So, while I know Aria of Sorrow isn't what immediately came after Symphony of the Night I have been drawn to this game for quite some time and felt that after completing the latter game, I would play this.
Aria is honestly a really strange case in that while it does improve aspects from Symphony, most notably the difficulty, it also makes several missteps that result in it being the inferior title.
The game is relatively brisk in its pacing, you will get around the entirety of the castle in much less time than previously which I believe is a good thing. It gives the game a bit more replayability since it's something you can pick up, play and finish within a day.
For the most part level design retains the same level of quality from its predecessors, which does include the long hallways but honestly I've come to just take these as fun parts of the environment. Unlike something like Metroid, this takes place in a castle so it makes sense that there would be more straightforward hallways than on an alien planet.
Soma himself feels good to control, with a very fast walking speed compared to Alucard, but limited in the way of movement options for a decent chunk of the game... and also because of some problematic mechanics.
Let's talk about the Souls. This is a mechanic I think in theory is incredibly cool and interesting. When you kill a monster, you have a chance to obtain their Soul, which grants you different abilities.
For example, let's say you kill an Axe Armor, if you get their Soul, you'll be able to throw axes yourself at the cost of mana.
Of course, you're also limited to three souls for active use at a time, one per classification. Bullet Souls, Guardian Souls, and Enchanted Souls, as well as the additional Ability Souls which are permanent upgrades to Soma's moveset like his Slide and Double Jump.
Where the problem presents itself is in two things.
Firstly, Souls drop from enemies randomly. You are not guaranteed to get an enemies Soul the first time you kill it, or the second time, or the third, or fifth or tenth, or twentieth.
This means you have to grind if there's a specific Soul you want, and you will grind (for reasons I'll get into a bit later) whether you want to or not.
It's a system where while I can appreciate the randomness requiring the player to allocate a Soul to fit the build they're going for, it also just results in a lot of tedium if there's a Soul you desperately need.
Then there's the second issue: Some souls required for map progression... are not made into Ability Souls.
There are souls specifically made for Underwater Travel and instead of being placed in the Ability Souls slots and given the ability to turn them on and off, they are marked as Enchanted Souls. This means that if you already have an Enchanted Soul that you really like using, you have to switch it out every single time you go through one of these sections. This can result in massive stat reduction, and ultimately is just more tedium added to the game that was likely completely unnecessary.
It also results in limiting what the Player will use. For example, near the start of the game, you get the Flying Armor soul, which is a Guardian Soul. It gives you a farther jump distance and a glide. You get other Guardian Souls throughout the game, but if you want to use them, you have to switch out the Flying Armor. Of course, why would you ever want to switch out the ability to glide along with more jump distance and it stacks with your double jump?
The answer is, you wouldn't. Until I got the Giant Bat Upgrade near the tail end of the game which gives Soma perpetual flight for as long as you have mana, I always had the Flying Armor as my Guardian Soul because being able to make long distance jumps is essential in this type of game for the sake of progression.
Returning to the level design though, for the most part it is the same quality as Symphony though I did find several rough patches here and there. Specifically one hallway in the Colosseum area of the game just having one of the largest difficulty spikes I've ever seen. An entire room with spikes, treadmills, Medusa Heads, Valkyries, and a Devil that just feels like a cluster fuck of design, especially with how copy/paste the enemy placement felt... and all it was guarding was a sword weaker than what I had equipped.
The final area also has some really bad enemy placement like a room with 5 succubuses, a Devil Lord, among other enemies just slapped in with no rhyme or reason. The Bat Soul makes it a bit of a non-issue but it is exhausting especially when the game normally has challenging but fair difficulty for the most part throughout.
Bosses are probably what have seen the biggest upgrade from Symphony, as instead of basically being complete jokes, a good chunk of them are decently challenging fights that ask the player to learn their patterns (or Damage Race with Healing Items but that's neither here nor there). Death in particular really kicked my ass when I got to him until I learned how his patterns worked and utilized the slide more efficiently. The normal Final Boss as well was pretty satisfying to figure out, but that's also because you already know how that fight works going into it.
However, the True Final Boss... dear god.
Ok, so from here on we're going into spoiler territory.
=================================================
FUCK CHAOS OH MY FUCKING GOD.
This isn't just about the fight itself, but rather the chore that is getting to it.
Remember when I said that the random Soul drops are something you will do regardless of whether you want to or not. Well, that's because in order to access the True Final Boss and the True Ending of the game, you need 3 specific souls.
