Castlevania Advance Collection

My first proper run through all three GBA Castlevanias back-to-back made one thing very clear: this collection is doing the heavy lifting that years of expensive secondhand carts never could. Circle of the Moon opens the package as a 2001 GBA launch title starring Nathan Graves, a non-Belmont vampire hunter whose whip and DSS card system - combinable Attribute and Action cards that wildly reshape how combat feels - still holds up as one of the more inventive magic frameworks in the whole series. It is occasionally stiff, the double-tap dash takes getting used to, and RNG card drops can frustrate completionists on a first run. But once the castle clicks, the tight action-platforming loop earns its reputation. Harmony of Dissonance is the collection's most contested entry. Juste Belmont plays smoothly and the spellbook system riffs on DSS ideas without the card grind, but the color palette is aggressively bright - a relic of being designed for a GBA without a backlight - and the dungeon design rarely surprises. It is still a competent Metroidvania, just the weakest of the three. Then Aria of Sorrow arrives and the whole package shifts gear. Soma Cruz's Tactical Soul system lets you absorb abilities directly from defeated enemies, with hundreds of unique powers to collect, stack, and experiment with. The level design is sharper, the story actually goes somewhere interesting, and the boss variety is the best of the trilogy. Aria is the reason most people pick this collection up, and it delivers. The fourth game is Castlevania: Dracula X, the SNES remake of Rondo of Blood, and its inclusion baffles people who know what Rondo actually is. Dracula X plays as a linear, level-based Classicvania with Richter Belmont, knockback from hits, brutal Medusa head placement, and a fighting-game-style super system bolted on. It is hard, it is punishing, and it has zero of the exploration that defines the other three games. Reviewers and community members are genuinely split on whether it adds value or just highlights how much better Rondo itself would have been here. Treat it as a chaotic bonus stage. What holds the whole package together is the emulation work by M2. Every game gets a rewind function, save states (up to ten slots per game), pixel-perfect and fullscreen display modes, a gadget overlay that flags whether an enemy you are currently hitting can drop a rare card or soul, and a full music player covering every soundtrack. The art gallery includes box art scans and full manual scans for US, Japanese, and European releases - the kind of preservation detail that should be standard and almost never is. You can also swap ROM regions per game, so the Japanese versions are a button press away. The one missing piece most people flag is the absence of scanline filters for the GBA titles, though Dracula X gets that option. If you have never touched any of these games, Circle of the Moon through Aria of Sorrow represent some of the strongest exploration-focused action the genre has ever produced, and this is comfortably the most accessible and well-presented way to play them. Returning players who survived GBA carts in a dark room will find the quality-of-life additions genuinely useful rather than condescending. Just go in knowing Harmony is the warm-up act and Dracula X is the wildcard.

Alex · Scout Team

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