Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Here's a random one. Last year when I got my GBA, I was bored at work and looking around for some highly-rated games to go with it. I stumbled upon a 2-pack of Castlevania games, both supposedly very good, for just 5 bucks on eBay and bought it immediately. I've wanted to get into the series for a while- it heavily follows to format of Metroid games, with one huge sprawling level that requires lots of back-tracking and searching for upgrades. Really the differences here are the gothic theme instead of sci-fi, the use of a whip instead of of a gun, and a bit more story than your typical Metroid. Anyway I opted for Harmony of Dissonance, and honestly there's not much to say about the game. It was fun, sure, but that's because I'm a sucker for games like these. The only thing really of note here is the way the whole map is set up. You start investigating a castle, and stumble upon a few warp points that take you to different parts of the map, but it feels like the two huge parts of the castle you explore never actually connect aside from through warp points- they share walls, but there's no way to physically walk from one to the other. "Whatever" I thought. Eventually, the big reveal is that they are in fact two different castles with the same design, just different enemies and items to be found all over the place. This might sound like a waste of time or needless lengthening, but it really added a lot to the game, jumping back and forth between two different castles filling out both maps. By the time it ended I was close enough that I went for the full 200%, giving me the "completion" status on my backloggery. Overall though, if you don't like Metroid games, don't bother with these ones- I'll probably play a few more, but it doesn't have the "full series" goal that I've given to other more acclaimed series- Zelda, Final Fantasy, and yes even Metroid. And as a teaser, I'm about to jump into another game from one of the aforementioned series. I'll bet you can't wait! But you're going to have to.