I didn't expect to be saying this about a Konami product from the 2020s, but Castlevania: Advance Collection is a gold-standard for what a collection of retro games should be.

This collection features all three GBA Castlevania games, those being Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow, all of which can be played in their American, European or Japanese versions. There is little to no input lag, at least on the PS4 version, and the emulator comes with all sorts of convenient functionality, like save states, a clip function, a rewind function and remappable controls, a checklist that not all retro game collections manage to fill.

It goes a step further than that, however, adding an encyclopedia with information on all enemies and items, as well as what it calls "gadgets". Those gadgets are helpful UI elements that aid in the completion of each game: in Circle of the Moon, they show which enemies carry an unobtained DSS card; in Harmony of Dissonance, they show key items and furniture pieces present in an area; finally, in Aria of Sorrow, they show whether Soma has picked up the soul of an enemy he's fighting at that moment. All three gadgets are very welcome additions to their respective games.

The collection also comes with the SNES port of Rondo of Blood, Dracula X... but we try not to talk about that one.

Before being retconned out of the series chronology, Castlevania: Legends used to be the very first game in the series' timeline. It features the first incarnation of Count Dracula as well as the first Belmont, Sonia Belmont, to rise against him. For what would be a pivotal game in the series chronology, it's... definitely one of the Castlevania games ever made.

The Game Boy and Game Boy Color were filled with boneless, unambitious platformers, be them licensed games or attempts to bring home console franchises to the portable, and Castlevania: Legends is one more game in that latter pile, featuring uninspired level and enemy design, a janky, barebones implementation of traditional series mechanics and encounters that are an exercise in frustration. It has a very short runtime, but even so, it's better off being skipped.

It's a shame, too, because it features a female protagonist, whose appearance on the cover of the game was what drove me to try it in the first place. Sonia is pretty cool, it's just that her game is... not. I do enjoy the implication in the best ending that she had a son, Victor Belmont, with Alucard, thus forever tying the Belmont bloodline to Dracula. My gal literally doomed her entire bloodline to get a piece of that gorgeous dhampir, which... based and goals? Mad respect for her.

Besides, just think about it: had Legends stayed canon (which in my heart, it did), it would recontextualize every one of Alucard's appearances as him looking out for his great great great great grandchildren. "Richter, get down from that throne, you're going to hurt yourself". "Trevor, take an adult with you to fight grandpa's dad, okay?". I can only assume Iga struck the game out of the continuity because he was too afraid of how powerful such a narrative would be.

Confession: I didn't actually buy the Advance Collection for a history trip with the Castlevania series. Instead, I just wanted an excuse to play Aria of Sorrow again, with some other games as a bonus. Aria was my first contact with the Castlevania series, something that was both a blessing and a curse, because from then on, playing other Castlevanias always gave a feeling of "this is not quite it". Of course, in revisiting an old favorite, there's always the risk of one's memory not holding up and just not remembering the game's flaws.

One thing I definitely didn't remember was that the protagonist, Soma Cruz, is actually an eighteen year-old high-schooler, to which my immediate reaction was "no he's not". Just look at his portrait, beautifully rendered by Ayami Kojima. That piercing gaze? Shining white hair? That black turtleneck with the sleek fur-lined coat? This man is the definition of too cool for school. If he's a high schooler, he probably takes love letters out of his locker on a wheelbarrow. And he ignores them all, because that's how cool he is.

Erm-ahem. Fan fiction aside, the game takes place in Japan in the year of 2035. A solar eclipse is happening on that day, and Soma is headed to Hakuba Shrine to meet his childhood friend Mina and watch the event from there. Upon arriving at the shrine, however, Soma loses consciousness, and the two are transported to a mysterious castle, where they meet the enigmatic Genya Arikado. At first, he doesn't know what to do about the two teenagers, but as the trio are jumped by monsters, something unexpected happens: Soma absorbs the essence of a monster he defeats, obtaining its power. Having witnessed this, Arikado then ushers Soma to reach the top of the castle so the group can escape from it.

Aria was the last Castlevania game made for the Game Boy Advance, and it shows. The mastery over the limited hardware and small screen is displayed in some of the most beautiful spritework on the system. Soma himself is a shining example: the fluidity of his walk cycle, the turning of his body as he puts his strength into a swing, the way his coat gently sways with the wind... the amount of detail crammed into this not even 40 pixels tall character is impressive.

One might say that putting a lot of work into the main character is standard, as that will be the focus of the player's attention most of the time. The idea with such an approach would be to put a lot of work in the main character, and then not push enemies and other characters too far. Which is fine, except that no sprite artist at Konami got that memo, because they flexed all over the place. Enemies look positively gorgeous in Aria, from the first disgustingly goopy zombie met in the Eternal Corridor all the way to Dracula's final form, all of them are carefully designed, colored, shaded and animated.

To say nothing of the environments, which are a further step up from Harmony of Dissonance and look especially smooth. Parallax and Mode 7-like effects are a given by this point, but Aria takes it further by incorporating animated tilesets for lighting effects. The save room in this game is the most beautiful in the series, with the flickering of the flame on display through the walls and the statue in the center.

