The second GBA Castlevania takes after its parent closely, for better and worse.

By its parent I mean Symphony of the Night, which kicked off the “modern” trend of “Metroidvania” style action-platformers with exploration and RPG mechanics. I praised Circle of the Moon for continuing this trend while not being bound to SotN’s decisions; HoD on the other hand feels like it’s tied itself to SotN and jumped off a bridge.

The corridor-focused level design, shop and item mechanics, 80% of the monster designs, all lifted almost directly. It makes sense when you see this is a return to KCET under Koji Igarashi, and it certainly makes for a stronger game. It just means this blends in a bit more with the rest of the series. Even the protagonist Juste Belmont is basically just Alucard again in appearance for some reason (this would tie in to Legends establishing Alucard as a Belmont progenitor through Sonia, except that Iga has famously derided and ignored that game, partially for misogynist reasons).

Not to say it ignores CotM entirely; the two main characters Juste and his friend Maxim share a similarly tired rivalry-turning-to-antagonism dynamic, and the big new system involves combining elemental spellbooks with subweapons not unlike the DSS. The latter means that hearts are barely used, you’ll likely pick one OP combo and stick with it, and I never liked reliance on subweapons since you’re often trying to avoid a forced swap or endlessly searching for your preference. The former has complications involving Dracula’s relics as seen in CV2, which also ties in to the game’s main gimmick: the two castles.

Aping SotN’s inverted castle with a twist, here we have an illusory castle superimposed precisely over the map of the normal castle. This is a fine idea in theory, but it’s often difficult to distinguish between them, and travelling from one to t’other is convoluted. You can only do it at the scattered portal rooms, except there are also non-swapping warp rooms for some reason…!? It all ends up seeming a bit pointless.

There’s other questionable aspects to the experience. The shop shows up in certain rooms, but only when arcane conditions are met, such as your level or heart count being odd/even, or dependent on you getting a random drop. This is a bad idea. For the most part the game looks great, except for one part that is possibly homaging the NES games and ends up real ugly. And the usual question of balance; since progression is fairly open you can wade through rough patches for ages only to walk all over an early section much later, or miss extremely useful items.

Still, I shouldn’t be too down on it. It’s a very solid SotN-style game, even learning some lessons from it and cutting back on some of the useless mechanics (even as it adds others, like collecting furniture). The detailed animations are back, and a bonus alternate character mode. Getting around the castle, taking on challenging enemies, and powering up your character are all fun and satisfying. A highlight is the double directional dashes, which can be used to get around quickly or aid spacing in combat. And of course it’s a brand new castle with new bosses to experience and master. You could do a lot worse!