Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
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- Castlevania: Double Pack redirects here. For the second game included, see Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.
| Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance | |
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| Developer(s) | KCET |
| Publisher(s) | Konami |
| Release date(s) |  June 6, 2002 September 16, 2002 October 11, 2002 |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen CERO: 12+ ELSPA: 11+ PEGI: 12+(Double Pack) |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance |
| Media | 64-megabit cartridge |
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (commonly abbreviated HoD) is a video game created by Konami for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance system. It was originally released in Japan in 2002 under the title Castlevania: White Night Concerto (キャッスルヴァニア白夜の協奏曲 Castlevania: Hakuya no Concerto (Kyōsōkyoku)), and is part of the Castlevania series. Harmony of Dissonance is set in 1748, and stars Juste Belmont, a member of the legendary Belmont family of vampire hunters.
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[edit] Storyline
Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance is chronologically set 50 years after Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and 44 years before Demon Castle Dracula X: Rondo of Blood.
Two years prior to the game's beginning, Maxim Kischine left on a training expedition in order to cope with his self doubt after Juste Belmont was chosen over him to receive the legendary whip of the Belmont Clan, the Vampire Killer. Two years later, Maxim returned from his training expedition, badly wounded and with startling news: a childhood friend of Juste and Maxim by the name of Lydie Erlanger had been kidnapped. Maxim had also lost a great deal of his memory of the events of the past 2 years. Even so, he was able to lead Juste to the site of the disappearance, where they encountered a castle that hadn't been there previously. Juste hurried into the castle as Maxim recuperated in the entry way, promising to join Juste later.
As the story unfolds, Juste discovers that Maxim, in his eagerness to prove himself, had attempted to emulate the actions of Simon Belmont; he had gathered Dracula's remains in an attempt to resurrect the Dark Count, so that he could defeat Dracula himself. Something went wrong, and Maxim himself was possessed by the spirit of Dracula. Knowing this, Juste set out to collect the remains himself so that he could destroy them in order to save both Maxim and Lydie.
After locating Lydie and the remains, Juste once again confronts Maxim, who has once again been overcome by Dracula's spirit. After Juste defeats Maxim, Dracula seizes the opportunity to escape Maxim's body and reform himself. Juste manages to defeat the Count in battle, but without Dracula's dark pressence, the castle begins to crumble. Juste, Lydie and Maxim escape with their lives.
[edit] Gameplay
Gameplay in Harmony of Dissonance follows the model established in the series' "reinvention" with the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. At heart the game is a 2D action-adventure with level design based on similar principles to the Metroid series. The player collects new equipment and skills by exploring the game's castle setting and fighting increasingly powerful enemies and bosses, leading up to a climactic encounter with the castle's master.
Defeating minor enemies and bosses will procure experience points for Juste, and he will level up, similarly to most RPGs, when the statistical requirements are met. Occasionally, Juste will kill an enemy, and they will produce a set of armor for Juste's chest, arms, legs, or face. Equipment can also be found scattered about in corners of the castle. These items will contribute to the main character's stats, such as his attack power, and magic power.
Juste primarily attacks at close quarters using the series' traditional whip weapon, the Vampire Killer, which can be brandished to deflect projectile attacks, reminiscent of Simon Belmont's usage of the weapon in the Super Nintendo game, Super Castlevania IV.
In his travels, Juste will also find magical stones that can be combined with the whip, to add various properties such as elemental damage. One particular item, the Crushing Stone, allows Juste to charge energy into the whip (if the player holds down B), and release a powerful shockwave that can destroy stone barriers. However, since the attack requires the player to hold B to charge it up, it precludes the use of the whip-brandishing move.
A variety of ranged sub-weapons are available, one of which can be carried at any given time. Using a sub-weapon drains the player's supply of "Hearts", available by smashing lamps and candlabras found in the castle. Once no hearts are left or required number of hearts to use the sub-weapon are not available, the sub-weapon may no longer be used.
HoD distinguishes its gameplay from that of its predecessors through a new magic system, which is displayed very similarly in the 2003 release of the PlayStation 2 game, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. Various spell books are hidden throughout the castle, and combining any of these with any of the sub-weapons will provide the player with a new magic attack far more potent than the sub-weapon itself. This drains a separate stock of Magic Points (MP), instead of hearts. Its magic system does not have Circle of the Moon or Aria of Sorrow's depth however.
Unique to Harmony, also, is the addition of the dash move. By pressing either of the shoulder buttons on the Game Boy Advance, Juste will either dash forward or backward with a short burst of speed. The move is mostly intended for the player to use when encountering enemies who employ speedy attacks.
Juste will also, like Symphony of the Night, gain certain Relics through exploration of the Castle's areas, which will help him to reach previously inaccessible areas, and also gain new moves to add to his repertoire; an example of these is the Griffin's Wing, which allows Juste to utilize the super-jump that Alucard uses in Symphony of the Night, thus allowing the player to scale high cliffs and ledges.
