Game - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, my beefs with it

Circle of the Moon is still a cool ass game. I've been playing it on the WiiU gamepad over the last week or so while I'm *watching* TV with my wife. She got to watch Housewives, Biggest Loser, and Forever, while I was grinding levels in Castlevania to beat the latest boss. So I've been going through the game, and one thing I have to say is that it is fairly obtuse about some of its deeper mechanics. So we have the DSS(Dual Set-Up) system, certain enemies have a chance of dropping specific "cards". We have 2 kinds of cards, Action Cards and Attribute Card, you need at least one of each in order to activate the system, each 2 card combo has its own effect from having a fire whip, to getting a defense bonus based off the % of the map you've uncovered. There are 10 of each card soo....(math happening)...there are 100 different DSS effects you can use if you have all the cards. The small thing that I like about it, as you get new cards and are able to do more combinations, it doesn't tell you upfront what each combination does till you do it. You get a good feeling of discovery, the game is kind of telling you, "even we don't know what this does", then you activate it and try it out, from then on in the menu it lists the effect.

The thing I've found I don't like is that it in no way lets you know what enemies can drop cards, I've gone through 75-80% of the game and I had 7 out of the 20. and could make 12 combos. I feel I'm leveled pretty well for that game, but it scales crazy hard, and I've heard some of the magic effects you can get are devastating, equivalent to summons that obliterate the map...at best I got an electric whip. So I'm at a boss character that is supposed to be kind of like an evil version of me, and he starts out pretty simple, jumping, attacking, using the usual Castlevania weapons (axes, crosses etc) then eventually he starts using these big magic attacks. Even though I could get away from him and heal myself, which I did 2 times, once he started using the high level attacks I had no chance. It just left me feeling like I wasn't playing the game correctly. So I used a wiki on the cards and started going card by card, finding exactly what enemies drop them, and killing them over and over till I got it. I was also using all my equipment that increased my Luck Stat so I had a better chance at getting the drop, but that makes not nearly as powerful as you need to be just to kill enemies as fast as is necessary. So if you didn't know what enemies dropped cards, you wouldn't know to increase your luck stat in order to get the card. And its not like there are 40 enemies and 20 of them drop cards. There are 121 different enemies, each of them only appear in certain places, some that drop cards are common enemies but most are not. Now previously I mentioned how I liked that it didn't tell you upfront what each combo did, and for 90% of them that works great. But had one Action Card, and could use the combo to figure out what it did, I found that you have to use a special button combination to use the ability after you turn the DSS system On, but unless you know the combination you might never see it or use it, its a combo you would never normally use in the game! This kind of drove me insane.

I still like the game a lot and its very deep and very rewarding when you make progress, just a couple issues I found that annoyed me a bit. I'm interested in Game Design and playing this game I can kind of see small ways that those issues could be addressed. There is a button on the controller that is only used once you get a specific item, and only works in when your character is jumping or in the air. They could have that button combination removed and use the extra button on the controller when you are on the ground. As far as indicating what enemies have the chance of dropping a card. Maybe make all the ones that can drop look like they have a status effect or slight shimmer to them, and once you get the card from that enemy type, they just look normal. Just some thoughts on how to make a good 13yo game, better. Like I said I still really like the game, and I'm gonna finish it out, but those things bothered me. Actually while writing about them it made me slightly angrier about them the more I thought about it.