GuestLog in

Found this on a whim while trying to look up something else, but man am I glad I did. This is an interesting hack to be sure, one that I dove into all of yesterday and finished in a night.

STORY: So in this story, we're playing as Hugh Baldwin of CotM (obviously, lol), but this story tries to be a sequel of sorts to CotM. After the events of that game, Hugh, ever seeking to be stronger than Nathan, now is on a personal mission to acquire the power of the darkness that he was so close to in the first venture. This is honestly the biggest draw of this hack and a lot of the reason that I played so much of it in one sitting. I just had to know what was going to happen with each cutscene! There actually is a good story here, one with several twists that I thought interesting for sure.

GAMEPLAY: You wouldn't think that doing character palette swaps and dialogue reworking would warrant a look at the gameplay, but delightfully enough, the author actually changed up gameplay some. This is primarily still played like Aria of course, but the biggest change is the fact that Hugh's attack is a slash in an arc in front of him mostly akin to the "Swinging" class of weapons Soma uses in the base game. This arc doesn't have the reach of the longswords in the base game, so there's a bit more involved in actually fighting than jump in and start hacking away. There's also a MUCH more significant stretch of time before the "shop" (you'll see when you get to that point) becomes available, so healing items, found in vast quantities where there used to be equipment all over the place originally, isn't as readily replenished before the endgame. Hugh can take a LOT of damage quickly as a result, and the player will have to be more careful than normal.

FUN: YES! 100% yes. The change in story, the slightly altered combat, everything added up to a fun experience that kept me going well past time for me to stop cause I just had to know what was going to come up next. The fact that I wasn't readily tripping over new equipment all the time made the slightly fewer amounts of upgrades feel more exciting. The story, a bit silly in some cases, was fairly compelling and had me wanting to know what exactly was going to happen in the next cutscene. If that isn't a good measure of fun, then I dunno what is!

MY RATING: 9.5/10 Yeah, I'm singing this hack's praises and maybe going a little overboard, but this is MY review! Lol there ARE issues. Hugh's run animation, as the other reviewer put it, is a little sloppy, and the "Graham" boss fight looks like it can be slightly bugged (I only noticed it in the Boss Rush and even then only half the time) where the hands and halo fail to appear, leading to you defeating the boss with no resistance whatsoever. Endgame is also a slight change in that it grows exceptionally easy with the right setup, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing given the storyline. In the end, this is a great time and one I highly recommend giving a try.

Also, I loved the Normal Ending where you fail to prepare properly for the "Graham" boss fight. That one was delightfully silly with how it ended and I LOVED it :P

It has honestly been a while since I have played through Circle of the Moon. But this hack gave me reason to go back and do it all over again. Play through Hugh's tragic story, with all of the various changes in the all around general progression through this game. And then replay it again as NATHAN GRAVES!!! AWESOME!!!

Fans of Castlevania everywhere should check out this hack as it really changes the feel of the attack dynamic and how the story progresses. The quests are NOT the same!

The running animation could use a little more smoothing, but does not really mess with gameplay, especially once you get the Sword Dash.

I would really like to know though how the specifics of the music swaps worked, would've liked to hear Inner Quarters original and swap Chapel instead.

Still, great hack. Made me go back and patch CotM with Hugh Baldwin and CardUp. Well worth my time.