[edit] Graphics
The game uses a wider range of techniques that most players noted being non-apparent in its predecessor, Circle of the Moon. Critics hammered CotM for being too dark to see on the screen of the handheld, and HoD goes in the opposite direction by presenting brighter colours and special enemy attacks, as well as greater distinction in between areas. Minor details, such as odd paintings in the Clock Tower, contribute to a more horrifying game. Complex parallactic effects are also used, as are occasional flashes of lightning and and other graphical effects.
HoD also employs multi-jointed creatures and rotating sprites, and its animations are also significantly more complex than its predecessor's.
Despite all of this, HoD's graphics still have been criticized by some players for employing too many greys and reds, and also for the general murkiness of the main characters' sprites. Rumors have circulated claiming this could be due to the game being resized after originally being developed for a home console, although it is more likely that certain sprites (such as Maxim's) were simply taken from SotN, scaled down and recoloured).
[edit] Level design
"Harmony of Dissonance" has a much more corridor-like structure than its GBA predecessor: the spaces the player has to work their way through are tight and maze-like. Zig-zagging is a common motif - almost an encouragement to use the dash mechanic. As it is also focused very much on action, many straight hallways are incorporated.
The overall design of the castle is an open-ended style, allowing users to take paths in a different order each time they play the game.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the viewpoint, HoD has very little in terms of secret rooms and breakable walls, which is somewhat of an oddity, seeing how the previous games of similar nature contained so many of them.
"Harmony of Dissonance" gives rise to the idea of the castle having solid and spiritual forms. Juste will be able to explore all areas of the castle by going through dimensional portals to enter the spiritual castle's realm, and open up inaccessible places in the Earthly realm in that dimension, and vice versa. The use of parallel worlds is comparable to another Konami franchise, Silent Hill, but is most similar to the Light and Dark Worlds of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Most reviewers and players criticized the way this mechanic was handled, and claimed it to be needlessly convoluted.
[edit] Main characters
[edit] Juste Belmont
[edit] Maxime Kishine
[edit] Lydie Erlanger
[edit] Dracula Phantom
[edit] Castle areas
~The Castle Areas:
- Entrance - The obligatory first area of Dracula's Castle. Large windows reveal a coniferous forest outside, along with lightning. Inside, the place is relatively small, and is mainly composed of cobblestone and brick corridors. One of the rooms is a storage place for Dracula's wine.
- Marble Corridor - A place quite comparable to an attic. The colors are grim, and most of the rooms seem to be for storing certain items.
- Room of Illusion - More of a transition place, than a true area, the Room of Illusion provides the teleporter necessary to further Juste's progress. There is a room with rivers of lava, along with a large hallway with psychedelic effects in the background.
- The Wailing Way - The graveyard/tomb. A dark, cloudy sky shifts in the background, and broken apart, brick structures are scattered about. Small towers and hills can be seen in the distance.
- Shrine of the Apostates - A continuation of the Wailing Way, but with more of an architectural feel.
- Castle Treasury - Long, gray, pillared corridors make up this place, along with some hallways brimming with huge crystals. Ethereal mist is apparent in some rooms. Juste's room is also located here.
- Cave of Skeletons - Finally, all the bony denizens of Castlevania get their own haunt! Walls overflowing with skulls are present in some chambers, along with appearances of the skeletons of former Castlevania baddies. Some rooms feature large skeletons of beasts that Juste must move in order to proceed.
- Castle Top Floor - A continuation of the Castle Treasury. A couple elevator rooms are located here, along with corridors exposing more of the outside forest and clouds. Dracula's chamber is uninhabited, and the wall inside is broken away, exposing large, tumultuous clouds. The Clock Tower can, as usual, be viewed from the stairway prior to his room.
- Luminous Cavern - Very similar to SotN's own Underground Caverns. The lower portion is overflowing with water, which Juste must get rid of in order to progress. In the backgroud, large, rocky formations glow from luminescent water. In one room, Juste must strike a switch to crush a huge monster, and have its blood fill up a vertical corridor and raise a platform, in order for him to move on.
- Sky Walkway / Chapel of Dissonance - Again, similar to SotN, mainly due to the background borrowing the scrolling clouds technique, though they are much more active here. Majestic, gothic architecture makes up most of this area, along with a room containing an old, worn organ, and a large room featuring myriads of stained-glass windows.
- Aqueduct of Dragons - The game's sewer area. Waterfalls pour down in the foreground, and mucky, amphibious enemies inhabit the place's rusty, slimy rooms.
- Clock Tower - This dark place features myriads of complex cogs and such, along with a few unique interactions, one of them being where Juste can whip an armored knight into a mechanism to obtain its armor. The Marble Gallery's clock room hallway is back, too.
