Rounding off my adventure through the Japanese versions of the GBA Casltevania games by playing this also on my Japanese Wii U's Virtual Console, with its very cool Japanese title "Concerto of Midnight Sun". I've always like this game better than CotM, and while I still do after this playthrough, I don't think it's by quite as large a margin as it used to be. It took me around 7 or 8 hours and I got the best ending.
Where Circle of the Moon was handled by another team, Harmony of Dissonance put Igarashi back in the driver's seat (where he would stay until the last Metroid-y Castlevania game was released), and it really shows. Where CotM kinda plays like a refutation to Symphony of the Night's design in many ways, HoD feels more like a refinement by necessity. They obviously couldn't put something of SotN's scale and visual quality on the GBA, so they took the elements from that game that were most key to the experience and made an experience that, while still feeling like a more simplified version of the experience, feels far closer than SotN than the NES Castlevanias.
The narrative is similar to CotM, but the presentation and dialogue feels closer to SotN. It's once again a story about two friends who come to take down Dracula and save someone they care about but who Dracula manipulates to drive apart, but there's a bit more dialogue in this. Not THAT much more, but Juste and Maxim have a more interesting (albeit slightly) dynamic than Nathan and Hugh, and Death makes for a much better supporting villain in this than Camilla did in CotM. It's really nothing special either way, but I felt it worth mentioning here. I could definitely understand if some people feel that after this point the series becomes a bit long in tooth in terms of how much story it puts into the games, but I like how games after this (especially Soma Cruz's games) take the lore in weird places rather than treading over the same ground over and over.
The biggest reason I like this game over CotM is the controls. No double-tapping to run, the whip goes off a bit faster, and they added dashing back into the game. And not just back-dashing, but forward-dashing as well, with L to dash left and R to dash right. It makes going through the castle way faster, and allows you to maneuver much easier in boss fights. That said, I do have a couple of tiny complaints compared to CotM. First, Nathan (in CotM) has a little bit more play control over his jumps than Juste does, as Juste really commits to a jump once he makes it and you often can't change direction mid-air. The second would be that you ALWAYS get knocked back from a hit in HoD, where in CotM if the damage is minimal enough, it doesn't break your stride.
Presentation-wise, this feels far more like SotN than CotM. HoD's music isn't as good as CotM, as it opts for more original tracks than remixes of old tracks, but that's really the only place where it falters. CotM almost looks like a GBC game on a GBA at times, and that is far from the case with HoD. The game runs way better, Juste has a lot more frames of animation (his movement is SO Alucard it's almost comical) as do all the enemies. Sprites are also much more detailed and the enemy variety is also higher. There are also a lot more bosses in this game, some even entirely optional (in a SotN-kind of way), and although a fair few are very easy, the game itself is far from a cake walk if you don't take time to utilize your front and back-dashes correctly.
The only real criticism I have on this game design-wise is the castle. The gimmick of this game is that the castle has a front-half and a back-half (not unlike SotN's two castles, but these ones are just different versions of the same areas, not upside down). The overall castle designs are much better than CotM's corridors upon corridors, and areas feel different to traverse in a way that's interesting to go through. It's a good thing they're interesting to go through as well, because this castle has no warp system the way the other Metroid-y Castlevanias do. There are a couple one-way warp points between a spot in Castle A and a spot in Castle B as well as several spots to change between the same point in both castles, but no castle-wide warp system exists. This can make back-tracking for collectibles a real pain in the ass, even if the addition of the frontwards dash does make traversal a little bit faster. The game also has one or two really poor bits of signposting, especially one where it is not at all obvious that a certain item is in fact a key, but only if you equip it.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. There are certainly better Casltevania games to occupy your time with, but this one is a fine entry. It's not really innovating anything particularly interesting, and it shows its early place in the series pretty easily with its rougher bits of design. That said, it still plays really well and has some great boss fights and visual design, so if you're in the mood for some Metroid-y Castlevania, this is one that isn't too hard to enjoy.
Where Circle of the Moon was handled by another team, Harmony of Dissonance put Igarashi back in the driver's seat (where he would stay until the last Metroid-y Castlevania game was released), and it really shows. Where CotM kinda plays like a refutation to Symphony of the Night's design in many ways, HoD feels more like a refinement by necessity. They obviously couldn't put something of SotN's scale and visual quality on the GBA, so they took the elements from that game that were most key to the experience and made an experience that, while still feeling like a more simplified version of the experience, feels far closer than SotN than the NES Castlevanias.
The narrative is similar to CotM, but the presentation and dialogue feels closer to SotN. It's once again a story about two friends who come to take down Dracula and save someone they care about but who Dracula manipulates to drive apart, but there's a bit more dialogue in this. Not THAT much more, but Juste and Maxim have a more interesting (albeit slightly) dynamic than Nathan and Hugh, and Death makes for a much better supporting villain in this than Camilla did in CotM. It's really nothing special either way, but I felt it worth mentioning here. I could definitely understand if some people feel that after this point the series becomes a bit long in tooth in terms of how much story it puts into the games, but I like how games after this (especially Soma Cruz's games) take the lore in weird places rather than treading over the same ground over and over.
The biggest reason I like this game over CotM is the controls. No double-tapping to run, the whip goes off a bit faster, and they added dashing back into the game. And not just back-dashing, but forward-dashing as well, with L to dash left and R to dash right. It makes going through the castle way faster, and allows you to maneuver much easier in boss fights. That said, I do have a couple of tiny complaints compared to CotM. First, Nathan (in CotM) has a little bit more play control over his jumps than Juste does, as Juste really commits to a jump once he makes it and you often can't change direction mid-air. The second would be that you ALWAYS get knocked back from a hit in HoD, where in CotM if the damage is minimal enough, it doesn't break your stride.
Presentation-wise, this feels far more like SotN than CotM. HoD's music isn't as good as CotM, as it opts for more original tracks than remixes of old tracks, but that's really the only place where it falters. CotM almost looks like a GBC game on a GBA at times, and that is far from the case with HoD. The game runs way better, Juste has a lot more frames of animation (his movement is SO Alucard it's almost comical) as do all the enemies. Sprites are also much more detailed and the enemy variety is also higher. There are also a lot more bosses in this game, some even entirely optional (in a SotN-kind of way), and although a fair few are very easy, the game itself is far from a cake walk if you don't take time to utilize your front and back-dashes correctly.
The only real criticism I have on this game design-wise is the castle. The gimmick of this game is that the castle has a front-half and a back-half (not unlike SotN's two castles, but these ones are just different versions of the same areas, not upside down). The overall castle designs are much better than CotM's corridors upon corridors, and areas feel different to traverse in a way that's interesting to go through. It's a good thing they're interesting to go through as well, because this castle has no warp system the way the other Metroid-y Castlevanias do. There are a couple one-way warp points between a spot in Castle A and a spot in Castle B as well as several spots to change between the same point in both castles, but no castle-wide warp system exists. This can make back-tracking for collectibles a real pain in the ass, even if the addition of the frontwards dash does make traversal a little bit faster. The game also has one or two really poor bits of signposting, especially one where it is not at all obvious that a certain item is in fact a key, but only if you equip it.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. There are certainly better Casltevania games to occupy your time with, but this one is a fine entry. It's not really innovating anything particularly interesting, and it shows its early place in the series pretty easily with its rougher bits of design. That said, it still plays really well and has some great boss fights and visual design, so if you're in the mood for some Metroid-y Castlevania, this is one that isn't too hard to enjoy.