And the sound design? There are a surprising amount of voice clips for a GBA game, and enemies make all sorts of noises that give them more personality -- I especially like the intense death screams. It should also be said that the game's original soundtrack is one banger after another. Konami is really bad at this memo thing, because the composer also didn't get the one that said "these are the first and second areas of the game, no need to go all out". To say nothing of the moments where it actually made sense go hard, which... Incredible stuff.

Everything in Aria feels just right, like after a couple of games of trying to iterate on Symphony of the Night, something just clicked. The castle is a perfect mix of maze and proper castle, with the areas that branch and connect unpredictably, but without losing the feeling of distinct zones, which happened in HoD to some extent. Aria even went back to having transition rooms like SotN did, which despite being technically unnecessary in a GBA game, feel extremely natural from a design standpoint, creating some breathing room between areas that emphasize the difference between them.

In addition, the game maintains a consistent level of challenge from beginning to end, with enemies and bosses that are varied and engaging. Plus, with Soma not being a vampire hunter, the player is not locked into a whip for the entirety of the game, and he instead gets access to an arsenal of swords, lances, axes and blunt weapons. The choice between them is not simply about aesthetics: each individual weapon has a different range and hitbox shape, as well as distinct swing and recovery times. It's often advantageous to swap between weapon types for specific encounters, which speaks to how well designed equipment is.

Aria's greatest asset, however, is the Soul System and its monster abilities, through which you-- yes, you -- can now be the little asshat throwing bones from higher ground, living the ultimate Castlevania power fantasy. As established in the opening segment, when defeating enemies, Soma might obtain a soul, which when equipped, enable either a passive, sustained or instant ability related in some way to that monster. Souls are both a means of progression, with key souls obtained in specific rooms allowing access to new areas of the castle, and for combat purposes, replacing the series' traditional subweapons.

At first, this might seem similar to the DSS in that abilities are obtained as random drops from monsters, but it's far superior. For one, there's a direct connection between the monster and what its dropped soul does, which gives the system more personality. Moreover, unlike cards, every monster has a soul. In the face of the low drop rate, while it's unlikely the player will obtain every soul as they travel through the castle (unless your name is TASBot), the law of averages results in them obtaining some set of souls that they can work with. The result is that every playthrough feels slightly different as the player works with a set of tools. Also, completionists have their work cut out for them, hunting exotic monsters with the aid of late game mechanics that boost drop rates.

Souls are also an important metanarrative element that lends credence to Soma's growth. Unlike Juste before him, Soma is a student with no formal combat training, and this is reflected on his initial abilities, which are restricted to jumping and a weak attack. As he explores deeper into the castle, however, he grows stronger and faster, becoming a real powerhouse by the end of the game, and souls make that growth over the course of the story, down to the completely artificial video game notion of levels, seem justified.

Incidentally, Aria of Sorrow features an outstanding central narrative. This is largely owed to its mysterious and layered characters who make frequent appearances throughout the castle, and also to the unusual circumstances surrounding Dracula's castle in the year of 2035 itself. Similarly to HoD, ol' Vlad is nowhere to be found, this time because Aria takes place in an age in which Dracula was permanently destroyed by the Belmonts, and the characters, from church officials to government agents to soldiers to our unlucky duo of teenagers, have different ideas on why the castle reappeared.

There's no feeling quite as refreshing as returning to a childhood classic and realizing it's just as outstanding as it was all those years ago. Aria of Sorrow is the result of years of iteration and passion, and stands amongst the best Castlevanias and the best metroidvanias ever made. It alone justifies buying the Advance Collection.

A man dressed in black holds a young woman at gunpoint. He's a hitman, hired to erase all those who possess knowledge about something our unlucky gal has stumbled upon. Between her and the barrel of the shotgun is a man, who realizes what's going on and wants to do something to help. Except... he's already dead, his body lying face down in the ground, and his disembodied spirit just watching helplessly.

Not all is lost: with the help of another ghost nearby, he learns of a spirit's ability to possess and manipulate various objects, as well as, when faced with a corpse, the unbelievable power turn back time to just before that person died. After a bit of trying, he is able to prevent the girl from being assassinated. All is well! Only, he's still dead. Even worse... he has no idea who he is, or why he died. With the girl he saved being the only person who might have a clue about what transpired, he elects to follow her, and the night that follows is a sequence of ever more unbelievable events.

Coming out of several years in a row working on the Ace Attorney series, director Shu Takumi wanted to try something different, creating a new IP that pushed the beloved style character-focused stories of his previous works even further. To achieve that, he planned on using a disembodied spirit as a protagonist as a means to explore multiple locations and connect more intimately with more characters, in a way a person with a physical body wouldn't be able to. This opus took years to come into fruition, and how cruel it was that, in the saturated and piracy-ravaged market of the Nintendo DS's later years, it earned the label "cult classic" instead of the shorter and more deserved "classic".

Ghost Trick is an adventure game unlike any other ever made. Its unique style of puzzle gameplay puts the player in control of Sissel, the amnesiac spirit, whose most basic ability is to hop between highlighted objects in a scene and use them in some way, like moving a cart or turning on a light. In the most basic stages of Ghost Trick, that's just his goal: traverse a certain location to cause something to happen, or to eavesdrop on a conversation and obtain a piece of information.

