History VideoGame / CastlevaniaCircleOfTheMoon

* SaveGameLimits: Save points are well spread-out, and there's no quicksave feature, which makes the possibility of death harrowing since it usually means losing out on several rooms of progress.

* CutscenePowerToTheMax: After Dracula awakens and destroys the ground beneath their feet, Nathan and Hugh drop down a long shaft that should have killed them if not broken every bone in their body, but they land no worse for the wear and continue on as if nothing happened.

* EarlyGameHell: At the beginning of the Thief mode, enemies can kill you in about two or three hits and your attacks are incredibly weak, but as your luck goes up you can easily collect equippable items that more than make up for your reduced stats and max out your healing items. By the end of the game, even the Battle Arena can be easiest to beat in this mode.

** The first portable "{{Metroidvania}}" ''Castlevania'' game, and one of the least friendly ones for playing on the go, due to having no SuspendSave of any sort coupled with save points being sparse and well-distanced, as if the developers thought the game would be played exclusively at home with the GBA plugged into an AC adapter (rechargable batteries for the GBA wouldn't come until the Game Boy Advance SP). Thankfully this lesson would be learned come [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance the next game]].

* FixedDamageAttack: The Diana card gives your whip projectiles, but the strength of their attack is unaffected by leveling up. At first, they are one hit kills for early enemies and the first boss, but by the end of the game, your normal whip attack will inflict more damage then most of them, although they are still very useful.

** Finding the DSS cards is generally difficult, but the final two of each set are especially tricky. The Pluto and Uranus cards requires you to return to certain boss rooms at much later points in the game--when you would have no logical reason to--and defeat a mook that appears to be part of the scenery before it melts away and randomly drops the card. The Unicorn and Black Dog cards are rare drops from enemies far into the [[BrutalBonusLevel Battle Arena]]--an area with abnormally pumped-up enemies whose later rooms you can only get to after completing those before them.

** The matter of getting Gambler Armbands can be tricky. While the Scary Candle and Trick Candle (who drop the Uranus and Pluto Cards) can be dealt with quickly using Venus/Thunderbird, even without a Stopwatch, the Mimic Candle who drops Gambler Armbands has 900 HP and 600 DEF, which is rather stacked for something that disappears after a few seconds. The answer is to use the Stopwatch Item Crush to freeze it wholesale, though with the amount of abuse it can take, in Shooter and Thief modes you'll need 120 Hearts just to kill it once. Things are only more awkward for Fighter, as in spite of Fighter's attack being through the roof, their total lack of DSS Cards means that the Stopwatch Item Crush is out of the question, and at a high enough level (such as Level 48) with as much Strength as can be derived from equipment as possible, it'll take six hits to destroy the thing, which is seemingly out of the question because Nathan attacks more slowly while crouched than while standing. The "Guide Dang It" aspect is remembering that you can slide, and that your slide is both just as powerful as your whip and comes out significantly faster. Thus, by using the Stopwatch before exposing the Mimic Candle, whipping it twice as it falls, three more times when it lands, and closing with a slide kick, it's just barely possible to take it down, possibly even with enough leeway to change to Luck gear before the kick if your level is high enough.

* LevelScaling: As the player progress through the game, enemies are replaced by more powerful enemies to keep up with them.

* ManaShield: The Neptune card combinations heal you if you are hit with an element that it is guarding you against at the cost of MP. However, in the regular mode the amount of restored health is very small, making it more useful for the shielding than the healing.

* MeteorSummoningAttack: One of Dracula's ultimate abilities is to drop a shower of meteors on the protagonist. Given Dracula's own [[OneWingedAngel gigantic form]] limiting your movement options, the only real escape is to activate a [[FeedItWithFire rock-absorbing spell]].
* MinimalistRun: [[InvokedTrope Actually rewarded]]. Opting to play the game without a subweapon limits your options somewhat, but if you get enough hearts to use an Item Crash without one, you perform a long lasting, screen wide attack powerful enough to kill all but a handful of bosses in a single cast. Outside of Magician Mode and glitches, this is a very late-game capability as it costs 100 Hearts to use plus the Pluto card, which is required for the Item Crash DSS combo and drops from an enemy that only spawns after defeating Camilla.

