History Videogame / CastlevaniaCircleOfTheMoon

** The matter of getting Gambler Armbands can be tricky. While the Scary Candle and Trick Candle (who drop the Uranus and Pluto Cards) can be dealt with quickly using Venus/Thunderbird, even without a Stopwatch, the Mimic Candle who drops Gambler Armbands has 900 HP and 600 DEF, which is rather stacked for something that disappears after a few seconds. The answer is to use the Stopwatch Item Crush to freeze it wholesale, though with the amount of abuse it can take, in Shooter and Thief modes, you'll need 120 Hearts just to kill it once. Things are only more awkward for Fighter, as in spite of Fighter's attack being through the roof, their total lack of DSS Cards means that the Stopwatch Item Crush is out of the question, and at a high enough level (such as Level 48) with as much Strength as can be derived from equipment as possible, it'll take six hits to destroy the thing, which is seemingly out of the question because Nathan attacks more slowly while crouched than while standing. The "Guide Dang It" aspect is remembering that you can slide, and that your slide is both just as powerful as your whip and comes out significantly faster. Thus, by using the Stopwatch before exposing the Mimic Candle, whipping it twice as it falls, three more times when it lands, and closing with a slide kick, it's just barely possible to take it down, possibly even with enough leeway to change to Luck gear before the kick if your level is high enough.

*** The Venus + Griffon DSS spell. Increases intelligence by 25%... which has functionally no use, as it resets back to your base if the spell is turned off and drains 4MP/second, and intelligence is only used for MP regen. The ONLY conceivable use it has is to try and regenerate your MP faster if you lack for restorative items and have a safe room to sit for a few moments, though your intelligence needs to first be high enough to offset the 4MP/second drain first and ''then'' hope the boost is enough to increase your regen rate higher than what it was to begin with. Put simply, unless the game is being played in Magician Mode, this spell will never see any use.

** Petrify make you unable to move for a while, and you must shake yourself free or [[LiterallyShatteredLives take tremendous extra damage]] if an enemy smacks you.
** Freeze is the same as Petrify, except that you cannot break free manually, but rather wait until you thaw out.

* ArmorOfInvincibility: There's two, the first being the "Shinning Armor" which boosts all your stats in addition to its outstanding defense. Its counterpart, the Dark Armor, boosts defense even more, but actually cuts the rest of your stats (it's also simpler to acquire, being an item drop, albeit one from an enemy that needs to be backtracked to find, and in only one location).

* BraggingRightsReward: The Shining Armor, the most powerful armor in the game, is found after completing the Battle Arena, a sting of 17 fights in a row that you're expected to complete without casting any spells. It's one of the most difficult areas in the game, so if you're skilled enough to complete it, there's probably nothing else in the game that can challenge you (unless you need to revisit to earn some more cards).

* NoSympathyBetweenMooks: If one Zombie Dragon is killed, the other will [[DevourTheDragon chew away]] at the corpse to recover 300 HitPoints.

* ArmorOfInvincibility: There's two, the first being the "Shinning Armor" which boosts all your stats in addition to its outstanding defense. Its counterpart, the Dark Armor, boosts defense even more, but actually cuts the rest of your stats (it's also simpler to acquire, being an item drop, albeit one from a somewhat rare enemy).

* DualBoss: The [[{{Dracolich}} Zombie Dragons]], two massive bosses fought in the same room. When one dies, the other will chew on its corpse to restore some health.

* NoSympathyBetweenMooks: If one Zombie Dragon is killed, the other will [[DevourTheDragon chew away]] at the corpse to recover its own health.

* NintendoHard:
** Unlike ''Symphony'', ''Harmony'', and ''Aria'', this game is far harder and has less forgiving control physics. (You can still [[JumpPhysics steer your jumps]], but don't expect to be pulling [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]-esque acrobatics and mid-air dodging.)
** Spread-out save points, lack of an item shop, no AfterBossRecovery that's been there in practically every other game in the series, and excess of low-contrast projectiles on dark backgrounds really ups the difficulty. The game itself is also pretty hard even with lighting.
** In addition to the aforementioned lack of shops and high difficulty, items are only found as drops from enemies, from every piece of armor (bar the Shining Armor) to the simplest potion. Unfortunately, items are all pretty rare themselves, so unless one takes time to farm for them, healing is a major issue especially with all the damage you'll be taking in some of the bonus modes. Unless you've farmed plenty of items for a while, a tedious task itself, or have a DSS combo that allows for it, your only reliable source of healing is visiting a save room, requiring you to gauge your ability at all times to know when to retreat and try to heal or push on, and there's no guarantee you'll survive either venture, especially given how far apart each save room is.

The second modern [[{{Metroidvania}} new-school]] ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'', following in the footsteps of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'', ''Circle of the Moon'' was the first game in the series on the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance, launching together with the system in 2001. It helped keep the series going after the more recent Nintendo 64 games had been critically panned.

As of October 2014, you can now pick up the game on the UsefulNotes/WiiU as a Virtual Console title in all regions, and as of September 2021 it is included in the multiplatform ''Castlevania Advance Collection''.