Everything changes once he finds a dead body and travels back in time to exactly four minutes before that person's passed away. We're presented with the sequence of events that led to that death, and are then set loose in the scene with the goal of altering it and preventing that terrible outcome. Naturally, Sissel cannot talk or otherwise directly interact with anyone in the past, so in case he needs to change someone's behaviour, he must use his powers over objects to induce them into the desired course of action.

These sections are superb puzzles. They force the player to go through the scene several times, understanding what are the pivotal moments in the scene and what tools they have to work with. Sometimes, it's a simple matter of finding the right timing to perform a certain action, or finding a way to gain more time. In other occasions, the paths Sissel can take in a certain location must be thoroughly explored in order to gain more information and act appropriately. There's even cases where more elaborate chains of object manipulations must be enacted -- if the thought of preventing crimes by building Rube Goldberg machines sounds appealing in any way, this is the game you need to play.

More than the puzzles themselves, however, what's most intriguing is their execution. A pitfall games centered around puzzles often fall in is that those get in the way of the narrative, especially towards the end of the campaign where the difficulty is at its highest. Ghost Trick, on the other hand, follows in the footsteps of Ace Attorney, interleaving them with action and character moments. In addition, as the story progresses, the game focuses on offering a larger variety of puzzles through exploring different locations and featuring new characters instead of scaling the difficulty. Both of these decisions confer a flawless pacing to the narrative. The final section of the game, in particular, is so extraordinarily well paced that it doesn't feel like playing a game, but being part of a story yourself.

A story which is in itself, exceptional, and alone worth the price of admission. Shu Takumi was cooking he put forth the idea of a ghost used to explore a large cast: there are many, many characters in Ghost Trick, all of them worthy of being someone's favorite, and the game has the time and means to move between scenes, giving each person time on the spotlight and exploring their personality and motivations. Of note is that Ghost Trick is home to the single best dog in all of gaming: Missile, the Pomeranian, based on Shu Takumi's real life dog at the time, is a standout character whose energy and charm wins over just about anyone who plays the game for a bit. The uncontested best boy.

Each scene in Ghost Trick is rendered in a sidescrolling 2D view, which is in itself pretty rare for a narrative game, but the way the story is presented is what really makes the game shine: the scene direction treats each sideways view of a location as a stage, making heavy use of theater language to convey thoughts, emotions and information to the spectator. This is reinforced by the team's rejection of motion capture, which led them to hand-animate the flashiest, most unique and detailed animations for each character, sometimes establishing a character's entire personality simply from the way they walk into the stage. The game's flat colors and strong shapes may make every frame of it a painting, but seeing it in motion is the truly breathtaking part.

Ghost Trick's only debatable flaw is that the story being told here is so extensive and so complex that it makes the experience into one the player has to give credence to, and has to be willing to stick with to the end. The script very slowly unveils its hand, and it might feel, at times, like certain arcs were forgotten or huge plot holes are being opened. And that's not true: the plot is masterfully paced and paints a complete and concise picture by the time the credits roll, but because that process takes time, it demands a certain openness from the player, a willingness to engage with the narrative and let it unfold on its own time.

Which is to say, its only flaw is being too good for its own sake, a demerit that can no doubt be worn as a badge of honor. Ghost Trick is an exhilarating experience, and it is a blessing that it survived its weak sales performance on the DS and went on to be ported and remade for other platforms. Sissel's supernatural adventure between the worlds of the living and the dead deserves to be seen and enjoyed by more people.

One thing that often surprises people that haven't studied other cultures is that, just like there are multiple languages in the world, not every civilization that existed used the same numbers. In fact, the Arabic numerals we use today are barely a millenium old, and only established themselves as the standard among Western cultures by the 15th century. Roman numerals are generally going to be a person's first introduction to a system that operates with different symbols and logic, but there are many others.

Among those are the Cistercian numerals, created in the 13th century by an order of monks of the same name that was widespread in Europe at the time. This system was designed to represent numbers from 1 to 9999, each with an individual glyph. It is no longer used, and one doesn't have to concern themselves with it unless they are reading medieval manuscripts... or if they happen to be playing Cipher Monk.

Cipher Monk takes the player through thirty five levels where they're tasked with reproducing a certain quantity in the Cistercian system. It provides a chart with several examples of numbers through which the player is expected to derive the intuition behind the system -- in this, the game could have done a better job of explaining the intuition behind certain patterns, which might not be immediately obvious to those who are only familiar with the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals. There was also a missed opportunity in introducing the history behind the system.

Better controls could also have been on the table... But then again, it's a one dollar game that lasts 30 minutes. It literally took me longer to research and write this short review than to fully complete it, so maybe it's best to keep expectations in check. For the asking price, it's a fun puzzle game to kill a small amount of time -- just make sure immediately click the eye on the top right corner to hide the "Current" number display, as relying on that resource can ruin the game.

Moving on from the fiasco that was Circle of the Moon, the Advance Collection now treats us to Harmony of Dissonance. Will this be an improvement, or a further step down for the series? Let's find out.