** The Stage 4 and Game Over tunes are from ''VideoGame/SuperCastlevaniaIV''.

* NewGamePlus: Every time you beat the game, [[UnlockableContent you get a new mode]] based from [[FighterMageThief RPG character classes]] that has a set of bonuses. Beating that gets you another, up to five different modes in total:

** Magician - You start with all the DSS cards, but have poor physical stats.

** Unlike ''Symphony'', ''Harmony'', and ''Aria'', this game is far harder and has less forgiving control physics. (You can still [[JumpPhysics steer your jumps]], but don't expect to be pulling [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]-esque acrobatics and mid-air dodging.
** Spread-out save points, lack of an item shop, no AfterBossRecovery that's been there in practically every other game in the series and excess of low-contrast projectiles on dark backgrounds really ups the difficulty. The game itself is also pretty hard even with lighting.

** There are no shops and other than the reward gotten from beating the Battle Arena, no fixed locations where you can find new equipment, so what few items you can get must be farmed from enemies.

* PaddedSumoGameplay: Without enhancements via equipment and DSS combo's, Nathan's whip deals relatively low damage, and even by the end of the game it'll hit for about 50-60 damage without massive amounts of LevelGrinding. Fortunately, sub-weapons can make up for this.

*** The Venus + Griffon DSS spell. Increases intelligence by 25%...which has functionally no use as it resets back to your base if the spell is turned off and drains 4MP/second, and intelligence is only used for MP regen. The ONLY conceivable use it has is to try and regenerate your MP faster if you lack for restorative items and have a safe room to sit for a few moments, though your intelligence needs to first be high enough to offset the 4MP/second drain first and THEN hope the boost is enough to increase your regen rate higher than what it was to begin with. Put simply, unless the game is being played in Magician Mode, this spell will never see any use.
*** Venus + Cockatrice. Gains experience from walking...''WALKING, not RUNNING'', and you only gain 1 point every couple of steps. Would be cool if it weren't for the fact that it takes a lot of experience to gain a single level, and running and jumping restarts the amount of steps you need to take for the gain to kick in again.
*** Jupiter + Cockatrice. Turns you to stone and makes you highly resistant to damage...at the cost of slowing you to even SLOWER than Nathan's usual walking speed and making it so you can barely jump higher than a step. On the plus side, status ailments won't affect Nathan while he's like this.
*** Jupiter + Black Dog. Surrounds you in a black hole that both protects you and drains 1% of your HP like poison does.

*** The Neptune card is either this or extremely handy, but it depends super heavily on knowing what element each enemy belongs to. While some are super obvious (Poison Armor, Earth Demon, etc.), others....aren't (Evil Sword = Poison? Only obvious when in the Battle Arena, where they gain the ability to poison you). Without a LOT of experimentation, you probably won't get a lot of mileage out of the Neptune card.

*** The Black Dog card, probably FAR more than any other card in your available deck. The effort required to get it is hardly worth the mostly mediocre, if not outright useless effects it gives. The only useful effects it gives are the Darkness Whip from Mercury and the Darkness Shield from Neptune. Everything else is either too unwieldy, damages you, makes you weaker defensively, or isn't useful at all.

* SlideAttack: The one special move that you have from the get-go. If your strength is high enough, you can plow through enemies that you'd be able to oneshot anyway. Trying the same on stronger enemies does hurt them, but you will receive CollisionDamage.

* TemporaryPlatform: Before gaining the Roc Feather, you have to relay on crumbling floating platforms in some areas. Ice and Stone weapons can also turn enemies into this, which is required in order to get a few PowerUps.

* WakeUpCallBoss: Cerberus makes up for its weak appearance in ''Symphony'' by setting the standards of high difficulty for the bosses of this game. It is huge, the player can't be careless about its powerful attacks and only by bringing the right subweapon can the player expect to do good, constant damage.

* SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou: The game's cover art features Nathan whipping forward, creating this effect

** Hugh's rant on Nathan's winning all the time not because of his own skill, but because of the whip he has calls back to a similar rant to the protagonist in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam''.

*** Mars + Black Dog. Shoot a gun...that takes a LONG time to draw and even fire. The damage is incredible compared to the other Mars weapons, but only usable if your enemy is standing still and not an immediate threat in the time it takes to draw the weapon. The only potential saving grace, outside of abusing the[[GoodBadBugs DSS combination glitch while summoning with any of the damaging card combinations that Uranus offers]], is that the STR boost ''does'' apply to slide kicking or tackling your enemies.

