Unlike Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow is a much more tightly constructed, wonderfully interconnected world. It plays it a lot safer in a lot of areas which for me acted as a bit of a detriment but it is still a great game.
The soul system is a sick idea but due to it being mainly luck-based, it leads to some areas being a bit more difficult due to not having a specific enemy's ability, and switching between movement abilities on the fly sometimes feels a bit redundant since you have to go to the menu every time, akin to some games on the N64 cough Ocarina of Time cough. The game understands the Metroid formula really well for the most part, usually whenever you obtain a new item or ability there will immediately be an area that will spring to the forefront of your mind where you can use your newfound powerup.
The difficulty for the most part is fine, there's never really a point in the game where you feel overwhelmed excluding sequence breaking and going to an area where you should obviously not be (which I did multiple times on accident). Now when I say for the most part I mean practically all of the game except for the absolutely bullshit fight which is with Death, and holy SHIT is this fight completely unfair, I spent around an hour trying to beat him - which is about 1/6th of how long it took me to complete the game - and that should put everything into perspective.
The story is a story, at least with the regular ending that is so abrupt that it genuinely made me laugh when I first got it, but the true ending is pretty damn cool. The characters all have amazing designs, and the animation is gorgeous but it's Konami so this should be expected. My main gripe is just that the characters aren't too interesting or memorable, and a lot of conversations feel rushed or pointless.
Compared to SotN the soundtrack pales in comparison, where Alucard's journey took pride in beautiful, haunting pieces that were each unique in their own way and extremely memorable, Aria of Sorrow's feels derivative and honestly I can't really remember any of the music.
Overall it's a solid game, textbook Metroidvania - short and fun as hell - but whoever thought the Death fight was balanced, fuck you.
The soul system is a sick idea but due to it being mainly luck-based, it leads to some areas being a bit more difficult due to not having a specific enemy's ability, and switching between movement abilities on the fly sometimes feels a bit redundant since you have to go to the menu every time, akin to some games on the N64 cough Ocarina of Time cough. The game understands the Metroid formula really well for the most part, usually whenever you obtain a new item or ability there will immediately be an area that will spring to the forefront of your mind where you can use your newfound powerup.
The difficulty for the most part is fine, there's never really a point in the game where you feel overwhelmed excluding sequence breaking and going to an area where you should obviously not be (which I did multiple times on accident). Now when I say for the most part I mean practically all of the game except for the absolutely bullshit fight which is with Death, and holy SHIT is this fight completely unfair, I spent around an hour trying to beat him - which is about 1/6th of how long it took me to complete the game - and that should put everything into perspective.
The story is a story, at least with the regular ending that is so abrupt that it genuinely made me laugh when I first got it, but the true ending is pretty damn cool. The characters all have amazing designs, and the animation is gorgeous but it's Konami so this should be expected. My main gripe is just that the characters aren't too interesting or memorable, and a lot of conversations feel rushed or pointless.
Compared to SotN the soundtrack pales in comparison, where Alucard's journey took pride in beautiful, haunting pieces that were each unique in their own way and extremely memorable, Aria of Sorrow's feels derivative and honestly I can't really remember any of the music.
Overall it's a solid game, textbook Metroidvania - short and fun as hell - but whoever thought the Death fight was balanced, fuck you.
PKD2
1 month ago