Like with Circle of the Moon before it, the main cast is small. The story centers on a trio of childhood friends: the playable Juste Belmont, a descendant of Simon Belmont and inheritor of the Vampire Killer; Maxim Kischine, a trusted fellow vampire hunter who trained alongside Juste; and Lydie Erlanger, a young lady who's very dear to both. Lydie has disappeared, and Maxim was the last person to see her -- he, however, has no recollection of what transpired, recalling only the existence of a mysterious castle lost within the mists.

These clearly established, strong bonds between the characters, plus the mystery setup regarding Maxim's amnesia and a castle in which Dracula is nowhere to be found set the game off to a much better start than its predecessor. There are, in fact, twists hidden in the way the castle is laid out in itself, which I won't spoil for the purposes of this review because they do result in something of an "a-ha!" moment in the midgame, by which time Juste will have had multiple run-ins with Maxim and with the denizens of the castle, and it's clear that no one knows what's going on, but this is definitely an unusual situation even as far as the forces of evil are concerned.

As far as the metroidvania gameplay goes, the castle is... complicated. It's definitely a huge improvement from Circle of the Moon: Harmony of Dissonance does away with the silly obstacle courses that defined its predecessor, with branching areas that develop unpredictably and mesh into one another, and the result is much more surprising, and thus more satisfying zones to explore. Those zones also offer a multitude of treasures to find, making the exploration of every nook and cranny a rewarding one.

On the other hand, it's not like the player has a choice: they have to explore every single square of the castle map, as rooms that might seem optional or empty can actually be essential to advancing. Likewise, equipment plays an important part in Juste's adventure, and there are many key items masquerading as normal items. This is not new for the series, with Symphony of the Night's Holy Glasses allowing access to the second half of the game, but HoD employs this idea much more often. As such, it's important to inspect the inventory descriptions for all items that are picked up and make notes of rooms that seem suspicious.

It's not that these design decisions were bad -- they force engaging with the castle on a deeper level, which is a positive -- but it's easy to see someone coming out frustrated from the game due to being stuck for a long time because of a detail they didn't notice. This is compounded by the biggest point of contention, which is another castle feature that has the player traverse every area in the game at least twice. The result is that there is a lot of repetition to Harmony of Dissonance -- even more so to a player who doesn't quite know where to go.

So the castle in this entry is controversial. However, in my review of Circle of the Moon, I claimed that a bad castle isn't as much of a problem if the game plays well, and if anything, Harmony of Dissonance is proof of that statement. Clearly, someone looked at Nathan and Alucard side-by-side and realized the next lil' guy had to be more like former: Juste plays amazingly smoothly right from the get-go, with a directional dash move performed via the trigger buttons that allows him to traverse rooms like a speedrunning lunatic. Later additions to his moveset reinforce this agility, making it much less painful to travel long distances.

This also greatly helps his combat capabilities: by dashing, he can quickly move in and out of combat, which in turn rewards players that play aggressively. Juste's abilities are even further reinforced once the player finds their first spellbook: there are five in total, and each of them transforms the subweapon ability in unique ways. This means that, despite being a whip user for the whole game, his moveset has a few more tricks that help him deal with faraway or aerial enemies.

When one considers Juste's full moveset, he is rather overpowered. And he feels as such, too. CotM had that Game Boy Color feel to its graphics and animations, and it, too, impacted the player's perception of the game. Juste is not only better animated, he retains that shadowy trail that's a page taken straight from SotN, making it clear that this he is not just a guy. It's almost... too much. Before I noticed the "Belmont" attached to his name, I was under the impression Juste was a vampire like Alucard, not a vampire hunter. But I suppose that Dissonance (ha!) is a small price to pay to have a character that feels good to control.

Symphony of the Night it is not, but Harmony of Dissonance presents a fun take on the Castlevania formula. It's true that the game might demand patience from its player, but for those willing to stick with it, there's plenty of fun to be had in Juste Belmont's unexpected battle against evil.

Frog Detective 3 sees the conclusion (for now?) to the story of the eponymous amphibian, taking them to the sands of Cowboy County to solve the mystery of the missing hats. New gameplay elements include a scooter, which also allowed for a larger environment... and that's it. The rest is the same point-n'-click, item trade chain type of game.

Anyone who's made it to game three in the trilogy already knows what it's like, and whether or not it's for them, but nevertheless: Frog Detective is a great pick for young kids, who will probably adore the cute visuals, witty writing and the scooter. As for the adults, it's a bit more hit-or-miss. There's very little complexity to the investigation, so it's up to how much the jokes land.

On a side note, it's such a bummer that none of the games in the trilogy used the magnifying glass for something.

The biggest puzzle surrounding Circle of the Moon to me is how it came to be. Could it be that it's a B-team game that went sour? Perhaps it was a rush-job to get something out for the Game Boy Advance's launch? Or maybe, it was born from a legitimate desire to mesh Symphony of the Night's level design with more traditional Castlevania gameplay. It's even possible it was all of those things combined. Regardless of the answer, however, it's clear that it was a mistake.

Circle of the Moon is economical in regards to its storytelling: the cast is restricted to Dracula and a cohort along with three vampire hunters, and one can count the total cutscenes on their fingers. In fact, after a very short introduction in which Dracula gets resurrected, the player gets thrown straight into the action -- literally, as the hunters fall into a trap hole, becoming separated. The group is composed by the mentor Morris Baldwin, who's captured by the antagonists, along with his two apprentices Hugh Baldwin and Nathan Graves, the latter being the playable character.