*** The Pluto card. True, there's quite a few very handy spells available (Item Crush, Exp Gain +20%), most of the spells available are very situational at best, which makes it seem fairly disappointing for the effort necessary to acquire it.

* RandomDrop: Restorative items, equipment, and the DSS Cards all can only be fought when they drop from enemies. In Magician mode, at least, you start with all the cards.
* RareRandomDrop: Thanks to the absurdly low drop rates of items, some of which only drop from one enemy at a rate of less than 1%. Thief mode helps by starting you out with 1600 luck (and jacking it up close to max pretty quick), but considering that takes four playthroughs to get, there's going to inevitably be some item-farming downtime during a given playthrough

*** The Venus + Griffon DSS spell. Increases intelligence by 25%...which has functionally no use as it resets back to your base if the spell is turned off and drains 4MP/second, and intelligence is only used for MP regen. The ONLY conceivable use it has is to try and regenerate your MP faster if you lack for restorative items and have a safe room to sit for a few moments, though your intelligence needs to first be high enough to offset the 4MP/second drain first and THEN hope the boost is enough to increase your regen rate higher than what it was to begin with. Otherwise, this spell will never see any use.

*** Jupiter + Cockatrice. Turns you to stone and makes you highly resistant to damage...at the cost of slowing you to even SLOWER than Nathan's usual walking speed and making it so you can barely jump higher than a step.

*** Mars + Black Dog. Shoot a gun...that takes a LONG time to draw and even fire. The damage is incredible compared to the other Mars weapons, but only usable if your enemy is standing still and not an immediate threat in the time it takes to draw the weapon.

* AntiClimaxBoss: The final room of the Battle Arena contains just a Devil enemy. While it's a very strong enemy, it's only one foe, with attacks that can be avoided, in contrast to the many other rooms in the Arena that feature upwards of half a dozen enemies at once that saturate the area with attacks.

** Sme DSS combinations have effects which don't show up immediately. The simpler DSS combos instantly add elements to your whip or increase your stats, but some other combos only show their uses after you get hit. Worse, some, especially the useful [[SummonMagic summoning]], requires a [[SomeDexterityRequired relatively complex button input]], and the game absolutely doesn't tell you all these until you figure them out.

* GrimyWater: The [[DownTheDrain Underground Waterway]] has purple water that hurts you when you touch it. It can be purified with the proper magic item, or just avoided with extremely judicious [[DoubleJump double jumping]] and enemy-dodging.

* PowerUpLetdown: The Dagger is yet again the weak starter weapon that just gets in the way of progress. Averted once you unlock the Shooter mode, you can make daggers [[HomingProjectile home in on enemies]], which can actually be pretty handy. The Shooter also does more damage with daggers than the other job classes (but they still aren't as powerful as your whip).
** The Venus + Griffon DSS spell. Increases intelligence by 25%...which has functionally no use as it resets back to your base if the spell is turned off and drains 4MP/second, and intelligence is only used for MP regen. The ONLY conceivable use it has is to try and regenerate your MP faster if you lack for restorative items and have a safe room to sit for a few moments, though your intelligence needs to first be high enough to offset the 4MP/second drain first and THEN hope the boost is enough to increase your regen rate higher than what it was to begin with. Otherwise, this spell will never see any use.

* StandardStatusEffects:

** The Game Over tune is from ''VideoGame/SuperCastlevaniaIV''.

** Fighter Mode, unlocked by beating Magician Mode, removes all DSS cards from the game but increases the player's physical strength.

* AnimatedArmor: Thirteen [[UndergroundMonkey varieties]]; the ''Castlevania'' standby Axe armor, one armor for each of the ten elements, and two bonus armors (basically buffed versions of the Holy and Dark elemental armors) in the arena.

* ArrangeMode:

* BackThatLightUp: Basically, playing this on the original GBA is not recommended. Fortunately, just about any other system that plays GBA, from the SP (even the older frontlit SP is an improvement) to the UsefulNotes/{{DS}} Lite, solves this problem.
* BalefulPolymorph: You can turn into a BallisticBone-flinging [[DemBones skeleton]] with a right DSS combination. There's also an item that you can equip with that same DSS combination that can turn you into [[BearsAreBadNews a bear]].
* BlindIdiotTranslation: While Camilla is a real name, it's generally an accepted fact that it's the traditional ''Castlevania'' villain Carmilla who's the primary bad guy.
** In other games in the series, the best armor in the game is called the Shining Armor. In this game, however, it has been misspelled as the Shinning armor.
* BonusDungeon: The Arena; a BrutalBonusLevel filled with EliteMooks and has the game's best armor waiting at the end.
* BoringButPractical: Once you reliably get the boomerang, it'll probably become your most used weapon since it takes high advantage of large enemy-hitboxes.

