Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

"The only review here that makes any sense"

Wow. Let me just begin by saying I' m throughly disgusted with the fact that everybody else LOVES Harmony of dissonance. So disgusted in fact, that I made a damn account just to voice my disapproval. So here it goes. Let's start with the title.

The original Japanese title of this game was White Night Concerto (Or Concerto of the Midnight Sun). I'm not a purist as far as that goes, I rarely refer to games by the Japanese titles. However, when it got to America, the stupid jackasses in charge decided to feign poetry by using two conflicting words. Excuse me? HARMONY of DISSONANCE? Is that supposed to impress me?

The story leaves a lot to be desired. First of all the game simply states that "Fate has dictated that Juste search for the reamins of Dracula" Fate? Is that the best you can give me? Fate decided. Ok, just checking. Anyways, then Juste's best friend Maxim (Which is pretty much the most overused RPG name of all time. Lufia anybody? Final Fantasy? Legacy of Kain? Suidoken? Tsugnai?) comes back and "his body is covered with wounds". It would make a lot more sense if they kept it as the Japanese "Beaten close to death" "Covered with wounds" sounds like he walked through a briar patch on his way to meet Juste. And we get to our final character when the game mentions "Maxim informs Juste that Lydie, a childhood friend whom they both care deeply about, has been kidnapped" after which they end up in the castle. This time, the game writer's have given up on themselves entirely. Not anybody's girlfriend, wife, betrothed, but a simple childhood friend? How incredibly droll.

So at this point the game starts. Maxim is bleeding and almost dead in the corner, but he asks you to go on. You get chased by a huge suit of armor which falls into a hole and dies is a pretty cool explosion. The first place has amazing music. Seriously, I want that song on my Ipod, it's so good. Music may be the only place I'll give this game some credit. But right from the start, you will find at least 5 things you cannot yet do. This game requires you to backtrack a LOT after finding new items and acquiring new skills, and it doesn't help that the castle is a huge confusing mess of "You can;t get there from here" situations.

The fight system is pretty usless too. You have the whip, which you can hold out and swing in any direction, but while sacrificing immense power. The only good this ever does is when you get the energy circle which allows you to swing in a cirle just by holding the button. The subweapons are pretty prosaic, the axe, the knife, the holy book, the holy water, the sacred fist (Which is not only rather useless, but very awkward looking) and the cross. This game also introduces Spell Fusion (Which they bothered to trademark) meaning he can use magic spells based off the subweapon he is holding and can switch bewteen Spell books using different elements to generate different effects. Some, like the Soul of Hydra, Guardian Cross, and Flurry of Knives, are very effective. Others, like Rain of Voltage, Double Shield, and Frosty Flames are fun to use. Most are just plain useless, like wind+axe will simply make a single axe float in the air and Book+fire will simply throw a buring book which will rarely hit your target.

The game itself gives you very little direction. Cryptic snippets of conversations with Death will only allow you to realize that there are two castles, which will create endless continutiy headaches for players trying to figure out the game, or to explore it. Furthermore, in a show of how weak the characters in this game are, from the weakly named best friend who seems utterly intent to die due to negelegence by Juste, to the kidnapping fodder (she deserves no name), we come to Death's serious involvment in the plot. Death is meant to be a high-tier boss. He's not there to talk. But such a poorly scripted game that even makes the best friend the final boss couldn't be bothered with the fact that he's DEATH!

Another thing that bothers me is that this game has a very odd sidequest. Sidequests are usually fun in games like this, involving some kind of optional boss or a hidden character. All you're going to get in this game is the quest for Feung-Shui. Juste has to collect furnature for one specific room that's hard as balls to find and pretty it up (Even though none of the other rooms have furnature either. So we get more poor writing) This becomes a serious attack on our willing suspension of disbelief, thinking a thin, effeminate man like Juste can hold a King sized bed, rocking chair, a sidetable, and 6 different statues at the same time. And what do you get if you complete your redecorating project? Actually, I have no idea. I was missing one thing, and I gave up playing. Likely, seeing the mood of this game, you won't get sh*t, you just need to finish it to get the "good" ending where Maxim doesn't die (Frankly, the less of these people there are, the better)

And one last thing I can;t stand. This game is RIFE with Castlevania's biggest disappointment. Those are the "big's". For those of you who don't know who they are, "Big's" are big versions of regular enemies used as bosses. A clear show by the programmers that they don't care to make any creative bosses. More often that not, the bosses who aren't "bigs" are far too hard to kill, and the "bigs" are far too easy.

So do yourself a favor. Buy Aria of Sorrow instead. It's got a much cooler title anyways. Stay away from this awful game.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/09/07