Dracula's home, this time around, is a complete bore. Unlike the game worlds one will see in most metroidvanias, this one isn't structured in a way that the areas mesh into one another: each area presents a more or less linear layout, an obstacle course built around the power-up required to access it. At the end, there's a boss, and right after them, a power-up that opens the next area. The power-up also unlocks a shortcut near the boss room which leads out of the section of the castle they're in, which in turn, the player will likely never have to enter again.

It's very easy to see this weak design through the castle map itself: notice how Abyss Stairway, Eternal Corridor and the left part of the Audience Room together link to the entrances and exits of almost every area in the game, like this ugly glue between levels. Now compare it to the SotN map, which is much less regular and loops around itself in multiple parts. Also note how the warp points are spread out throughout the castle and are actually useful in SotN, unlike the ones seen in Circle of the Moon.

And we're still not done tearing into this castle because our vampiric host had the god-awful idea of having every optional pickup be an HP, MP or max heart increase, with new equipment being obtainable only from enemy drops. One can only imagine that this choice was due to gear being mediocre anyway, offering only stat increases or decreases, but the result is that exploring alternate paths or finding secret rooms is never met with an exciting reward. In fact, by the end of the game, it's an activity that will likely be entirely ignored, as the difference between 252 and 256 hearts is negligible. Again, compare with SotN and its flashy swords and suits of armor that make Alucard immune to different types of damage -- it's harder to justify not exploring in that game.

As awful as the castle is, however, it would have been far more tolerable if Circle of the Moon just played better. Nathan Graves has that name because that's where we'll all be by the time he finishes swinging his whip -- even compared with Richter from Rondo, which is a far more punishing game than every Igavania, Nathan attacks more slowly. In fact, almost every action this man takes has to be accompanied by lengthy, uncancellable anticipation and/or recovery animations: one of the earliest power-ups lets him tackle and it's more like an awkward tumble forward, barely usable for its designated purpose of breaking obstacles. Later on, a pair of magic boots enables a wall-jump, which was clearly gimped at some point in the design phase so it wouldn't allow just any ascent, and god forbid Nathan jumps from too high a platform while climbing because he will have to spend a while getting back on his feet.

To make things even worse, Nathan has a low default walking speed, which is meant to be counteracted with a dashing ability that is one of the earliest power-ups. To dash, the player must press left or right twice, a choice of input that greatly increases the likelihood that the action of simply walking out of harm's way will come in too late or that the input itself will be dropped. Which leads us to the deeper issue with this moveset: Circle of the Moon's enemies were seemingly created assuming a responsive character, coming at Nathan with fast attacks, wide movement ranges and plenty of projectile spam. This is especially true for bosses, which aren't all terrible -- most are -- but often feel like playing chess against an opponent that's playing StarCraft.

In an attempt to add some sort of spice to the gameplay, enemies also drop cards, which are used to cast buffs and spells through a system called DSS. The DSS can be seen as a precursor to the Soul system seen in Aria and Dawn, but one that's still anemic and dysfunctional. Every card is a random drop from enemies; only specific enemies drop them, at a very low rate; at least two cards are required to trigger any sort of effect; only one DSS ability may be active at one time; switching between abilties requires entering the menu and pressing L while on the ground; so on and so forth. The Advance Collection goes out of its way to display which enemies drop which cards and provides a list of what each combination does, which can only be construed as an admission that the DSS is unusable without a guide.

But hey, once the game is finished, it invites the player to try a new file in Magician mode, which changes Nathan's stats and gives him all cards from the start. Maybe now the full potential of the DSS will be unlock-- just kidding, it just means he's now a weaker version of himself that will spam the same screen-wide spell the whole game, thus providing a final testament to how shallow the system and game is. The bottom line is that Circle of the Moon is a half-baked attempt at a Castlevania that is best avoided: with loads of great Metroidvanias in the market nowadays, it's a hard sell even for the diehard series fan.

Dracula X is a soft remake of Rondo of Blood made for the SNES, a relic from a time when game code was entirely specific to a platform and porting over a game meant rewriting everything from scratch. In adapting to the limitations of the new platform compared to the PC Engine, the port was made much lighter on content than the original game, featuring less stages, characters and types of enemies, and also removing the animated cutscenes that told Rondo's story.

Taken as what it is, it's... passable. It's an SNES platformer, like so many others at the time, and can last through a couple hours of enjoyment -- if that's your thing, that is. Personally, clunky combat and instant death pits are not my favorite features in a game, and Dracula X sure is packed with those, even bastardizing the iconic Dracula fight to include a bunch of pitfalls. However, I can see an SNES owner getting this game as a kid and loving it.

In 2024, though, a more pressing question than "why would one play this" is "why would anyone play this instead of Rondo of Blood itself". Even for those craving some classicvania, there's not much to see here that's not already in Rondo. Dracula X's inclusion in the Advance Collection is thus, puzzling.

So, 2024, That's practically 2014, right? I'm still in time to check out A Link Between Worlds? Yes, of course.

