Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002. Developed and published by Konami, the title was produced by Koji Igarashi (IGA), producer of the 1997 PlayStation hit, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Most recently, the title was released for modern platforms and PC within the Castlevania Advance Collection. As such, I decided to take a trip down memory lane to recall how I felt about this game, now 17 years on from conquering it for the first time.
IGA and his team set out to replicate the success of Symphony of the Night on Nintendo’s handheld. As such, you’ll notice callbacks like Juste Belmont’s blatant design based on Symphony‘s protagonist, Alucard. The title also features a dual-castle system akin to the former’s Inverted Castle. But since IGA did not work on 2001’s Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, this was his attempt to continue the series’ timeline using his previous experience.