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Castlevania Circle of the Moon and Portrait of Ruin are one of my favorite Metroidvania from the Castlevania series but I know that not many like Circle of The Moon so putting the two together is amazing and a lot of fun Nathan who is one of my favorite Castlevania characters I finally got his second chance on Nintendo DS, beat Portrait of Ruin for the first time with this hack Strengths: Character sprites straight from Castlevania Fighter Music from other DS games in the Castlevania series and some remixes were great (like the Awake, ClockWork and Vampire Killer remixes from Circle of The Moon) The story is still Portrait of Ruin, but with amazing role swaps and references and still fitting into the original Timeline, almost like it's an alternate universe where Circle of The Moon is canon New weapons etc. Negative points: Artistic style (drawings aren't bad, but they don't match Portrait's artistic style). I highly recommend this hack if you like Circle and Portrait a lot!

First things first, I'll say I previously played the Rondo Of Ruin hack for Portrait Of Ruin, which I had some mixed feelings about, but was a fairly entertaining hack overall that I enjoyed progressing through, although I found some parts quite rough. I was a bit skeptical over Circle Of The Realm which at first I thought was just going to be more of the same.

Actually ended up really surprising me. The quality of the new character custom portraits aside, I really liked what was done with both Nathan and Hugh working together, the duo truly feel very powerful, befitting of their status as veterans. Hugh in particular felt like a proper Warrior/Mage hybrid that executes both roles exceptionally well. Neither character felt particularly weaker than the other, if anything, both felt outright busted to me and I love it.

Although if I have one nitpick with the balancing, I think the gun weapons on Nathan are way too good, especially with their ability to pierce though multiple enemies and even through walls. Hugh on the other hand I had more fun with his weapon variety on top of his spell casting. I got way more mileage out of his offensive spells than I would normally with Charlotte in the normal game, being able to cast in mid-air is a huge game changer. Really dig that both characters get access to Maxim's goodies straight out of Harmony as well, Nathan with his insane Shuriken, and Hugh with Maxim's Sword. There's just a ton of variety in how you can play both characters, and it really hits the sweet spot.

I also really enjoyed many of the new music remixes taken from Circle Of The Moon and other Classic Castlevania titles, and I like that the level layouts weren't absolutely crazy like Rondo of Ruin's, although some I felt were a bit too crowded with huge mobs resulting in some minor slowdown.

Finally, some of the new dialogue had me cackling, particularly Nathan making a threat to put the vampires into a grave, befitting of his family name. That had me rolling. Love it. However there were a few errors here and there, as well as descriptions of items like Cursed Robe that read "Second Paragraph" below its initial description. The script's comedy has some charm to it in the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish, highly recommend this hack if you are looking for some quick goofs. It's not a particularly challenging hack compared to Rondo Of Ruin, and it's much easier than the original Portrait Of Ruin in the long run. The Whip's memory was pretty frustrating, more so than the original games fight since far as I could tell, there's no worthwhile weakness to net actual big damage numbers, so relying on more unconventional abilities to score damage like familiars began to look like an attractive approach to the fight.

Overall, very solid hack and I like it a lot.

I recently DL'd this hack, and it was very interesting from the beginning. The dialogue could use some tweaking, but that's not too bad. However, the hack is limited to the first two painting worlds, because the Hard Stone relic doesn't work properly. That needs immediate fixing, or no one will ever complete the game. Other relics may also be suffering this bug, but I can't be sure yet, as I haven't been able to collect them all. The first two levels were well designed, and were straightforward in completion.

Edit: I had to cheat a little, but I finished the game. AFAIK, there was only the one bug. Either that, or I needed the Ally Push Relic to move the stuff outlined in green. Game was fun, if hard. Still recommended, because of fun value.

To make it clear, surely there are bad points about this hack: the art is really weird, would deserve the same "copy and paste" attention from the menu portraits, and the dialogues are just placeholder elements. I don't care that much about the text, it is a Castlevania game without some elaborate plot, but that piece of art is totally unneeded.

To keep going on the bad points, there is something that really deserves attention, assuming it is not intentional: the player always get stuck under the Clock Tower blocks! I even had to replay the original game to make sure nothing changed, but in the original game you can still slide trough the spikes, while in the hack it is "stuckdoom", only healed trough pressing X, in a really timed pace (just smash it), or using a "magical ticket".

Another point of minor annoyance is the way some backgrounds are changed, just had them compared against the original version, many things are really weird, like the "desert stages" transparency.

Now for the neutral point worthy mentioning, the characters share most equipment in the game, while in the original game there is clearly a division between Jonathan and Charlotte. Bad, good, the fact is that it makes the run faster for newcomers.

I like the new moves, like the "sliding jump", however I didn't like the "Griffon Wing" removal at all, it doesn't make the game harder or anything like that, but the relic weighs in for convenience. You can still make most parts just by jumping over the enemies.

The weapon skill mastery balance is... COMPLETELY UNBALANCED! I don't know, there isn't anything "must have" over useless stuff, it is just something to make you use the weapons more, in a couple of bears.

The really good parts, after all, are the "Circle of the Moon" additions, it could have been more, even more to make the bad parts fade away, that is where this hack excels and this is why I still recommend it, making for the initial nostalgia and smashing trough the hard block ahead of annoyances.

It would do good if more enemies had been replaced by some CoTM counterpart, and its bosses filled the Hall of Judgement to make up for even more enjoyment.

Circle of the Realm is the second full rom hack we've had of Portrait of ruin, and I have mixed feelings about it.

