As soon as your adventure will start, you will be
provided with a very good reason to enter the Castle where the evil
Dracula awaits...
...run like hell and you might have a chance to make
it.
This Castlevania chapter borrows heavily from Symphony
of the Night and this is certainly a good thing!
Elevators are here to assist the laziest of the players,
even in this digital world!
This area is one of the most impressive as you will
witness a marvelous Mode 7 effect in the form of clouds zooming at high
speed towords you
This screenshot
should give you a good idea of the graphics you will find in Concerto
of Midnight Sun
Some new assaliants will make their appearance and
they will require you to use the dash button to avoid their attacks!
Jeust room. To embellish it, look in the deepest recesses
of the castle for a variety of items!
The teleport system is back again
for the great happiness of us all
Review-Castlevania Concerto of the Midnight Sun (better known as White Night Concerto) marks the return of Dracula to the GBA realm. For the first time, the name Castlevania has been used for the Japanese version of the game. According to Konami, the name Dracula has been dropped and Castlevania has been adopted because it is possible that future Castlevania releases won't necessarly rotate around the Legend of the Transylvanian Count anymore. This should ensure more variety and freedom in the development of the saga.
Graphically, Konami achieved unimaginable peaks of excellence this time. The different wings of the Castle feature some very nicely drawn backgrounds, rich in colors, details and variety. Also, there seem to be a greater variety of enemies and the main character sports an impressive amount of frames of animations.
Ayami Kojima's art is exquisite as usual
Moreover, the graphics are brighter this time around, so it won't be a pain to play the game on the small screen. Luckily, I had the chance to play the game on the "GBA de" so I could savour the graphics in all of their resplendent colors on the big screen!
Unfortunately,the music has been somewhat sacrificed.The quality is low, much lower than that of Castlevania COTM. Still there are a couple of catchy little tunes that save the music from being completly irritating .
Gameplay has generally been overhauled. Jeust is fast as he can quickly cover through dashing (shoulder buttons) the huge areas of the Castle. Backtracking becomes less tedious now. New skills are aquired by collecting certain items and spells / summons are aquired through the finding of books scattered throughout the Castle.
Finally, I think that Castlevania White Night Concerto is certainly headed in the right direction but it is still a step away from the quintessence of Castlevania gaming which is Symphony of the Night (which came out 5 years before it!).
Bottom line: a rather impressive Castlevania game and one of my favorite games in nintendo's GameBoy Advance catalogue...8/10
from retro to modern gaming 
