Uploaded July 2018 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago

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Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA 1992 Konami)

Run Time: 1h19m39s
Run Skill Level: Manageable

This game is broken.

This run is glitchless. It's up for debate whether that should include the damage glitch for the Crushing Stone, but you would end up having to go out of your way to purposely restrict yourself from using it if you plan on using the most optimal strategies.
The way the glitch works is if an enemy takes damage from 3 different sources, the 3rd source will deal damage every frame (with the exception of the Legion bosses, who handle damage differently).
I discovered this on my own with the very first boss I got to use it on (Maxim, who starts the fight invincible, thus giving you time to charge your attack). So how Konami left it in is beyond me.
The other glitches break the game entirely by allowing you to break the game by entering rooms and sections of the castle that you weren't supposed to yet. This game really was held together with duct tape. Those glitches aren't used here.

As far as subweapons go, the Bible Book is the real star of the show. The attack that you get from all 3 of the books that were collected in this run, there really is no situation that can't be handled efficiently.
The Holy Water is really useful in the beginning of the game and should be considered the disc one nuke, and the cross is somewhere in between.
It could be up for debate as to whether you can skip the cross and just pick up the book instead. The cross is very useful for travel, but you can possibly get more damage out of the bosses using the book.
Either way, you'll want to grab the Wind Book if you want to make things easier.

I went out of my way to grab a few extra things. This is a walkthrough first, so these extra pickups are to be used to guide a new player to the game. However, a lot of the pick ups can be skipped.
The biggest skip if you're feeling bold is not fighting the Devil to get the night goggles. They don't even really do much anyway.
The Giant Bat can be skipped until the end, but it has to be fought in order to lower the draw bridge. It's really stupid that the game gives you absolutely no indicator of this. I feel like it's better to fight until the end, as the Bat has 400 HP. You can only hit it 3 times before it becomes invulnerable for a few moments, and you're only hitting for around 10-11 HP at the time. So the fight is immensely slow.
In theory, if you fight the Giant Bat at the beginning, it's possible that you don't have to fight Talos later, but I don't think I can recommend that. Just stick to my route for now.

Played on BizHawk 2.2.2 with a 4xBRZ shader