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Thank you very much to whoever made this excellent hack. I had never finished this game 100% without cheating due to the difficulty in the arena and also in the fight against Dracula, the idea of ​​placing cards on the map without having to wait for the enemies to drop was brilliant.

I don't see how people are complaining about the healing when this game ends on the worst gauntlet the series has ever seen. If you can beat the 7 Minotaur room in the arena without a full heal worth of items, you probably don't need a romhack for this game in the first place! An uncomfortable amount of the game is putting down the GBA while mana refills so I can heal by standing still, and that's WITH healing items to spare. The drop rate getting kicked up really just helps to move things along better.

The more natural ability progression is great in a game with upgrades that are so boring otherwise, having to do the arena for the last one maybe kind of sucks... again that arena is AWFUL, genuinely bad and the healing items DON'T trivialize it for the average human unless you go out of your way to grind out a full inventory. The idea of missing out on what is a very important part of your character kit compared to an armor or weapon drop because they're random really put me off of trying the game, and it's still not great with this hack, but it's DEFINITELY better, I'd say.

Ah, this game... perhaps considering by many (even Konami themselves) as a sort of black sheep, I always felt the ill reputation was undeserved. It has good music, graphics and animation considering its age, as well as an interesting system for abilities, combining card pairs for varied magical effects, called DSS (dual setup system).

That said, the way such cards were acquired (through enemy drops) as well as their insanely low drop rates meant that the player had to either stop and grind specific enemies for cards (not to mention knowing what to go for would require looking up guides, which meant emergent play gets thrown out of the window) or, without card grind, meant the player would end up not making the most out of the system and just rely on the trusty whip for most of the game, which made the system moot.

What this hack does is treat DSS system cards that enable powers as other Metroidvania entries in the series treat movement relics - you find specific cards in specific places as unique items - this emphasizes exploration and allows the player to have a true sense of discovery and progression that feels a lot more natural and rewarding. It is honestly how the game should have shipped originally.

As mentioned in other reviews, the drop frequency of potions and meat is way too high. More than half the time you whip a skeleton it'll drop a healing item.

That said, the rest of the hack is great and the premise of having cards placed in specific spots instead of randomization is nice and makes you think of the game differently as you're getting cards a lot more frequently, as well as routing things out for future playthroughs. For new players, guaranteed cards allow players to experiment with card combinations that you rarely ever would in a regular playthrough due to how rare some of those card drops are.

As much as I love how this hack plays, the altered drop rates get annoying quick and removes a lot of the challenge unless you try to arbitrarily restrict yourself from using healing items.

I would absolutely recommend this hack if this issue was fixed.

The cards becoming collectables within the map was a great change and has been noted by several other reviews. Unfortunately the creator decided to step outside the scope of simply changing the card drop system and added an unrelated change of significantly increased health drops. In the original COTM there was a bit of a gray area where you could opportunistically grind for potions/meat and increasingly negate difficulty, if you preferred the challenge and did not want to potion chug you could simply play normally and accumulate a non overpowered stock of health items. In this patch I always had enough meat to tank every single boss, the burdern of challenge now fell on me because playing normally and using the items I had gained realistically negated all challenge. This change should have been put in a separate difficulty patch IMO.

Circle of the Moon has one of my favorite mechanics out of all the Castlevania games, but card grinding quickly makes the game hard to replay. This mod, hack, patch, "third party DLC", whichever term you use for it, this one makes it a thousand times less obnoxious. The placement of the Uranus card is far too unreasonable, however, and the fact that the combinations still don't tell the player their effects until they find out what they do through trial and error, but all in all I would 100% recommend using this hack.

Overall some fantastic work, that is all negated by locking the Uranus card behind a challenge that is not at all fun to complete. Most people will never get to enjoy it now.

I don't think I'd be able to every collect all the DSS cards in the original game, but thankfully this hack negates that problem.....with one major exception. Finding cards organically is great stuff, as it removes any frustration or disappointment that comes with grinding for cards. And the meat drops are a nice touch, as it makes some boss fights less hard when you can heal more often. The only issue I have with this hack, one that others have mentioned, is that the Uranus card is locked behind completion of the Battle Arena, an area so difficult and unfair that obtaining the card without cheats is almost impossible for most players. This is a big issue for a lot of people, and I can understand why. The suggestion to put the Uranus card right before Dracula is one I wholly support in this scenario. The cherry on top of that would be simplifying the familiar summons method that comes with the Uranus card's powers, and everything about this hack would be perfect. But as it stands now, this hack (especially when combined with the Auto-Run hack) is still much appreciated.

This hack didn't just make the game more fun, it also made it more fair!

First, the idea of placing cards around the castle is absolutely amazing. The long hours (Yes, the game can actually do that to you, and not give you the card for the whole hour) of trying to grind for those cards are over. Now the process of collecting them is really fun, and you really have to look out for the secret rooms.

Second, the game is more fair now. Because the cards are now placed around the castle the enemies now drop other items like armor or potions. This is a great help, because the game doesn't have a shop of any kind, so getting the only way to get items is to grind too. With this improvement you have greater chance to get more useful items.

This hack is a phenomenal improvement, and I recommend it to everybody who played the original.