Despite it having been sitting in my shelf for some ten years by now, I knew almost nothing coming into A Link Between Worlds bar its central gimmick and connection to A Link to the Past, and even in the latter there was a bit of a surprise: in Japanese, the game is outright called 神々のトライフォース2, which would be equivalent to naming it A Link to the Past 2. It's good that they changed it in the West, not only because sequels tend to intimidate people who don't know the original, but because A Link Between Worlds has its own, unique game feel to it, almost like a reimagining, which naming it "Thing 2" betrays.

It is a direct sequel, though, that is not up for debate: it takes place in the same Hyrule as A Link to the Past, decades, maybe centuries after the events of that game. You play as, as one would guess, Link, who's the apprentice to a smith in Kakariko Village. Link's day starts out just like any other, that is, with him oversleeping and being late to work yet again. During a delivery of a commissioned sword, however, he is met with the eccentric Yuga, a man possessing magical powers who attacks the local church. Sword in hand, the descendant of the legendary hero sets out to find a solution to this new threat.

It pays not to know much about the narrative of A Link Between Worlds because, surprisingly for a Zelda title, there's a lot of depth to it: it expands upon the lore of the original game, building its story on top of established elements and motifs, while at the same time, providing us with fascinating new characters and settings. The cast is wider than that of the prequel, and the slowly unfolding narrative has a lot of twists and turns to its plot, which wraps up to a beautiful ending.

It's one of the ways in which ALBW incorporates the sensibilies of more modern Zelda design, and it goes even further than that: despite the world map being mostly unchanged from the original, the game brings a completely new twist to its dungeons, abandoning the grid-based design of the original in favor of more varied rooms. A few dungeons retaining the feel of the original while others explore other concepts, like more vertical and/or more open layouts. On the surface, some of them even resemble the DS Zelda games more than A Link to the Past.

But then comes another twist: equipment is no longer found within dungeons, being instead required to enter them in the first place. A mysterious merchant named Ravio sets up shop in Hyrule and helpfully offers to sell or lend Link helpful items, like a bow or a hammer. The economics of Ravio's shop are a bit confusing -- Ittle Dew presented a more elegant implementation of the same concept -- but it does serve a purpose in that it rewards thorough exploration while at the same time not requiring it. Plus, it's one of the game's many rupee sinks, which help solve the problem of rupees being useless that's often seen in the series. In A Link Between Worlds, it's unlikely, unless the player intentionally grinds, that they'll finish the game with maxed out rupees.

The potential problem with this setup is that each dungeon assumes the player has one specific item and only that item, and simplistic puzzles can arise from having a single answer to any problem. "Oh no! I'm stuck in a puzzle in the Bow® Dungeon™! Whatever shall I do? I guess I will use my Bow®!" Fortunately, A Link Between Worlds's level designers were aware of this issue, making full use of the game's 3D nature to create complex rooms, and also incorporating a variety of stage elements to support the creation of each dungeon, preventing the one-answer problem and making each one feel unique. The result was some of the best dungeons in the series.

One mechanic shared by every dungeon is the wall traversal: it's the one thing that drew the most skepticism on my part coming into the game, and I cannot believe how wrong I was. The wall mechanic is, at the same time, mind-bending and intuitive, creating a complete paradigm shift on how dungeons are traversed while still feeling perfectly natural to the game. There are a myriad different ways in which A Link Between Worlds uses its central gimmick in its many environments, exploring verticality, connections between rooms and so on.

It's the cherry on top that makes the game, more than excellent, feel irreplicable. A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic reimagining of a classic game that's so dear to my heart, blending its iconic motifs and clever design philosophies with more modern aspects of Zelda games' design. Don't be like me: don't wait for a full decade to play it. It's a treat that deserves to be enjoyed.

Unlike the other pieces of Dragon Age DLC, which present linear storylines in self-contained levels, Awakening attempts to replicate the structure of the main game, bringing a larger campaign made up of different questlines that the player can choose to tackle in whichever order they wish. Also unlike the other DLC, it was priced at a whopping forty dollars on release, which was almost as much as the main game, so it might as well have had something special going to justify it. Fourteen years ago, my gut told me it wasn't going to. It turns out those suspicions were not entirely unfounded.

The expansion is a direct sequel to the events of the main game. The Warden, now promoted to Warden-Commander, arrives in the fortress of Vigil's Keep within the arling of Amaranthine, which was granted to the Grey Wardens during the epilogue. What should be mere routine quickly spirals into chaos as the fortress is attacked by an army of darkspawn whose commander is somehow capable of human speech. The Warden-Commander now shuffles to repair Vigil's Keep as well as recruit new Grey Wardens to fight this new threat.

From a playtime standpoint alone, the expansion already compares disfavorably, clocking in at a quarter of the playtime of the main game, which should be a sign of how light on content it is. While one might (fairly) object to hours-per-dollar being used to evaluate a game, it's important to note that runtime, in a dense RPG such as Dragon Age, allows the writers to flesh out their characters and worlds much better, and it turns out they desperately needed that, because Awakening lacks both the setups and the cast of the original and struggles to get its main quest going.