** The Devil enemy in the observation tower is probably one of this game's best examples. At least the experience matches. Worse yet, [[spoiler:he also appears as the final enemy in the Battle Arena, ''with heavily buffed stats'']].
** The hidden Lilith enemy counts as well, both for difficulty and experience points.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:Hugh's increasingly JerkAss behavior]] is revealed to be manipulation on Camilla's part. [[spoiler:Nathan has to BeatTheCurseOutOfHim in the penultimate boss battle]].
* BrandX: [[WhipItGood The Hunter's Whip]], since only a Belmont can use the Vampire Killer to its potential.
* BroadStrokes: It is debated whether the game is part of IGA's official timeline. IGA, in a 2008 interview with ''Nintendo Power'' magazine (covering ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia]]'') considers this game [[GaidenGame a side story]] and [[CanonDiscontinuity not part of his timeline]], as it's unmentioned on [[http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/dracula/product/data.html the Japanese timeline]] (updated as of 2007's ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaTheDraculaXChronicles The Dracula X Chronicles]]''), though it was shown in the timeline that came with pre-ordered copies of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'', minus the description.

** Unlike all the other Metroidvania games in the series, your default stats for STR, DEF, INT and LUCK start at 100, quickly go up to 4 digits and theoretically max out at 9999[[note]]Though you're not likely to reach that point unless you're playing one of the special modes[[/note]]. In gameplay terms, this doesn't make much of a difference, but due to the way enemy defense works, the damage done to various enemies varies to a ridiculous degree compared to the other games in the series: by the time you're strong enough to beat the game and can do about 100 damage to endgame enemies with a normal attack, you'll do close to 1000-2000 damage to the weakest enemies in the game, when in any other game in the series, it'd probably be closer to 200-300.

* CardsOfPower: Nathan casts magic by combining DSS cards dropped by enemies. One attribute card + one action card grants a specific ability.

* ClippedWingAngel: Halfway through the fight, Death transforms from his typical robed form into something resembling a [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/castlevania/images/8/83/Deatha.gif/revision/latest?cb=20170723164257 gigantic praying mantis.]] While significantly scarier looking and gaining a GroundPound attack, this also brings him down to earth, putting him in range of Nathan's entire arsenal, dramatically increasing your damage output.

* CollapsingCeilingBoss: In a variation to this, one of Iron Golem's attacks will make gears tumble down, since you're fighting him in a clock tower.
* CopyAndPasteEnvironments: Blatantly obvious, at least compared to ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'' that came before and ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance Harmony of Dissonance]]'' that came after. Large stretches of the castle have precious few distinguishing features, giving it a far more repetitive feel more reminiscent of NES {{Metroidvania}}s like ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' or ''VideoGame/BlasterMaster''.
* CraniumRide: You can turn flying eyeballs into stone or ice and use them as platforms.
* CursedWithAwesome: The Cursed Ring. Grants +30 to both Strength and Defense, but a pretty massive penalty of -100 Luck. Under normal circumstances, this is rather significant given that item drops are very rare as it is and likely not really worth the excessive penalty to the one stat that increases it outside of boss battles. However, during Thief mode, by the time you're even able to get a Cursed Ring (first chance is from Beast Demons in Eternal Corridor), you're likely to have over 4000 Luck as it is and gain +160 additional Luck per level. As a result, the penalty is peanuts and worth the significant boost to BOTH Strength and Defense given Thief mode's lacking growth rates in those two stats. The only other items to give near that amount up to this point are the Hard Ring (+50 Defense, -10 to everything else) and the Strength Ring (+50 Strength, -10 to everything else).
* {{Determinator}}: Nathan Graves is not part of a legendary clan -- in fact, he's a vampire hunter still in training who gets bested by his rival time and time again during lessons -- and yet still whups Dracula's ass. That's like a karate student who doesn't even have his black belt yet, going out and beating up Chuck Norris.

* DoubleJump: Though as per Metroidvania rules, you must earn it.
* DualBoss: The [[{{Dracolich}} Zombie Dragons]].

