I have no attachment or personal feelings towards the Castlevania series. I appreciate these games from a historical perspective but I never really spent much time with them outside of playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for a few hours as a kid (it was a pretty random purchase at the time).
I’ve been eyeing a bunch of various older (mostly 2D) games recently and decided to buy Castlevania Advance Collection to finally give the series a proper try - it was on sale and fit the criteria so why not?

I was a bit worried about getting into Castlevania as many of the games (especially the early ones) look like they wouldn’t really be up my alley in terms of gameplay and controls. That may as well be true, as I said, I never really played the series, but going with the Advance Collection turned out to be a good choice - even if I needed a moment to get used to how to play “properly”.
While I’m still in the middle of my playthrough, I can safely say that Circle of the Moon is pretty great. It plays amazingly well, looks and sounds fantastic - it’s a genuinely fun title and that’s not always a given when going back to old classics.

It might be one of my favourite “new” titles I’ve tried this year. I can’t wait to get back to it.

This is my… second attempt at playing this, I think? This time with a more “no pressure” attitude though it didn’t help much to be honest.

Game runs and looks beautifully on the Deck - stable performance, no technical issues (except for a single crash), great image quality. Can’t say I’m a fan of the art style (stylised LEGO blocks mixed with more “realistic” environments) but I don’t hate it enough to make it a problem.
Gameplay and story presentation on the other hand… I’m not gonna lie, this title puts me to sleep (literally). Both elements are well made but they also feel extremely flavourless and plain. “Inoffensive”, maybe? I somehow managed to finish year 1 and have zero desire to go back for now - I might have to try playing it in chunks instead of normally.

It’s not a bad game but it’s sooooo boring - enough so to make me wish I was playing the old Harry Potter and The Sorcerers Stone instead.

Ah Rayman… it’s a series I like even though, if I think about it, I didn’t really play much of it. I played Rayman 2 as a kid but only finished it a few years ago, tried (but never finished) 3 a bunch of times, spent some time with Jungle Run and dabbed a tiny bit with Origins - suffice to say, my attachment is more emotional or memory based rather than having to do with my actual experience with this franchise. It’s weird.

For years, Rayman 3 has become something of a “cool game I want to go back to and finally complete”. Well, I did just that.

I initially tried to play with the “Better Rayman 3” mod but something about its widescreen fix broke both the pre-rendered cutscenes and UI so I opted into using Ray3Fix and playing in 4:3 instead. It worked well enough though I can’t say it was worth it.

R3 is a pure downgrade from the second game. Camera control is more finicky, constantly shifting between full control, static placement and a weird in-between with partial control. It’s also physically constrained by the level geometry which makes it feel even more stiff and constricting, especially in smaller environments (which there are quite a few of). I’m genuinely not sure there’s another game where I fought the camera this much, even though I’m pretty sure R2 had a very similar system (it’s been a while since I played that one but I know it wasn’t this painful).
Gameplay feels worse than R2, with enemy lock-on often aiming at a completely different enemy (or even direction) than you intend to, unimaginative level design and pretty boring enemies (including bosses). It’s not all bad (there are some decent sections here and there) but it’s not enough to elevate the experience into something enjoyable. Finally, there’s writing. Oh boy, the writing. It leans way bit too much into the snarky and edgy “attitude” era as if it was afraid to commit to itself and play things straight. This makes it feel very dated and, in my case, difficult to sit through. After finishing the whole thing I can’t say it was worth it.

It’s a mediocre title and a bad sequel, I’m glad I can scratch it off my backlog but I won’t be coming back.