Personally, I'm in it for the gameplay and I found it to be very enjoyable, going as far as to beat it on hard mode as well. It's another metroidvania with a fresh take on the mobility portions of the game.

The music is fantastic. Personally, I'm caught between the Top Floor Remix and The Vampire Killer mix as they were both excellent tracks. There's others I'm sure I'm forgetting but the music choices for the mood of each section of the castle/paintings was superb.

Now for the bad...

I have no idea what is up with the portraits but please get a spriter or something. The art style is jarring and inconsistent within the Castlevania universe and honestly reminds me of MS paint (no offense). I understand someone took the time to make them but even a digitized portrait would have been preferable. Furthermore, the grammatical errors and odd story don't help out much.

I'm conflicted. The gameplay is fantastic. New "level" designs, new weapons, sounds, etc.. that makes the progression enjoyable. The RPG aspect is superb. I'm simply taken aback by the aforementioned art style and grammatical errors.

Overall, this hack is definitely worth it, as the critiques I've mentioned are more cosmetic than anything else. If you're just looking for a metroidvania to sink your teeth into or like the RPG portion, COTR is for you.

So this isn't to say its a bad hack, more of a recommend once its been polished some more.

The music is fantastic, the subtle changes are also great, the characters play wonderfully, just like all the other reviews say.

But I can't excuse shoddy text. Myriad linguistic issues, poor semantics, a very poorly paced exchange of dialogue, all of it just KILLS the pacing for the game. Maybe I'm not the target demographic for this, but when you put this up next to the Aria of Dissonance/Juste Belmont hack for Dawn of Sorrow, this one looks amateur and extremely cheap by comparison. Which is such a shame because this hack has so much going for it in the gameplay department.

I don't think the art is as jarring as suggested in some of the reviews, but then again, nobody mentioned the language issues getting to them like they have for me, so take it with a pinch of salt.

If you're only interested in the gameplay, then by all means, considering this a hearty recommend. But if you want to play this as a complete experience, I'd say wait it out because the language issues just make me want to stop playing with how disruptive they are in the overall experience.

After this mod has been released a few days ago, I'm interested to give it a try. The result are AMAZING. As Castlevania fans, this mod bring back my memories when I was playing Circle of the Moon. You can only play as Nathan on there, but in this mod, you can play both with Nathan and Hugh as well.

Unlike Rondo of Ruin, this mod somehow very enjoyable, even for Newcomers who hadn't ever tried the original game before. Although the developer said if some emulator doesn't work, at least both my No$GBA (PC) and FreeDS (Android phone) emulator works well. :D

One of elements that I love the most is music. "Sinking Old Sanctuary" is my favorite one. Every time I'm entering Great Stairway (Circle of the Moon version) or Nation of Fools (Legacy of Darkness version), I'm always listening it with full smile.

Custom enemies are great. My personal favorite is Blue Armor Lord (Golem).

I know most players were complaining about character's portrait when dialog box shows up. But I'm not. I like your drawings and their expression xD

About the weapons, I think there are some weapons which need to rebalance. All gun weapons are too over powered, and the Gergoth Laser thing, seriously. I could destroy anything (even Dracula) less than 10 seconds with it. It breaks the game, and makes the boss battle way too easy. Maybe you need to remove them in the next update? I got it from Ruler Sword.

Speaking of the negative elements, there is one thing that I must point out. And unfortunately, I was one of the sucker that fell victim to it. I write it here so anyone else don't get pranked too.

I don't know if most of player love "treasure hunting" by killing any type of enemies repeatedly until they drop their items. But I love doing it. And after completing this game for a few days, defeating Dracula, and save the game, I'm start to checking the enemy list. And how shocked I am when I just realized if there is one enemy whose the items still haven't been unlocked yet. And that enemy is.......

POISON WORM !!!

Well, you may think, why you don't just go to Forgotten City and kill it again? Here is the problem : Unlike most enemies in the game, the worm can only be encountered ONCE. And once it dies, it never respawn again. So if you're displaying the map and didn't press select button to switch to the enemy stats display, most likely you will miss the item dropped by the worm. Normally, if you kill it and the items hasn't dropped yet, the only thing you can do is by suspending the game and repeat the process again. But once again, only if you realized that the worm had secret items because in original game, the worm didn't have any droppable items. However, if you managed to kill it, move to the next area, forget about suspending the game, AND SAVE THE GAME AFTERWARDS, the item will lost permanently and you must start all over from beginning again :(

This hack is super good. The new sprites for enemies, weapons, and Nathan & Hugh are cool and charming, as well as the dialogue. The new portraits for the characters show the creativity to solving a problem with making a hack that I appreciate. All of the weapons are interesting, if not a little broken. Hugh's spells are insanely powerful and being able to cast them in the air is a godsend. The subtle changes seen in most of the stage design keep the game feeling fresh, without going overboard. The soundtrack and sound design in general sound amazing, with the remixed songs from CotM sound like Konami themselves made them for the DS. The voices are surprisingly good and cleverly implemented, as Nathan uses Soma voicelines from Castlevania HoD. Hugh's voicelines sound really good as well, making his spells that much cooler. The Judgement Tower area is one of my favorite designs of a "Nest of Evil" stage. A slight issue I ran into while playing would be some rooms and all save rooms cause crazy slowdown. The best example being the "Eternal Corridor" section. While looking cool, this section causes my computer to start chugging. These performance issues could very well be a personal computer issue, though. This rom hack is definitely up there as one of the best Castlevania PoR hacks out there, especially impressive knowing that the version I played was the first public version. I highly recommend this mod, and can't wait to see the development of this hack as more and more patches come out.