* EarlyGameHell: At the beginning of the Thief mode, enemies can kill you in about 2 or 3 hits and your attacks are incredibly weak, but as your luck goes up you can easily collect equipable items that more than make up for your reduced stats and max out your healing items. By the end of the game, even the Battle Arena can be easiest to beat in this mode.

** The first portable "{{Metroidvania}}" ''CV'' game, and one of the least friendly ones for playing on the go, due to having no SuspendSave of any sort coupled with save points being sparse and well-distanced, as if the developers thought the game would be played exclusively at home with the GBA plugged into an AC adapter[[note]]Rechargable batteries for the GBA wouldn't come until the Game Boy Advance SP[[/note]]. Thankfully this lesson would be learned come [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance the next game]].
** ''Circle'' is also the only portable ''CV'' title without an in-game enemy database, currency and shops to spend it at, and a second quest where you get to play as the main character's rival; these were all features of ''Symphony of the Night'' that became standardized starting with ''Harmony''.
** This game is also among the few where new armor and accessories ONLY affect Nathan's stats. While other games would have items that raise resistance to elements, halve Heart consumption, and so on, those powers are relegated to DSS use. As a result, your inventory will become cluttered with MANY items that are no longer usable simply cause you have an item with superior stat increases.
* ElementalPowers: The DSS allows 10.

* FierySalamander: Salamander DSS card grants you the use of fire element.
* FightingYourFriend: This game has Nathan versus Hugh.
* FixedDamageAttack: The Diana card gives your whip projectiles, but the strength of their attack is unaffected by leveling up. meaning at first, they are one hit kills for early enemies and the first boss, but by the end of the game, your normal whip attack will inflict more damage then most of them, although they are still very useful.
* FrankensteinsMonster: Appears as a common enemy in the Eternal Corridor.
* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: Nathan is no Belmont, and he certainly isn't wielding any Vampire Killer, so naturally one might expect him to have quite the task in taking on Dracula, and he does (see PaddedSumoGameplay and NintendoHard below).

* GottaCatchEmAll: The magic cards.

** Some of the magic cards and secrets. Perhaps most egregiously, the Pluto & Uranus cards requires you return to a certain boss room at a much later point in game- when you would have no logical reason to- and defeat a mook that appears to be part of the scenery. And then hope said mook [[RareRandomDrop actually drops the card]] before it melts away. The Unicorn and Black Dog cards are rare drops from enemies far into the [[MonsterArena Arena]]--an area with abnormally pumped-up enemies whose later rooms you can only get to after completing those before them.
** That is before saying that some DSS combinations have effects which don't show up immediately: The simpler DSS combos instantly add elements to your whip or increase your stats, but some other combos only show their uses after you get hit. Worse, some, especially the uber-useful [[SummonMagic summoning]], requires a [[SomeDexterityRequired relatively complex button input]], and the game absolutely doesn't tell you all these until you figure them out.
** The matter of getting Gambler Armbands can be tricky too. While the Scary Candle and Trick Candle (who drop the Uranus and Pluto Cards) can be dealt with quickly using Venus/Thunderbird, even without a Stopwatch, the Mimic Candle who drops Gambler Armbands has 900 HP and 600 DEF, which is rather stacked for something that disappears after a few seconds. The answer is to use the Stopwatch Item Crush to freeze it wholesale, though with the amount of abuse it can take, in Shooter and Thief modes you'll need 120 Hearts just to kill it once. Things are only more awkward for Fighter, as in spite of Fighter's attack being through the roof, their total lack of DSS Cards means that the Stopwatch Item Crush is out of the question, and at a high enough level (such as Level 48) with as much Strength as can be derived from equipment as possible, it'll take six hits to destroy the thing, which is seemingly out of the question because Nathan attacks more slowly while crouched than while standing. The "Guide Dang It" aspect is remembering that you can slide, and that your slide is both just as powerful as your whip and comes out significantly faster. Thus, by using the Stopwatch before exposing the Mimic Candle, whipping it twice as it falls, three more times when it lands, and closing with a slide kick, it's just barely possible to take it down, possibly even with enough leeway to change to Luck gear before the kick if your level is high enough.
* HarpingOnAboutHarpies: Harpies appears as flying enemies that sometimes shoot their feather all over the place, and they are also used later as [[PaletteSwap palette swaps]] to display succubi and fallen angels.

