I'm not worthy of this game. Apparently falling somewhere between Super Castlevania IV and Symphony of the Night, you could almost say that Circle of the Moon on GBA is like Metroid with a whip. That wouldn't do it justice though; rather, COTM is a bonafide and very faithful Castlevania game in terms of graphics, style, music, etc., but it has a lot of the game design from Super Metroid. (Hey, if you're going to rip off a game's design, Super Metroid ain't a bad choice at all!)

Just as with Tony Hawk 2, the first thing I noticed was the music. It sounds decent through the GBA speaker, but it's fantastic through headphones. Clearly above and beyond anything possible on Game Boy Color. The opening song has an eerie chorus of voices running through it, but the normal gameplay music I've heard so far is more typical Castlevania fare...somewhat creepy, but upbeat and never annoying.

The graphics are a weird mix of gorgeous 2D sprites, awesome special effects (watch carefully when you save the game...), and limited animation. If you were hoping for the flowing cloak and subtle body movements from Symphony of the Night, forget it. But, animation isn't a big deal to me in the long run. The castle itself looks great, and many hallways have parallax scrolling, which I haven't seen on a handheld title since Saffire's GBC demo at E3 2000.

The gameplay: wonderful. I can't believe I've spent this long writing impressions when I could have been playing. The hit detection is immaculate, which is oh-so-important in a 2D action game like this. Nathan's whip has a long reach, and attacking in the middle of a jump works perfectly, which says a lot. Nathan can jump to a surprising and totally unrealistic height, which gives me a sense of freedom in the environments that I wasn't expecting. So far the enemies are all really easy to kill, except for this one flying gargoyle dude who makes rock spikes come out of the ground. Grr... Though I can't wait to get more cards, the new DSS system looks really cool at this point. After choosing a combo of cards, you can turn on the effect with the L trigger. In the case of my current flaming whip effect, the magic bar only goes down when you attack, and I think it slowly regenerates when you're not using it (I'll have to check that though).

So far my only real gripe is that navigating vertical shafts is really dangerous-feeling, because you can't see very far above or below at all. Also, health-replenishing items are rare (I've only found one so far), and they don't refill very many HP. When you get hurt, at least this early into the game, your only choice is to trek back to the nearest save point...and watch that sweet screen-filling effect one more time. ;-D