I gave Circle of the Moon another try on Castlevania Advance Collection.
It’s still a bad game. Had to rewatch the intro multiple times, with no option to skip it, since the very first save point is placed badly, and I died multiple times looking for it.
The level design is obnoxious, with those “wells” that you have to jump from platform to platform, instead of a more serpentine multi-floor designs of some of the later installements. What puzzles me, though, is that the earlier Symphony of the Night got the design right, though!
Then there’s the drop rate… The main feature of the game is that you can combine two types of cards in order to imbue your whip with different powers, which gives you about 64 different options. Sounds great! And the nice thing about the Advance Collection version is that there’s an indicator if an enemy can drop the card, and if you already have it or not. But I spent probably half an hour farming for a very basic card, killing axe armor maybe 100 times, and I still haven’t got it. You know what, this simply doesn’t worth it.