Now, the good thing is that the game gives you these tomes that tell you what the Souls are but also not really because it's kind of vague and the patterns are a bit difficult to make out on the GBA. The other good thing is that one of the Souls required, The Giant Bat Soul, is given to you after a boss fight.
The other two Souls though, you gotta grind for em, and let me tell you it is a pain in the ass to grind for Soul drops. For the record, the Souls you need are the Fire Devil and Succubus Souls, the Fire Devil you can find in the Underground Cemetery, and the Succubus can be found on the Top Floor.
After doing that, which can take a decent amount of time, you have to beat the regular final boss with those Souls equipped, which borks your current build. Then, and only then can you go back to the Floating Garden to access a room leading to the Chaotic Realm.
A positive here though is that you get the best boss fight in the game against Julius Belmont, who is one of the coolest characters in this franchise. The fight is intensely challenging but also super fun, basically being a better version of the Richter fight from Symphony which I can appreciate.
After Julius though... it's kind of a downhill slope.
The Final Area is just a greyscaled reuse of every level in the game, including underwater sections that require you to switch your Souls etc. It feels slapped on especially given enemy placement and the like, and it drags on for longer than it honestly should.
Then you get to the Final Boss itself and... it sucks.
Chaos' First Phase is just a visual mess. The boss blends in with the background of the fight which makes it near impossible to tell what is happening and where to hit them at any given point. Of course, you will learn how to adapt to it but it's still a design choice that just seems... plain bad.
Then there's the second phase and if there's any advice I can give to you, it's that you need to make sure you have as many healing items as humanly possible.
The boss takes minimal damage until you destroy all 4 of the eyes surrounding the arena, and at the same time life draining orbs are continuously getting closer and closer to you, while a bone serpent you can't damage weaves all around and shoots an even bigger life draining orb.
Clusterfuck is all I can say to describe the experience, easily the most haphazard Castlevania final boss I've seen so far.
The saddest thing is, I had the twist of Soma's identity spoiled for me by fucking Super Smash Bros. It's still a cool reveal for what it's worth, but I wish I could've been taken by surprise there.
Anyways spoilers over
=================================================
All in all, despite its shortcomings, Aria of Sorrow is still a very engaging time, and very easy to just pick up and play. I would obviously recommend playing Symphony before hand, but still, it's a great time.
Soma Cruz fucking rocks that fit though y'all, like, easily the most fashionable Castlevania protagonist.
Also he has a gun
Aria is honestly a really strange case in that while it does improve aspects from Symphony, most notably the difficulty, it also makes several missteps that result in it being the inferior title.
The game is relatively brisk in its pacing, you will get around the entirety of the castle in much less time than previously which I believe is a good thing. It gives the game a bit more replayability since it's something you can pick up, play and finish within a day.
For the most part level design retains the same level of quality from its predecessors, which does include the long hallways but honestly I've come to just take these as fun parts of the environment. Unlike something like Metroid, this takes place in a castle so it makes sense that there would be more straightforward hallways than on an alien planet.
Soma himself feels good to control, with a very fast walking speed compared to Alucard, but limited in the way of movement options for a decent chunk of the game... and also because of some problematic mechanics.
Let's talk about the Souls. This is a mechanic I think in theory is incredibly cool and interesting. When you kill a monster, you have a chance to obtain their Soul, which grants you different abilities.
For example, let's say you kill an Axe Armor, if you get their Soul, you'll be able to throw axes yourself at the cost of mana.
Of course, you're also limited to three souls for active use at a time, one per classification. Bullet Souls, Guardian Souls, and Enchanted Souls, as well as the additional Ability Souls which are permanent upgrades to Soma's moveset like his Slide and Double Jump.
Where the problem presents itself is in two things.
Firstly, Souls drop from enemies randomly. You are not guaranteed to get an enemies Soul the first time you kill it, or the second time, or the third, or fifth or tenth, or twentieth.
This means you have to grind if there's a specific Soul you want, and you will grind (for reasons I'll get into a bit later) whether you want to or not.
It's a system where while I can appreciate the randomness requiring the player to allocate a Soul to fit the build they're going for, it also just results in a lot of tedium if there's a Soul you desperately need.
Then there's the second issue: Some souls required for map progression... are not made into Ability Souls.
There are souls specifically made for Underwater Travel and instead of being placed in the Ability Souls slots and given the ability to turn them on and off, they are marked as Enchanted Souls. This means that if you already have an Enchanted Soul that you really like using, you have to switch it out every single time you go through one of these sections. This can result in massive stat reduction, and ultimately is just more tedium added to the game that was likely completely unnecessary.