* InfinityPlusOneSword: Some DSS cards (Unicorn and Black Dog come to mind) and the Shinning Armor you find at the end of the arena.
* InvincibilityPowerUp: Pluto + Unicorm makes you invincible for a fairly long time, but disables your ability to attack for its duration.
* ItsAllUpstairsFromHere: The Machine and Observatory towers have you ascending upwards to the inevitable boss battle.

* JerkAss: Hugh appears frequently throughout the castle, giving Nathan a hard time.
* JokeItem: The Uranus + Black Dog combo summons the Black Dog, who deals [[FourIsDeath four]] damage to everything on screen and heals you for four hit points. It would be mana cost-prohibitive against the very first monsters, but both cards are found near the end of the game in [[GuideDangIt obscure locations.]]
* LethalJokeCharacter: The Pluto + Black Dog combo turns you into [[DemBones a skeleton]] that [[OneHitPointWonder dies in one hit]], [[GlassCannon but its attack can do the most damage in the game]]. And such a hit shows up every 4-6 attacks on average.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: At the start of the game, Magician Mode suffers from doing only does half damage and taking double damage, plus MP and MP recovery aren't high enough to spam DSS attacks. But by the end of the game, you recover MP so quickly you can chain even the strongest Uranus DSS combos until the end of time. Did we mention that you're invinicible while using them?
* LittleHeroBigWar: Nathan is completely unrelated to the Belmont clan or anybody they've ever encountered or intermarried with, and it bears repeating, he does ''not'' wield the Vampire Killer. But that doesn't stop him from doing what he can to help keep Dracula sealed away.
* LuckStat: To go with the [[RandomDrop Random Drops]]. The last NewGamePlus bonus, Thief mode, you earn boosts it through the roof (hitting the {{Cap}} before long) .

* ManaShield: The Neptune card combinations heal you if you are hit with an element that it is guarding you against. However, in the regular mode the amount of restored health is very small, turning the combinations into this trope.
* MercyInvincibility: One of the DSS combinations (Jupiter+Golem) actually interacts with this mechanic, making the invincibility last four times longer.

** The Skeleton Medalist, who will run into a wall as soon as you enter his room. He drops the [[SecretCharacter Bear Ring]].
** [[ChestMonster Masquerading as ordinary candles]], the Scary Candles only give you a brief window of opportunity to destroy them before they dissolve into the floor and disappear. They drop the [[SummonMagic Uranus card.]]
* MeteorSummoningAttack: One of Dracula's ultimate abilities is to drop a shower of meteors on the protagonist. Given Dracula's own [[OneWingedAngel gigantic form]] limiting your movement options, the only real escape is to activate a [[FeedItWithFire rock-absorbing spell.]]
* MinimalistRun: [[InvokedTrope Actually rewarded]], unbeknownst to most players. Opting to play the game without a subweapon limits your options somewhat, but if you get enough hearts to use an Item Crush without one [[note]]100 Hearts, a cost so prohibitive you may think you simply don't have one for a large portion of the game[[/note]], you perform a long lasting, screen wide attack powerful enough to kill all but a handful of bosses in a single cast.

** Honestly, the entire game is a love letter to music from past games. Accompanying the five tracks original to the game, among others, are the intro theme and stage 2 theme from ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines Bloodlines]]'' and final boss theme from ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse Dracula's Curse]]''.
** The Game Over tune is from [[VideoGame/SuperCastlevaniaIV Super Castlevania IV]].
* MythologyUpgrade: Mesopotamian sun god Adramelech appears as a giant, eyeball controlling, ooze gagging goat thing that is locked into a giant pillory.

** Vampire Killer - The standard playthrough
** Magician - You start with all the DSS cards, but have poor physical stats
** Fighter - You have amazing stats, but can never get a single DSS card

** Thief - You get insanely high luck in a game where power is more or less influenced by item drops
%%NewWorldTease

** Unlike ''Symphony, Harmony,'' and ''Aria'', this game is far harder and has less forgiving control physics. (You can still [[JumpPhysics steer your jumps]], but don't expect to be pulling [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]-esque acrobatics and mid-air dodging.
** Spread out save points, lack of an item shop, no AfterBossRecovery that's been there in practically every other game in the series and excess of low-contrast projectiles on dark backgrounds really ups the difficulty. The game itself is also pretty hard even with lighting.
** In addition to the aforementioned lack of shops and high difficulty, items are only found as drops from enemies, from every piece of armor (bar the Shining Armor) to the simplest potion. Unfortunately, items are all pretty rare themselves, so unless one takes time to farm for them, healing is a major issue especially with all the damage you'll be taking in some of the bonus modes. Unless you've farmed plenty of items for a while, a tedious task itself, or have a DSS combo that allows for it, your only reliable source of healing is visiting a save room, requiring you to gauge your ability at all times to know when to retreat and try to heal or push on, and there's no guarantee you'll survive either venture, especially given how far apart each save room is...