Decided to replay CotM recently and got to the end without any grinding whatsoever. Well, turns out that I forgot about the final form of Drac and how summons are practically necessary to hit it. I just couldn't be bothered to grind at the endgame for cards after having a mostly enjoyable replay without 2/3 of them.

This is the mod that I should have installed before even thinking about playing again. Within 10 minutes of starting a new game, I already had found like 3 cards and had some basic DSS abilities ready to use. As opposed to not receiving any cards due to poor drop rate until about an hour into my other replay, this mod already seems to fix some fundamental flaws of the base game. I also really appreciated that the card locations in this mod were a mix of basic, accessible locations, as well as replacing some of the copious, secret, MP+ hidden items with cards instead. This mod is such an improvement I had to stop myself from replaying the whole game again immediately!

Originally grinding the cards was way too much of a pain, and some of them could become harder to get (after Adramelech, for one) due to monsters getting replaced, others had insanely low drop rate, and there were some exclusive to the Battle Arena that could be missed out permanently. So, this does fixes the major issue of dealing with RNG to get the card, but there are a few things that could have been done in addition to it, to further improve the DSS:

First is having the DSS combos automatically identified. Sure, one can use the codebreaker "42025688 0101" and "00000063 0001" to have that be done automatically, but there's no reason the DSS effects should be hidden to begin, specially when there's the off chance of being locked out of its reveal if you 100% the map and decide to try them out.

Second is making Venus+Griffin use less MP (down it from 4/second to 2/second or 1/second?), to make it "Increases INT" effect actually useful, because as is there is no point in using it since INT is mostly useful for MP regen.

Third would be making the Battle Arena lose its MP drain effect. Because having to rely on an exploit to use cards for a second (usually to summon) is not fun at all, and the area is already hard enough even if you somehow are able to use MP.

All in all, great hack for a great game.

I really liked the hack because it gives the player a sense of progression but damn, why the heck did you put the Uranus card at the end of the Battle Arena, of all places? Just put it before Dracula or something if you think it's too OP lol Also a documentation explaining where it's each card could be handy too, for those who don't just want to complete the game without having to do 100% of the map.

This hack, is undeniably awesome. It effectively makes the game a more enjoyable experience.

Gone's the tiring grinding for cards and the off feeling that separates the game from other Metroidvanias. Very close to being the perfect way to play the game.

But, there's a glaring issue that GREATLY bothers me, and I'm sure that many of you who have played it knows what I'm talking about... Where's the Uranus card!?

For some sadistic reason, he decided to replace the Shining Armor all the way at the end of the Battle Arena with the Uranus card, but clearing that place was supposed to be optional, it was made to be an optional difficult challenge... And it's really, really hard for average players to get to the end of it.

Originally, you would have to go to the arena to grind the Devil Armor and White Armor to get the Unicorn and Black Dog card, but you didn't have to finish it all the way to the end, like it became necessary to do in this hack.

It would have been nice to keep the Shining Armor at the end of the arena instead of the card, that way, people would find the place just like an optional ultimate challenge of the game, because logically, you will need to be at a much higher level to finish all 17 rooms than you do even to beat the game.

Which means that beating the game having all the cards now becomes incredibly difficult to do so, it really makes the grinding for the cards in the vanilla version seem so much tolerable.

And it's a shame really, making the coolest card in the game so hard to get just kinda pisses me off.

That's my only problem with this great hack.

I'm really grateful to the creator of this patch, I loved this game but hated the grinding necessary to get all the cards. Having to instead explore for them is much better game design overall, and anyone who disliked the game should give it a second chance with this patch. The way the cards were hidden feels very natural as well, working well with the pacing. My only concern is where the Uranus card is, since I've completed the game and this was the only one I couldn't find, even checking online to find where all the secret rooms are. Unless it's far in the arena, the only place I haven't completely explored, it seems to be too well hidden to find in this patch, and unfortunately I can't check online for help where it's hidden.

Also, I'd love to see a card randomizer made with this patch. It would be so great for replayability to have the cards that appear at every location be different each time people play it.

I like this system better than the original. Although game progression is still generally slow. Once the game is beaten, shooter, and thief modes are awesome. But the warrior and mage modes leave nothing for you to acquire.

Still, an all around great hack, that I wouldn't mind playing again.

Thanks alot.

This is outstanding. It makes the game a lot more enjoyable as it creates a much better, living sense of progression as you get new cards. Whereas originally you had to look up a guide to know which enemies to tediously grind for, this mod removes that issue completely and I believe it addresses the game's main flaw. This change also makes it match other Metroidvanias more as you are finding new attacks to use as you explore naturally, and some of the cards are even hidden in secret walls to boot. The way the cards are spread out is also pretty much perfect and match your current progress, as you won't be getting cards that you wouldn't be able to at that point in the original game.

Overall a definite improvement to the original and pretty much how the game should be played. Exploring for cards is infinitely better than tedious enemy grind.

Playing through this while finding the cards, it makes things feel slightly different and better accessibility when it comes to collecting these for traversing through the castle. Don't need to farm for them anymore!

Simple change makes this worthwhile on playing through it. Nicely done :)

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Now if we can just get a full blown CotM editor lol :D