Glitches and Fun Facts
The Warp Glitch: In this day and age, who would want to spend any amount of time with his or her $50 investment when you could instead kill off the middle man and skip right to the end? For such people, who waste no time getting straight to the point, is Circle of the Moon's "warp glitch," which can be pulled off using the DSS card combo of Golem and Apollo. In utilizing this glitch, you can quickly skip over large portions of the game or, for those masterful, directly to very last battle with Dracula. The move can be performed in any area where two rooms are connected via a vertical divide (as seen in the following screenshots, to start).
To pull it off, equip the Golem and Apollo card combo (using the "Free DSS Powers" trick if you must) and activate it right as you're passing through the divide so that move executes as soon as you enter the next room. If done correctly, the out-of-sight Nathan will be "warped" to an alternate, seemingly random location as viewed from his new position on its ceiling. Your escape from this predicament is dependent on the ceiling having some type of opening; the alternative, which is inadvisable, is to run Nathan to the end of a screen and drop down behind a wall, behind which he'll become permanently stuck. In the most extreme case, as mentioned above and as the result of the glitch being used as shown in the screenshots, Nathan will be warped to a glitched-out Ceremonial Room, where with some fancy maneuvering he can work his way through the door and into Dracula's domain much sooner than expected. (This glitch was sent in by Amar Youkai.)
Gone But Not Forgotten: Every now and then, something gets past game testers and remains as a residue of poor design. In the Underground Warehouse, we can take advantage of one such instance. In a room with grizzlies and archdemons (which is found one door down from the top of a vertical passage guarded by succubuses), there's a door that exits to the left. By simply pressing the jump button, you can have Nathan jump through the overpass that rests above and arrive at one of two places: Over the door and right off the map, or to the very top of the room, where you can walk on the ceiling. In the latter scenario, you can get back into the room by falling through the overpass; you can super jump your way out of the former to arrive at room's top, but by then things will become so glitched that you won't be able to fall back into the room. (Contributed by Delition Hikari.)
Can't Stop the Rock: Circle of the Moon may be Metroid-like in nature, but it doesn't take too kindly to the genre's brand of sequence breaking. Specifically, your mission will become unsalvageable if you find and defeat Camilla before attempting to take on the Iron Golem, who as a result won't appear in his Clock Tower chamber; rather, you'll be greeted by only a pair of Trick Candles, and the right door will remain permanently sealed. Your only recourse will be to reset the game and reload your save file--assuming you didn't save after beating Camilla. (Contributed by CVFan25.)
Battle for Eternity: It's normally the case that you have to exit the Battle Arena after you procure the prize that awaits you at its end. You don't really have a say in the matter: The door that grants you access to this final room permanently slams closed once you pass through it. However, reader Dusk Raven has found a way to glitch past this door and reenter the Battle Arena, wherein you'll be free to roam about as you please without restriction. Start by putting a fair bit of distance between Nathan and the exit chute in the prize room's left side; then slide toward the chute and try to work it so that Nathan exits the room but doesn't drop out of the shoot following the screen's transition. If you work it to where Nathan remains wedged in the chute, you can turn and slide right to reenter the Battle Arena, whose monster-filled innards will now be yours to roam at your leisure.