I got the stupid expensive edition of this while it was on sale in November.

Higher difficulties are still impossible to me, I wish there were more characters, I think the pricing model is as ridiculous as gating iconic songs like Zanarkand behind expensive premium editions.

And yet, Final Bar Line is still just addictive as hell and I still love this series as much as ever.

After half playing through this about three times, I've finally seen it through.

Much like other Igavanias, there are sudden wild difficulty spikes that can be fairly offputting. However, I feel like there's a subtle flow to the design of Aria that even SOTN lacks - you always feel effortlessly pushed in the correct direction to progress.

There are some tedious elements regarding getting the correct enemy souls for story reasons, and some puzzles feel very esoteric and unclear. I'd honestly love to see Aria remade with Saturn/PS1 visuals and a better sound chip behind it.

The visuals and crunchy GBA audio are the only major things that let this even slightly down in 2024. Remake this with the luxury of SOTNs visuals, sound, and throw in some hammy voice acting and this would rank even higher among the best.

Went in expecting a probably underwhelming Soulslike experience, but Neowiz understood the homework. The most competent non FromSoft Soulslike I've played.

Visually evokes Bloodborne, mechanically evokes Sekiro. A compelling story and world with well-considered quality of life improvements over even FromSoft's efforts that work to encourage gameplay experimentation without punishing the player.

The final boss has now supplanted Orphan of Kos as the hardest Souls boss I've fought. Took me 4-5 hours of slow mastery to overcome.

I weirdly never clicked with Sekiro but I'm interested to return to it after playing Lies of P - maybe now it'll finally click.