaws with Harmony, but moreso because this game was affirmation of what I previously believed this franchise to be.
Where Circle of the Moon took the Symphony formula and added back classic Castlevania flavor, Harmony of Dissonance rolls back all of those changes to make Symphony 2. This isn't inherently a bad thing, Symphony is lauded en masse fairly often, at least within the gaming spheres I frequent. So retreading the previous formula to iterate on it is almost respectable. Bringing Igarashi back for this game also implies to me that there's a bit more creative vision going into this game. Rather than simply needing to make another Castlevania game, Harmony is a chance to improve upon and revisit ideas that had to be cut or were just undercooked in Symphony.
I don't love Symphony though. I've made this clear before, so I won't retread this topic much. Symphony is a good game that I respect, but I have no attachment to it and it's not something I personally fiend for more of. With this said, I'll also preface this by saying I enjoyed my time with Harmony.
Harmony doubled down on giving you power over movement by starting the game off with Juste having a fast spammable dash in both directions. This singular change gives you so much agency during combat, being able to come close to moving and attacking independently, rather than having attack direction follow movement direction. Harmony feels to me like they really wanted to up the general pace of gameplay from Symphony. Symphony artificially seems a lot faster than it was actually designed for when factoring in shield-dashing, Harmony gives you an even faster and more versatile option than shield dashing off the single press of either shoulder button.
The atmosphere and ambience I feel was the biggest upgrade of Harmony over Circle. The backgrounds have so much detail and environmental story-telling that just were not present at all in Circle. Combined with the music focusing on original arrangements focused on setting the mood, rather than giving you upbeat arrangements of previous Castlevania music to bash enemies to.
That's about where my praise of Harmony's improvements end though. Despite overall enjoying this game for what it is, when played in comparison to both Symphony and Circle I think are where it starts to falter a bit. While Symphony had a large arsenal of weapons and spells for Alucard to wield, and Circle chose to more tightly design enemy challenges to complement Nathan's limited moveset, Harmony just falls inbetween. Juste has extremely powerful movement tools, but his attacking options are unfortunately limited in a way that ultimately ends up making his offensive arsenal feel barren. Combine this with enemy placement and pattern design feeling like HP sponges just kind of blankly staring into space in the middle of linear hallways, and you get a relatively lukewarm gameplay experience.
Juste's arsenal is completely dominated by magic subweapon combinations. With equippable elemental spellbooks, you can turn your subweapons into magic spells that cast off your constantly-replenishing magic meter. These spells are so absurdly powerful (and spammable, thanks to not requiring any hearts), that they become your only attacking option. But since you can only have one subweapon equipped at a time, based on pickups in the environment, rather than true equippable menu items, it means your arsenal is basically just the one single subweapon you have. The cross and bible are very very powerful, and they only have one or two elemental spellbooks you'll want to use them with, so you're basically just using that one attack only for the entire game. For me, wind bible was basically Junk Shield from Mega Man 7. It felt like it dealt an insane amount of damage near insantly and acts as a shield that simultaneously protects you from any damage. Using a sword felt pointless. Wind cross was the other weapon I used a lot, which just one shot anything on half the horizontal space of the screen.
The two castle exploration I've seen previous reviews describe as being confusing, but I had no issue with it. I felt like it was a fun way to do inverted castle while intertwining it with the story consistently, rather than just being a halfway point of the game. It made navigation of the castles actually require a bit of foresight and planning, rather than just being able to go in a relatively obvious straight line to the next location. The two castles aren't a new idea, but I don't think it's a negative or positive addition. What I do think was a negative addition however was having the castle layout be much more sprawling. With several long hallways dividing areas as dedicated transitionary passageways. It makes the map feel like there's a lot more dead space of nothing, and adds a lot of potential extra backtracking. Instead of just having a locked door along the path to connect to areas, and immediately being able to see that you don't have the key for it, now you have to wander down a long branching transitional hallway to find the locked door you don't have the key for. These transitional hallways and sprawling maps I feel take away from exploration more than they add to it. Rather than leading to the feeling of having a large, interconnected map. These long transitional hallways seem to break the immersion of the world, and quickly break down into a feeling of "oh I don't have the key for this section yet, I just wasted my time going down this path, time to backtrack and waste more time."
The room decorating subquest was apparently planned content for Symphony, but finally it's here in Harmony. I think it would be easy to dismiss this as being very shallow, and potentially nowhere near the scope of what would've been planned for Symphony. But that's merely assumption and conjecture, and really this subquest I think fulfills an excellent purpose here. Criticisms may lean more into not actually being customizable, but room decoration as a customizable feature is a bit superfluous of the real purpose of room decoration. It simply gives you a collectible and progression system as a reward for exploring the castle. It's the exploration collectible reward, and for that purpose I think it's excellent. In Symphony and Circle getting 100% map completion just made a number go up and has no sense of progression outside of that. You're just filling out squares on a map to make a number go up. In Harmony, exploring and filling out the map is how you'll find all the furniture to decorate this room out. It's not a particularly complex or involved process, but I like that it gives a tangible reward to collecting.
Harmony feels like it backpedaled from Circle defining a distinct identity, to just be Symphony 2. It flounders a bit in regard to the gameplay from the heavily reduced options in combat, with only a gain in movement options becoming easier and less involved. The upgrade in atmosphere from Circle is noticeable and greatly appreciated, and for the GBA it's fantastic. But when compared to Symphony it understandably flounders quite a bit just due to the more limited hardware Harmony is on. It ultimately ends up feeling like a proper follow-up to Symphony, but limited inherently by the hardware. I'd like to think that if this was also a PS1 game it would've just been Symphony but better. I don't think it's too difficult to imagine that alternate reality.
Harmony is a good game, that mostly just falters in relation to its predecessors. I'd imagine if somebody started with this game, it would've astounded them with the scope and artistry, especially in the context of being a GBA title. It's a step backwards, but an understandable one that does lay foundation to improve upon with just *more*. More weapons, being able to swap between spells more easily, more complex enemy patterns, and just more to fill up the environment with.
As an addendum, I didn't feel much need to mention Maxim mode. It's better than the alternate modes of Circle, but it's just a retread of what Richter and Maria modes from Symphony. It's an expanded on version of a boss rush mode, but including castle navigation and common enemy placement within that. It's an excellent feature that adds a lot for people who want a pseudo-speedrun mode. I've never found boss rush modes particularly interesting, since the exploration is a huge part of the enjoyment of games like this for me. But adding in the basic castle navigation into that mode creates a much more engaging experience.
— Juni - May 1st, 2025 —