** It's not canon.[[note]]Well, not part of Igarashi's canon, anyway.[[/note]]

** There are no shops and other than the reward gotten from beating The Arena, no fixed locations where you can find new equipment so what few items you can get must be farmed from enemies.

** The stat numbers are on a pretty big scale; unlike other games where stats cap at 255, stats here are each in the 2000's at least by the endgame.
** There are no alternate character modes.
** But in place of alternate mode, there are ''four'' NewGamePlus modes, each of which tweak Nathan's stats and abilities. In other games, the most you get is choosing a difficulty level and your level cap rather than being offered new play styles for the same character.
* OfCorsetsSexy: Carmilla's top looks to be one as well.

** Death (more like ClippedWingAngel) and also Camilla (who does this without you fighting her normal form).
** Necromancer does it too, turning himself into a flying skeletal demon.
* OrbitingParticleShield: There's an entire subset of shield powers with many variations on this.

* PaddedSumoGameplay: One reason this game takes awhile to beat is the fact that, without enhancements (ie, magic), your whip deals ''crap'' for damage, and even by the end of the game it'll hit for about 50-60 damage without massive amounts of LevelGrinding. Fortunately you have the boomerang.
* PermanentlyMissableContent: One of Nathan's DSS Spells can summon a long-lasting storm of rapid homing projectiles, but only if you never got a subweapon during the game (you can't take them off).

* PetalPower: Several of the [[GreenThumb Mandragora]] based spells involve attacking with flower petals.

* PoorPredictableRock: The Underground Waterway is one of, if not THE most obnoxious areas in the game... unless you have the Neptune+Serpent combo, which grants you immunity to ice attacks that most enemies in there use and makes the place nearly harmless. The difficulty comes from the Neptune card dropping from Ice Armors, which are primarily found in... the Underground Waterway.

* RandomDrop: The items ''and'' the DSS Cards, the latter of which is the mutant lovechild of this and GuideDangIt. In Magician mode, at least, you start with all the cards.
* RareRandomDrop: Thanks to the absurdly low drop rates of items, some of which only drop from one enemy at a rate of <1%. Thief mode helps by starting you out with 1600 luck (and jacking it up close to max pretty quick), but considering that takes four playthroughs to get...

* RegeneratingHealth: One of the spells allows you to heal gradually, but you have to stand still for it to work.

* TheRival: Hugh. Also a [[spoiler:RivalTurnedEvil, thanks to Dracula's influence.]]
* SaveGameLimits: Save points are well spread-out, and there's no quicksave feature. And ''this is a game for a portable system.''
* SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou: [[http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/File:Cotm-na.jpg Nathan Graves is about to whip you!]]
* SequenceBreaking: You can skip the fights with Death and the Zombie Dragons. Once you kill Adramelech, you can access the [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer Underground Waterway]], although the water is poisonous until you get an item from Death. If you know the path through it and some good reflexes (or abuse the [[InvincibilityPowerUp Pluto + Unicorn combo]]), you can make it through to the save point before Camilla relatively unharmed.
* SequentialBoss: Averted in that while Dracula has two forms the second is in a different room and you are free to go save and heal before you follow him there, unlike most games in the series. Played straight with other bosses in the game, though, like Death.

** A ''very'' well hidden easter egg gives a shoutout to an obscure UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}} fighter called ''Rakuga Kids''[[note]]This makes more sense when you consider that ''Circle of the Moon'' was made by the same dev team, Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe[[/note]]. In a secret room hidden ''within'' a secret room, itself pretty difficult to find, there is a unique enemy, who will immediately run away from you before you can fight it. Figure out how to catch and kill it, and ,if you're very lucky, it will drop a Bear Ring. This item has no ostensible purpose other than lowering all of your stats by 100 when equipped. However, if you equip the ring and then use the Pluto+Black Dog combo that normally turns you in the aforementioned skeleton (and getting either of those cards is a GuideDangIt in itself), you instead will turn you into a strange green bear with a cannon on its head and its ass that shoots bear-shaped rockets out of the cannons and can drop bombs. It is a lot more agile than the skeleton, and can DoubleJump, but still dies in 1 hit. The bear, called Beartank, was one of the fighters in ''Rakuga Kids''.