** A well-hidden easter egg gives a shoutout to an obscure UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}} fighter called ''Rakuga Kids''[[note]]This makes more sense when you consider that ''Circle of the Moon'' was made by the same dev team, Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe[[/note]]. In a secret room hidden within a secret room, itself pretty difficult to find, there is a unique enemy, who will immediately run away from you before you can fight it. Figure out how to catch and kill it, and, if you're very lucky, it will drop a Bear Ring. This item has no ostensible purpose other than lowering all of your stats by 100 when equipped. However, if you equip the ring and then use the Pluto/Black Dog combo that normally turns you in the aforementioned skeleton (and getting either of those cards is a GuideDangIt in itself), you instead will turn you into a strange green bear that can shoot bear-shaped rockets out of numerous cannons and drop bombs. It is a lot more agile than the skeleton, and can DoubleJump, but still dies in 1 hit. The bear, called Beartank, was one of the fighters in ''Rakuga Kids''.

* HarpingOnAboutHarpies: Harpies appears as flying enemies that sometimes shoot their feathers all over the place, and they are also used later as [[PaletteSwap palette swaps]] to display succubi and fallen angels.

** The experience levels max out at 99.

* ElementalRockPaperScissors: Some elements work better on some enemies and some don't. Since there is no MonsterCompendium, this will take a while to learn.

** Dracula's lair is in the ''center'' of the castle rather than being at the top, let alone approached by a big staircase coming from the right. Even ''Symphony of the Night'', which has Dracula fought in the center of the Inverted Castle, at least has his series-traditional quarters present in both versions of the castle.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: At the start of the game, Magician Mode suffers from doing only does half damage and taking double damage, plus MP and MP recovery aren't high enough to spam DSS attacks. By the end of the game, you recover MP so quickly you can chain even the strongest Uranus DSS combos while remaining invincible.

* CutscenePowerToTheMax: After Dracula awakens and destroys the ground beneath their feet, Nathan and Hugh drop down a long shaft that should have killed them if not broken every bone in their body, but they land no worse for the wear and continue on as if nothing happened. Then again, you can drop down this same shaft over and over again during gameplay and be equally unharmed [[spoiler:(and you might have to, as there are a few secret rooms behind breakable walls in there)]].

** Mandragoria - [[GreenThumb Plant]]

* DumpStat:
** To a much lesser extent than most examples, but of your four primary statistics, Intelligence functions as slightly less useful than the other three. Why? Because contrary to what most RPG's have taught you, ''Intelligence does not increase the power of your spells'' in this game, serving only to determine your MP regeneration rate, of which it takes quite a significant increase in order to regenerate faster. Offensive spells offer a flat percentage bonus to your attack stat and scale with it rather, and there are items to restore your MP rather than wait five minutes for your MP to restore on its own, though those can be difficult to find due to the low drop rate of items in this game. Chances are most players will probably not worry so much about MP Regen once they have enough intelligence to offset the usage of the Venus cards that boost the other three stats.
** Played FULLY straight in Warrior Mode, however, as Nathan will never find any DSS cards and thus, your MP Regen and Intelligence as a result are utterly meaningless for him in that playthrough.

* DumpStat: To a much lesser extent than most examples, but of your four primary statistics, Intelligence functions as slightly less useful than the other three. Why? Because contrary to what most RPG's have taught you, ''Intelligence does not increase the power of your spells'' in this game, serving only to determine your MP regeneration rate, of which it takes quite a significant increase in order to regenerate faster. Offensive spells offer a flat percentage bonus to your attack stat and scale with it rather, and there are items to restore your MP rather than wait five minutes for your MP to restore on its own, though those can be difficult to find due to the low drop rate of items in this game. Chances are most players will probably not worry so much about MP Regen once they have enough intelligence to offset the usage of the Venus cards that boost the other three stats.

* WakeUpCallBoss: Cerberus makes up for its weak appearance in ''Symphony'' by setting the standards of high difficulty for the bosses of this game. It is huge, the player can't be careless about its powerful attacks, and only by bringing the right subweapon can the player expect to do good, constant damage.

* SequenceBreaking: You can skip the fights with Death and the Zombie Dragons. Once you kill Adramelech and blow up all of the sarcophagi barriers, you can access the [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer Underground Waterway]], although the water is poisonous until you get an item from Death. If you know the path through it and some good reflexes (or abuse the [[InvincibilityPowerUp Pluto/Unicorn combo]] on Magician mode or with glitches), you can make it through to the save point before Camilla relatively unharmed.

* BarrageOfBats: In his first phase (Dracula in normal form), he casts three flaming bat projectiles rom his cape at the player. When he assumes his OneWingedAngel form, he alternates between a large purple monstrosity, and a large eye surrounded by a swarm of bats that act as a protective barrier.

* PimpedOutDress: Camilla wears a pink and red dress with frills trimming the sleeves and neckline, and the skirt made of flowing fabric, that is bunched up in the back that makes it look like a GiantWaistRibbon.

* JamesBondage: As Nathan finally reaches Dracula, [[spoiler:Morris]] stands tied to a pole in the background.

** Shooter Mode emphasizes the Sub-weapons, giving the player a high maximum of hearts as well as decreasing their heart consumption, but decreases health, strength, and defense. This mode also introduces an exclusive Sub-weapon in the Homing Dagger.

* DualTonfas: The combination of the Mars and Cockatrice cards allows Nathan to attack with these. [[TakenForGranite They can turn enemies to stone]].

* BalefulPolymorph: The Pluto/Black Dog DSS combo turns Nathan into a BallisticBone-flinging [[DemBones skeleton]]. Equipping the Bear Ring while using this combo instead turns him into [[BearsAreBadNews Beartank]].