The mystery of intelligent darkspawn is an enticing one, and it does present us with two fascinating characters from that faction, but the campaign rushes through the moments where they might have been developed, and it is only near the very end of the campaign that we're presented with their true purposes and with the nature and scale of the threat they represent: until then, we're mostly tasked with the administration of the arling and recruitment of new Grey Wardens, doing quests that, while fun, at least at first, seem unrelated to the darkspawn.

Even though the work as arlessa is far from the dramatic race against the clock we had before, it's possible to tell fascinating character-driven stories against a bureaucratic backdrop, but not only does it require a wealth of in-game events -- which again, the short runtime does not allow for -- strong characters with good chemistry are needed, and Awakening is lacking in the latter, and arguably the former as well.

Apart from Oghren, who has somehow become even more vile since Origins, the party is composed of entirely new characters, and it's a real mixed bag. Justice is the one standout, a spirit from the Fade trapped in the body of a Grey Warden against this will who's then forced to experience the world of mortals through the eyes of one. His points of view on the events of the game are fascinating and fresh, and his lack of knowledge about the real world organically creates conflicts of ideas with the rest of the party without him having to be a dick to them. Justice also experiences consistent growth throughout the game.

The rest are just... eh. Velanna and Sigurh are forgettable: there could have been something going for them, but at the breakneck pace of Awakening, there just wasn't enough time to flesh out their characters and they just end up as More Grey Wardens™. Likewise, Nathaniel is an interesting proposition for a character that needed more time to work out his conflicts with the Human Noble without seeming whiny -- my first impulse, which I had to reload a save to fix, was to execute him on the first meeting when he asked to be killed instead of conscripted.

Finally, Anders: his DA2 incarnation may not garner all the love in the world, but at least there, there's a better balance between the multiple facets of his character, and he displays a wider range of emotions. In Awakening, he spends most of his time playing the smartass, to a point where leaving him in the party for too long may drive one insane. It's interesting to see the inversion that will happen in DA2, where Justice will be the one that reads as shallow and single-minded, while Anders is more complex.

Either way, another point of the setting that gets lost due to the rushed storyline is the weight to the order of the Grey Wardens and their practices. The Right of Conscription gets waved around like it's nothing, and the Joining ritual loses both its mystery and seriousness, becoming as casual as inviting someone out for a darkspawn-flavored milkshake. The pacing also ruins points that Awakening itself tries to bring up, with lots of quests petering out before reaching a fulfilling conclusion. A few sidequests, like the Blight Orfans (sic) questline, make for great examples of this, but nothing can top the abysmal conclusion to the campaign, which sees the party turn their back to the charred corpse of the final boss immediately as it dies and... cuts straight to the ending slideshow.

The cherry on top are the bugs. Origins is far from a clean gaming experience and a trip down the wiki will quickly demonstrate that, but Awakening is on a whole other level: multiple pieces of equipment can be lost upon entering the DLC and entire questlines can just fall apart or be missed if the player dares do missions in certain orders or remove companions from the party when the game doesn't expect them to. By the end of my playthrough, three entire questlines were uncompletable, including Sigurh's character missions and the Vigil's Keep upgrades. And supposedly, even with the game done, its bugs are still with me, as the imported save can have other issues and misrepresent the playthrough.

There's a semblance of something good going on in Awakening, but engaging with it mostly brings disappointment over disappointment. In the end, it feels like a tacked-on, overpriced expansion to Dragon Age: Origins, lacking both the scale and weight of that game. Owners of the Ultimate Edition will enjoy one more silly adventure to take their Grey Warden on if they can tolerate the hurdles, but will probably forget about it shortly after. As for the people who paid full-price back in the day... Oof.

A while ago, I was talking to a friend about RPGs we liked, and Dragon Age: Origins came up as one of mine. They replied that they tried playing it once and found it too dated. I had just started a new playthrough then, and thought that that absolutely couldn't be the case, as it had felt groundbreaking back when it was released. However, as I continued that playthrough in the days that followed, with each main quest I completed, with each DLC I played, I felt myself eating my words.

DA:O's unevenness definitely shows in this decade. Its visuals, which already weren't great for the PS3 at the time, feel dated and are sometimes hard to make out, and they accompany numerous bugs and performance issues, especially on the console version. The gameplay systems also feature a myriad odd design choices that, among other things, make it shockingly hostile to a new player more in tune with modern gaming experiences, or even to one coming from BioWare's other flagship series at the time, Mass Effect.

In the realm of character development alone, we can see a few of those: between hard to understand equipment mechanics, missable items and upgrades, limited supplies of money and consumables and the inability to respec builds, there are multiple ways one can permanently screw themselves. And then there comes the balance (or lack thereof), with multiple, severe difficulty spikes, confusingly priced shop items and the presence of bugged and/or useless abilities and traits in the skill tree. Add all of that together, and simply saving at a bad time can brick an entire playthrough.

So yes, as of 2024, DA:O is huge pile of jank. My pile of jank, which I absolutely adore, regardless of its age. Having played it so many times way back in 2010, somehow, when playing it again now, I still found new outcomes to explore: the fact that the writers were able to weave such a complex narrative, with so many moving parts and possibilities, and still walk out with something coherent is a real achievement. All those years back, I had also never truly appreciated the nuances of some of the moral choices, like the crowning of a Dwarf King.