* [[SpellBlade Spell Whip]]: The Mercury DSS card imbues your whip with the element of whichever card it's paired with, causing it to deal elemental damage and changing its attack range.

** Freeze is the same as Petrify, except that you cannot break free manually, but rather wait until you thaw out. Small wonder why those Ice Demons were such demonic spiders.

* SummonMagic: Uranus card, generally regarded as the best card in the game. Too bad [[SomeDexterityRequired some dexterity is required]] to use it, and they [[GuideDangIt don't tell you how it works]].

** Using the Jupiter and Cockatrice combination turns you into a statue with low mobility, but immunity to status effects and virtually impossible to knock down.

** Poisonous worms, Poison Armors and other poison enemies are purple, fitting the game's focus on [[ElementalPowers different elemental traits]].

** Interestingly enough, antidotes are also represented by a bottle filled with purple liquid.
* TemporaryPlatform: Before gaining the High Jump, you have to relay on crumbling floating platforms in some areas. Ice and Stone weapons can also turn enemies into this, which is required in order to get a few PowerUps.

* TurnsRed: [[spoiler:Hugh]], who halfway through the battle, turns on the power of evil and gets an extra skill for each of the sub weapons.

** The [[BossInMookClothing Devil]] is found in only two places in the game - a side room in the Observation Tower, and [[spoiler: the final room of the Battle Arena]]. And ''thank Christ for that!''
** The Nightmare enemy and her [[PaletteSwap palette-swapped counterparts]] each only appear ''once'' in the entire game, and only in side areas that you have to go out of your way to reach.

* WallJump: The magic item that you receive after defeating Golem allows you to do this, enabling you to proceed.
* WhereItAllBegan: At the very start of the game, your character is dropped into the Abyss while standing in front of the door to Dracula's inner sanctum. The entire rest of the game is a quest to get the key to that same door, behind which is the final encounter with Dracula.

* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: You need to find a powerup in order to ''run''. Even though you were seen running in the opening sequence.
** Also, you're somehow able to smash boulders by slamming into them ''before'' being able to push wooden crates.

* AnimatedArmor: Thirteen [[UndergroundMonkey varieties]]; the ''Castlevania'' standby Axe armor, one armor for each of the ten elements, and two bonus armors (basically buffed versions of the Holy and Dark elemental armors) Collection's.

As of October 2014, you can now pick up the game on the UsefulNotes/WiiU as a Virtual Console title in all regions.

* AnimatedArmor: Thirteen [[UndergroundMonkey varieties]]; the ''Castlevania'' standby Axe armor, one armor for each of the ten elements, and two bonus armors (basically buffed versions of the Holy and Dark elemental armors) in the arena.

** A ''very'' well hidden easter egg gives a shoutout to an obscure UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}} fighter called ''Rakuga Kids''. In a secret room hidden ''within'' a secret room, itself pretty difficult to find, there is a unique enemy, who will immediately run away from you before you can fight it. Figure out how to catch and kill it, and ,if you're very lucky, it will drop a Bear Ring. This item has no ostensible purpose other than lowering all of your stats by 100 when equipped. However, if you equip the ring and then use the Pluto+Black Dog combo that normally turns you in the aforementioned skeleton (and getting either of those cards is a GuideDangIt in itself), you instead will turn you into a strange green bear with a cannon on its head and its ass that shoots bear-shaped rockets out of the cannons and can drop bombs. It is a lot more agile than the skeleton, and can DoubleJump, but still dies in 1 hit. The bear, called Beartank, was one of the fighters in ''Rakuga Kids''.

** In other games in the series, the best armor in the game is called the Shining Armor. In this game, however, it has been misspelled as the *Shinning armor.*

The game caught some flak upon release for allegedly having graphics so dark and poorly-defined that it was nearly impossible to see what was going on on the screen. In fact, this was the fault of the non-backlit Game Boy Advance, for which ''Circle of the Moon'' was a launch title. Later improvements of the hardware have dispelled these criticisms, but it explains the uncharacteristically bright and colorful graphics in the later ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance Harmony of Dissonance]]''. Those critics who could play the game, however, had generally positive things to say.