After what I’d consider to be one of the worst of the handheld Castlevania games was released, one could potentially assume that the series would begin to go downhill, with seemingly showing the potential to just begin rehashing the same concept time and time again. Despite this possibility, what actually happened is that Aria of Sorrow kicked off what I consider to be the golden age of Castlevania, starting off with on of the absolute best games in the series. This is the game that rally nailed what made SOTN such a beloved game but made sure that Aria of Sorrow actually had its own identity to go along with it, feeling like a proper evolution of the established formula.
The most obvious changes to this come from the protagonist, Soma Cruz himself, marking a rare time in which the player is in control of someone who’s not a vampire hunter. This narrative difference manages to find its way into the actual gameplay as well, with a big defining feature of this game being the soul mechanic, where the player has the chance of absorbing the power of an enemy after killing it, giving you a unique benefit for each enemy type in the game, leading to a grand total of 110 souls one can obtain. These range from equippable stat bonuses, to powerful magic attacks, to some that have a more niche use, such as being able to swap the HP and MP of certain enemies to be able to immediately defeat them, making for quite a varied player experience that encourages experimentation and provides value for each new type of enemy that you find. Furthermore, the way Soma controls is my personal favourite from any of the games, having the potential attack speed of Alucard, but with far more variety in weapons, with a variety of speeds and attack arcs. This provides the game with more replayability as well, and rewards getting to grips with the movement of the game excellently, making the light weapons far quicker once the player can get the timing down for proper end lag cancellation, giving an experience similar to that of SOTN where the player is constantly improving. I am also a big fan of the heavier overhead weapons as well, simply because it means that the variety makes a larger percentage of the available weapons in the game useful, compared to the very low amount of useful equipment you found in SOTN.
Talking about useful equipment, I feel that the exploration in this game is extremely rewarding compared to any other game so far, with different builds being more viable due to the fact that magic and standard weapons are both largely balanced, allowing for more of the rewards you get from exploring and running into dead ends to feel worth your time. Navigating the castle in general just feels very intuitive in general though, to be fair, with the abilities you obtain throughout the castle often being closely situated by some sort of path you can now access, either allowing for further progress, or acting as a shortcut/teleporter location. At no point in the game does the next key progression point feel out of the way or tedious to walk to, without making the castle feel particularly small or linear either, making backtracking and getting completely lost a very rare occurrence. I can’t really speak too much for the difficulty of this game however, mostly because I’ve beaten it 5 or 6 times over the last couple of years and have basically mastered most of it at this point, although there were still parts that I ended up getting caught off guard by due to getting overconfident, so the game clearly is punishing to some degree, especially when careless. The way the game handles its true ending is absolutely amazing to me as well, with the extra content added past the point in which you’d get the regular ending only being about 30 minutes longer, but being consistently climactic and intense, feeling like a suitable way to cap off the game, rather than tacking on far too much additional content that ends up feeling lazy and boring. I love how the player has to explore to be able to get the information required to clue them in that there’s some big secret to the game, especially with one of the 3 books to tell you what you need being shown out of reach early on in the game, each book telling you of a particular soul to equip for an initially mysterious purpose, leading the player on a trip through the castle to uncover a variety of areas that require some more involved platforming or clever soul use in order to get through, giving the player a final sort of test before the ending section of the game truly begins, making the journey feel all the more significant and giving the game a difficulty curve rather than spiking after beating the fake final boss.
Overall, this is definitely one of the best games in the series in my eyes, polishing the game’s formula excellently while giving it its own unique spin and identity, making it stand out quite nicely, especially given the fact that the game itself is very well put together and fun to play in its own right. The soul mechanic, while completely luck based, is still a system I really love for the variety it brings forth to the game, with there being enough enemies you’ll be slashing your way through that you’ll undoubtedly be able to pick up quite a few without even having to consider grinding at all, giving the game a bit of variance if you end up wanting to play through this multiple times. This is the Castlevania formula at its most tightly designed and refined without a doubt, and the fact that it combined this with some extremely well executed new ideas pushes this forth to become one of the best entries in the entire series.
The most obvious changes to this come from the protagonist, Soma Cruz himself, marking a rare time in which the player is in control of someone who’s not a vampire hunter. This narrative difference manages to find its way into the actual gameplay as well, with a big defining feature of this game being the soul mechanic, where the player has the chance of absorbing the power of an enemy after killing it, giving you a unique benefit for each enemy type in the game, leading to a grand total of 110 souls one can obtain. These range from equippable stat bonuses, to powerful magic attacks, to some that have a more niche use, such as being able to swap the HP and MP of certain enemies to be able to immediately defeat them, making for quite a varied player experience that encourages experimentation and provides value for each new type of enemy that you find. Furthermore, the way Soma controls is my personal favourite from any of the games, having the potential attack speed of Alucard, but with far more variety in weapons, with a variety of speeds and attack arcs. This provides the game with more replayability as well, and rewards getting to grips with the movement of the game excellently, making the light weapons far quicker once the player can get the timing down for proper end lag cancellation, giving an experience similar to that of SOTN where the player is constantly improving. I am also a big fan of the heavier overhead weapons as well, simply because it means that the variety makes a larger percentage of the available weapons in the game useful, compared to the very low amount of useful equipment you found in SOTN.
Talking about useful equipment, I feel that the exploration in this game is extremely rewarding compared to any other game so far, with different builds being more viable due to the fact that magic and standard weapons are both largely balanced, allowing for more of the rewards you get from exploring and running into dead ends to feel worth your time. Navigating the castle in general just feels very intuitive in general though, to be fair, with the abilities you obtain throughout the castle often being closely situated by some sort of path you can now access, either allowing for further progress, or acting as a shortcut/teleporter location. At no point in the game does the next key progression point feel out of the way or tedious to walk to, without making the castle feel particularly small or linear either, making backtracking and getting completely lost a very rare occurrence. I can’t really speak too much for the difficulty of this game however, mostly because I’ve beaten it 5 or 6 times over the last couple of years and have basically mastered most of it at this point, although there were still parts that I ended up getting caught off guard by due to getting overconfident, so the game clearly is punishing to some degree, especially when careless. The way the game handles its true ending is absolutely amazing to me as well, with the extra content added past the point in which you’d get the regular ending only being about 30 minutes longer, but being consistently climactic and intense, feeling like a suitable way to cap off the game, rather than tacking on far too much additional content that ends up feeling lazy and boring. I love how the player has to explore to be able to get the information required to clue them in that there’s some big secret to the game, especially with one of the 3 books to tell you what you need being shown out of reach early on in the game, each book telling you of a particular soul to equip for an initially mysterious purpose, leading the player on a trip through the castle to uncover a variety of areas that require some more involved platforming or clever soul use in order to get through, giving the player a final sort of test before the ending section of the game truly begins, making the journey feel all the more significant and giving the game a difficulty curve rather than spiking after beating the fake final boss.
Overall, this is definitely one of the best games in the series in my eyes, polishing the game’s formula excellently while giving it its own unique spin and identity, making it stand out quite nicely, especially given the fact that the game itself is very well put together and fun to play in its own right. The soul mechanic, while completely luck based, is still a system I really love for the variety it brings forth to the game, with there being enough enemies you’ll be slashing your way through that you’ll undoubtedly be able to pick up quite a few without even having to consider grinding at all, giving the game a bit of variance if you end up wanting to play through this multiple times. This is the Castlevania formula at its most tightly designed and refined without a doubt, and the fact that it combined this with some extremely well executed new ideas pushes this forth to become one of the best entries in the entire series.