u/EffAllThatEFFER

Big Boss/Naked Snake and Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid). Big Boss is the main villain of the first two games and actions are a catalyst for the whole franchise while his "son" Solid Snake is the series main hero. Insert your "NO! THAT IS NOT SOLID SNAKE!" memes below

Goku, Bardock, Turles, and Goku Black (Dragon Ball). Goku, his Dad, some evil guy who looks a lot like him, and his body possessed by an evil Kai from another universe

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance pretends to be a classic Metroidvania, claiming to offer the freedom to roam through Dracula’s massive castle. But here’s the kicker: it’s ridiculously linear while also giving you zero guidance. It’s like asking you to walk a tightrope, then suddenly turning off the lights and taking away the safety net.

The frustration kicks off with the map itself. While Metroidvanias are known for their interconnectedness (is that even a word?), HoD feels like a design document that went horribly awry. It’s not just the headache-inducing "Castle A and B" mechanic thrown in there because "Hey, you guys liked that in SoTN, right?!"; the layout is fundamentally ridiculous. You’ll waste hours wandering through repetitive corridors and twisted paths, only to be halted by a single, locked door that requires that one specific item to unlock. What is that item and where do you find it?

Fuck you, figure it out on your own and make sure you equip it because if you don’t, it won’t work, even if it’s sitting in your inventory. What item do you need and when do you use it? Just take a wild guess because the game isn’t going to fucking tell you. Other Castlevania titles at least provided some guidance; SoTN bluntly said, "Hey idiot, wear this gear and head to this spot to access the second half of the game." HoD scribbles a complex equation on a whiteboard in a room full of 9-year-olds and genuinely expects them to solve it and explain why 42 is the meaning of life in the margins, then gives you an F for the entire year for not figuring it out.

In a game that's actually designed well, a blocked path is just a little puzzle; here, it’s a solid brick wall that makes half the map completely off-limits. It totally kills the game’s momentum.

The game runs on a rigid, invisible script. You take down a boss and gain a new ability, all set to explore the world, but instead, you’re met with a wall of dead ends. The game expects you to magically know the precise order of events it was designed around, but gives you zero guidance. Suddenly, you’re not playing a gothic action-adventure anymore; you’re stuck in a game of "Where’s Waldo," forced to retrace your steps through the same boring, maze-like corridors to check if you overlooked some random, unremarkable lever or a wall-toggle puzzle that blends in with the background.

In other entries of the series, backtracking is a joy—a chance to flex your movement abilities and rack up XP. Here, navigation is a nightmare. The map is so poorly laid out that moving from point A to point B feels like a chore, and the backtracking feels like a punishment for not being a psychic.

Opening a web browser doesn’t save you, either. The consensus is always, "Just use a guide," but Harmony of Dissonance is so confusing that even the guides feel like shit set up by The Riddler. I’ve sat there with five tabs open; GameFAQs threads from 2003, sprawling maps, and frustrated forum posts, only to find that every answer leads to a new question. You look up how to open a door, only to find you need an item from a different wing, which requires a specific event you supposedly triggered (or didn’t) three hours ago. It is an endless repeat of "do this, to do that, to do the other thing."

This is the most poorly designed game in the entire series. And yes, that includes Adventure and Legends and even Dracula X, which, despite their flaws, managed to accomplish their objectives far better than HOD ever could. I honestly think HoD is the worst Castlevania game out there, even worse than the N64 ones. It’s really frustrating because there’s no solid reason for it to be as bad as it is. Games like '64' were set up to fail from the start, but HoD had every opportunity to succeed and still tripped up at every turn.

This game doesn't feel like an adventure at all; it feels more like I'm stuck doing a shift at a data entry job I never signed up for. It's an absolute disaster of a game that confuses confusion with depth and thinks boredom is challenge. Playing it feels less like a homework assignment that I just throw my hands up at and choose to fail because it's way less hassle.

I beat it last night, making sure I got 100% completion, purely out of spite so that I've already seen everything in the game and have no excuse to ever replay it

I'm playing Rondo of Blood next, fuck it

TL;DR: HoD is Poo