It also results in limiting what the Player will use. For example, near the start of the game, you get the Flying Armor soul, which is a Guardian Soul. It gives you a farther jump distance and a glide. You get other Guardian Souls throughout the game, but if you want to use them, you have to switch out the Flying Armor. Of course, why would you ever want to switch out the ability to glide along with more jump distance and it stacks with your double jump?
The answer is, you wouldn't. Until I got the Giant Bat Upgrade near the tail end of the game which gives Soma perpetual flight for as long as you have mana, I always had the Flying Armor as my Guardian Soul because being able to make long distance jumps is essential in this type of game for the sake of progression.
Returning to the level design though, for the most part it is the same quality as Symphony though I did find several rough patches here and there. Specifically one hallway in the Colosseum area of the game just having one of the largest difficulty spikes I've ever seen. An entire room with spikes, treadmills, Medusa Heads, Valkyries, and a Devil that just feels like a cluster fuck of design, especially with how copy/paste the enemy placement felt... and all it was guarding was a sword weaker than what I had equipped.
The final area also has some really bad enemy placement like a room with 5 succubuses, a Devil Lord, among other enemies just slapped in with no rhyme or reason. The Bat Soul makes it a bit of a non-issue but it is exhausting especially when the game normally has challenging but fair difficulty for the most part throughout.
Bosses are probably what have seen the biggest upgrade from Symphony, as instead of basically being complete jokes, a good chunk of them are decently challenging fights that ask the player to learn their patterns (or Damage Race with Healing Items but that's neither here nor there). Death in particular really kicked my ass when I got to him until I learned how his patterns worked and utilized the slide more efficiently. The normal Final Boss as well was pretty satisfying to figure out, but that's also because you already know how that fight works going into it.
However, the True Final Boss... dear god.
Ok, so from here on we're going into spoiler territory.
=================================================
FUCK CHAOS OH MY FUCKING GOD.
This isn't just about the fight itself, but rather the chore that is getting to it.
Remember when I said that the random Soul drops are something you will do regardless of whether you want to or not. Well, that's because in order to access the True Final Boss and the True Ending of the game, you need 3 specific souls.
Now, the good thing is that the game gives you these tomes that tell you what the Souls are but also not really because it's kind of vague and the patterns are a bit difficult to make out on the GBA. The other good thing is that one of the Souls required, The Giant Bat Soul, is given to you after a boss fight.
The other two Souls though, you gotta grind for em, and let me tell you it is a pain in the ass to grind for Soul drops. For the record, the Souls you need are the Fire Devil and Succubus Souls, the Fire Devil you can find in the Underground Cemetery, and the Succubus can be found on the Top Floor.
After doing that, which can take a decent amount of time, you have to beat the regular final boss with those Souls equipped, which borks your current build. Then, and only then can you go back to the Floating Garden to access a room leading to the Chaotic Realm.
A positive here though is that you get the best boss fight in the game against Julius Belmont, who is one of the coolest characters in this franchise. The fight is intensely challenging but also super fun, basically being a better version of the Richter fight from Symphony which I can appreciate.
After Julius though... it's kind of a downhill slope.
The Final Area is just a greyscaled reuse of every level in the game, including underwater sections that require you to switch your Souls etc. It feels slapped on especially given enemy placement and the like, and it drags on for longer than it honestly should.
Then you get to the Final Boss itself and... it sucks.
Chaos' First Phase is just a visual mess. The boss blends in with the background of the fight which makes it near impossible to tell what is happening and where to hit them at any given point. Of course, you will learn how to adapt to it but it's still a design choice that just seems... plain bad.
Then there's the second phase and if there's any advice I can give to you, it's that you need to make sure you have as many healing items as humanly possible.
The boss takes minimal damage until you destroy all 4 of the eyes surrounding the arena, and at the same time life draining orbs are continuously getting closer and closer to you, while a bone serpent you can't damage weaves all around and shoots an even bigger life draining orb.
Clusterfuck is all I can say to describe the experience, easily the most haphazard Castlevania final boss I've seen so far.
The saddest thing is, I had the twist of Soma's identity spoiled for me by fucking Super Smash Bros. It's still a cool reveal for what it's worth, but I wish I could've been taken by surprise there.
Anyways spoilers over
=================================================
All in all, despite its shortcomings, Aria of Sorrow is still a very engaging time, and very easy to just pick up and play. I would obviously recommend playing Symphony before hand, but still, it's a great time.
Soma Cruz fucking rocks that fit though y'all, like, easily the most fashionable Castlevania protagonist.
Also he has a gun