[edit] Enemies
Like SotN, the game draws heavily from previous games for its enemy selection. Nearly sixty of the castle's inhabitants have been drawn from SotN, and, consequently, the Japanese-only Demon Castle Dracula X: Rondo of Blood.
Due to the game being created on a system with much less of a capacity to handle the myriads of details seen in SotN, HoD's reuse of the characters is noticeably different. Resolutions have been downgraded to fit the requirements of the game's space, and some enemies have lost the use of some of their previous repertoire of attacks. Some have not been so much drawn blatantly from prior creations, as have been upgraded. Castlevania 3's Owls make a return in a much more impressive fashion, coincidentally, only inhabiting the game's graveyard.
HoD's new enemies are possibly the oddest denizens yet seen in a Castlevania game, and contribute further to the horrific influences of the game. Their designs have been described as occult and indefinable at times.
The legion of bosses is also drawn from previous games in most cases. SotN's Legion/Granfalloon beast makes a return, though in a less gigantic fashion, as does Castlevania 3's Skull Knight. The multi-form boss, Shadow, could even be described as being similar to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening's final boss in its concept. Despite the reuse of ideas, HoD's bosses have been praised highly for allegedly displaying some of the best character graphics for the handheld.
[edit] Music
The music written by Soshiro Hokkai is certainly HoD's most heavily disputed area.
Most of the outcry against the game's soundtrack is due to the use of the GBA's PSG channels, unlike Circle of the Moon, which uses PCM.[1] (The GBA's PSG channels were originally intended to provide compatibility with older Game Boy games.)
The second component of this controversy is the actual melodic compositions themselves. The music is quite unconventional and gloomy; it ends up being almost depressing at points. The way the instruments are utilized also has provided some source of discomfort for people; the songs are quite heavily layered with multiple melodies, and this sometimes (ironically) gives a feeling of dissonance.
Despite the general dislike for the music, some players have been known to readily defend the songs, and also to proclaim the soundtrack to contain some of the best the series has yet had, such as Juste's theme, "Successor of Fate,", the Marble Corridor's "Offense and Defense" and the Chapel's theme, "Chapel of Dissonance."
A persistent false rumor is that Mana, guitarist of Moi dix Mois and Malice Mizer, composed the music for this game. In fact, Mana did not write any music that appears in the game itself; he only wrote a promotional cell phone ringtone "La nuit blanche". This ringtone was only released in Japan.
In an interview, Igarashi stated that this was the first time his development team (KCE Tokyo) had made anything for the GBA, and they had no idea of the system's capabilities. (Circle of the Moon was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe, an entirely different team.)
[edit] Trivia
- In the Cave of Skeletons, several background details make references to other games in the series; most notably, the large statue, reminiscent of Dracula's final form in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, another statue which is clearly intended to resemble Camilla's mask (Vampira) from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, and the skeletons of the dynamic duo from Super Castlevania 4, Slogra and Gaibon.
- There is a monster found late in the game called the Simon Wraith. It's dressed as the original Castlevania hero and wields a whip. However, in Japanese, its name was "Shimon," which is how "Simon" is written in Japanese. The kanji literally means "Gates of Death." This is a type of pun unique to the Japanese language. The whip-swinging skeletons are also referred to as the "Gates of Death" in the English Castlevania 3 manual.
- There are a few items that refer to characters from older Castlevania games. Sypha's Crystal will increase your MP recovery rate, while Christopher's Soul is a whip attachment that will let you shoot fireballs from the whip when your health is full (like the old Game Boy games). Unfortunately, these names were changed for the American release.
- The menu screen music is a remix of the name entry screen in the Famicom disk version of Castlevania. The Game Over music is also from the first two Game Boy games.
- The Thunder and Bible Spell Fusion will create two glowing energy orbs which float in front of you and block enemy attacks. You can also run them into enemies to directly damage them, but the orbs can only take about 16 hits, and they shrink to reflect how much energy is left. This Spell Fusion is pretty much a replica of the early form of the Shield power-up from Gradius, Konami's prolific shooter series. It even uses two sound effects from the first Gradius game; the power-up confirm sound is heard upon activating the spell, and the shot impact sound is heard when something hits the shields.
- When Juste halts on a sloping surface, or lands from a fall, he'll assume the pose displayed by the older games' protagonists (Simon Belmont, Trevor Belmont, etc.).
- The keyholes that warp Juste around the castle are the same ones found in Castelvania: Symphony of the Night. Also the gate that warps Juste between Castles A and Castle B is the same one that Doppleganger 10 used to enter Alucard's world.
[edit] Re-release
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was re-released in North America in January of 2006, along with Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, as part of Castlevania Double Pack. Both games are contained on a single GBA Game Pak. This pack also appeared in Europe later that year.