The large cast of characters shines, being packed with some truly detestable antagonists: Arl Howe is a despicable human being who, if playing as Human Noble (which, let's face it, you probably are), provides a personal motivation for the Warden character to chase him down. Loghain, on the other hand, is such a layered and complicated character, a foul man who truly, deeply believes to be doing the right thing, and facing him down in the Landsmeet brings chills to my spine every time.

The lovable sidekicks don't leave anything to be desired, either: the canon party of Leliana, Alistair and Morrigan is my favorite, with there being so much chemistry (often of the explosive kind) between the three, but the rest of the cast delivers as well. This was my first exposure to Bioware's writing, its intricate character personalities and settings, and even though, having seen more of their games since, the formula for those interactions is now evident, it does not dim their brilliance, and I still get lost in the dialogue just as much.

"That was uncharacteristically wise of you."
"Yeah, yeah, don't let that get around, I have a reputation."

Having bought the original game near its release, I had never had access to most of the (outrageously expensive) DLC packs, all of which were bundled into the Ultimate Edition. Surprisingly, all of them ranged from mid to bad: I suppose it's hard to make DLC campaigns for a game with such massive scale, where the big picture matters so much, but it's still shocking how short, rushed and uninvolving most of these extra adventures were. The BioWare touch is almost completely lost on them.

Speaking of which, as of 2024, BioWare has been repeatedly gutted by the dreaded publisher, and the future of the Dragon Age series is uncertain, with much of BioWare's original staff gone and Dreadwolf having been stuck in development hell for a while. Without the talent that made the original Dragon Age great, it's hard to see BioWare pushing the envelope again, so maybe, just maybe, they'd be willing to give Origins a Legendary Edition treatment, and polish up some bits in the process? One can only hope.

Warden's Keep adds a singular quest that has the Warden journey to an abandoned Grey Warden fortress and free it from demons. In it, they can potentially acquire a couple of new abilities (of variable usefulness, depending on the Warden's class) as well as the gorgeous Warden Commander armor set and some blood mage equipment. Finally, there's a chest at the keep that allows storing valuable items for later, something that was sorely missing from the base game.

It's a rather simple DLC -- it's fine if you own the Ultimate Edition, as it feels like a fun little sidequest in the middle of nowhere, but as $7 DLC, it's a bit... oof. Even worse when you think about this as a basic game feature (the party chest), as well as one of the nicer looking armor sets, being cut and sold separately.

Shale's DLC pack has a place in gaming history: priced at an outrageous $15 or your regional equivalent, you'd think EA was just using BioWare to gouge people, and, well, you'd be right -- that's been the case since they bought it, in fact -- but in this case, it's not for the reason one might think.

During the PS360 era, when console digital storefronts were still in their infancy and the vast majority of people still bought their games in physical media, stores like GameStop were thriving with their trade-ins and secondhand game sales. This situation led to publishers raising this huge panic around used games claiming that, since profit from the used copy went only to the store, they represented lost sales, were the same as piracy and thus, were killing the industry.

The problem, in their eyes, was the console license management model, or the lack thereof. On the PC, they could rely on serial codes and online activation (which god knows Microsoft tried to push with the XOne) to restrict the resale of games, but console users needed only to insert the disc and play. So how do you nudge users towards buying a new copy of your game instead of a used one? These publishers realized that, while you can't have a serial code for the game, what if you had to use a code for something else?

Enter the online pass, a single-use code included with new copies that enabled your account to use a title's online mode. Bought the game secondhand? Lent your copy to a friend? Lost the voucher, or didn't have one in the first place due to a packaging error? Tough luck, time to shell out for another pass. This anti-consumer practice was widely reviled, but had immense popularity for a time among publishers, who frantically searched for ways to contrive such a voucher so to drive the used copies' value down.

And contrive they did: they looked to purely single-player games, which didn't have an online mode to cut access to. In Dragon Age's case, in a display of total unscrupulousness, EA had BioWare slice away a piece of the game to sell as a $15 DLC, which you could get for free with a code included in new copies. That piece they cut out, as one might guess, is The Stone Prisoner, and that's why this DLC pack is so hard to fully enjoy. Even though I always had it for my playthroughs, it never felt like part of Origins, but instead, like a scam, a piece of the game cut out and generously returned to me.

One can even see the gashes from where they cut Shale off from the main game: the DLC begins with some random merchant showing up and conveniently giving the Grey Warden a golem control rod for no particular reason -- not even asking for a trade, or a quest, or any sort of fair exchange. What follows from there is mostly fine: The quest in Honnleath is, unusually for a DA:O DLC, interesting, and Shale is a fun character. It's true that, in an all-star cast like Origins's, I would probably rank her near the bottom, but she's nevertheless entertaining and an interesting insight into the golems and the history of the dwarves, with extra lines during the Orzammar main quest should you choose to bring her. But then again, wouldn't it have been better had she just been part of the main game, met as part of the Orzammar quest to begin with? The thought never leaves my mind.

Not much to say about this one: it's the exact same as the first iteration but with new scenarios. This one might require a bit more in-depth knowledge than its predecessor, though.