Which Castlevania games do you like?

[PrettyNier]

It reminds me of SOTN the most out of all those.

In some ways I can see that, it has a similar menu system and it's save points are nearly identical (it's also the only post-sotn castleroid where water hurts you and you can't sell items to the merchant, rather you have to sell gems) but beyond those few superficial similarities Harmony strikes me as the most unique castlevania game. I can't really compare it to many of the others, not even Symphony; Aria feels more like Symphony than HoD does to me.

I don't really like Circle of the Moon because it strikes me as incredibly uninspired; most of the enemies are just furry variations on enemies from Symphony, the backgrounds are usually very filler and uninteresting compared to the other metroidvanias (either abusing pillars/archs or just having standard brickwork; there are a few exceptions, but they are far and few between (the observatory is really nice looking)), the majority of enemies have the same pattern (two steps, attack, two steps, attack) or variations on that pattern, and the game has a bad habit of repeating it's enemy placement over entire hallways. How many times have you seen the KOBOLD + BEAR combination, with that same little rise in the floor?

I also don't really like the progression of abilities; a lot of the "abilities" are fairly inane (exceptions: walljump, tackle and run), not really accomplishing much in an in-game context aside from opening up a new area. they're keys, basically, and nothing more. As far as the three abilities you get that are legitimately abilities, only one of which is really fun to use (walljumping); the tackle is a good attack and effective in going faster, but it's like the roll in ocarina of time, it's more of an excuse when you don't feel like running or whipping (it also hurts you when you use it as an attack). which is fairly often; the running in the game is overly stiff and obnoxious.

i also wish the game had more original songs, a lot of the remixes are kind of underwhelming

i will give it credit, though; it had the right idea in restricting the amount of healing items you got (giving the game much more of a survivalist approach), and it's sense of scale is fantastic - it's one of the only castles in the series that legitimately feels massive.