(A super huge thank you to the super cool iv1632 for helping me decipher this wonderful romhack during later stages of it)
This is a pretty interesting reinterpretation of a game that I really adore. “Reinterpretation” doesn’t fully do it justice though, this is a complete overhaul of the original Aria’s map along with some QoL changes that are incredibly welcome. Aria is a game with a castle that fully takes advantage of the metroidvania formula and exploits it to its fullest degree, and it’s clear that the makers of this romhack knew what they were doing. The map here is amazing, with elements taken from other IGAvanias in the series and even flows better than Aria’s castle did most of the time. By overhaul regarding the map design I mean that most of the assets are reused from the base game and the map is moreso “shuffled” around than being entirely innovative (not a bad thing). Areas from the original game that players might have found annoying (like the Floating Garden, for instance) have been reworked and the Chaotic Realm has been fully integrated into the map along with a bonus Arena dungeon taking the base game’s Arena (which I still have to beat). All of these changes regarding the map design are 100% positive and I have practically no complaints. You may have noticed that I haven’t given the game a 10/10 as I did with the original Aria, and I’m going to get to that. Along with a brand new map Alter boasts the QoL changes I mentioned earlier. The drop rates for items and souls have been increased pretty drastically I feel, with soul drop rates in particular feeling way better than the original game’s, even if the rates haven’t been increased drastically or anything. To go into more detail about the drop rates for items I will have to mention the game’s difficulty. Aria is by no means a hard game, with most of the game’s challenge kicking in by later levels. The difficulty progression in Aria, and Alter that matter is amazing, with the first big challenge coming in the form of Balore, which in and of itself is a really great fight, but it is truly where I feel the game’s difficulty takes a step up and despite how lackluster the Graham fight is with it being incredibly easy to cheese through with the Claimh Solais, the boss encounters after this are superb. To get back to my point, part of Aria’s failsafe in terms of difficulty were its items. At no point was the base game ever lenient on you in terms of item drops, as evident in soul drop rates along with the rates for items to drop being incredibly low without at least the Rare Ring. I mention this because I don’t find a lack of item drops to be a bad thing because for the most part, most weapons function the same fundamentally and unless you’re delving into some high-level Aria tech you probably will be choosing your equipped weapon based on its stats rather than how it functions (although I can see some people abstaining from using a powerful weapon due to how slow it is), as opposed to souls which introduce a whole new layer to combat and movement depth, along with souls being a driving force in keeping the player engaged in base Aria. By changing the drop rates for items Alter kind of ruined my experience because I got a really good weapon drop straight out of the gate. Keep in mind that these latter complaints are pretty much just nitpicks and I only bring it up because I want to balance this review out so I don’t have to give it a 5 star rating because god knows I try to keep it in check. Other than that incredibly minor issue that I probably went way too in depth on the game is flawless, a masterpiece of romhacking and I wish for all romhacks to be like this one day.
Check out Aria and this if you haven’t already, it’s the apex of the metroidvania genre
This is a pretty interesting reinterpretation of a game that I really adore. “Reinterpretation” doesn’t fully do it justice though, this is a complete overhaul of the original Aria’s map along with some QoL changes that are incredibly welcome. Aria is a game with a castle that fully takes advantage of the metroidvania formula and exploits it to its fullest degree, and it’s clear that the makers of this romhack knew what they were doing. The map here is amazing, with elements taken from other IGAvanias in the series and even flows better than Aria’s castle did most of the time. By overhaul regarding the map design I mean that most of the assets are reused from the base game and the map is moreso “shuffled” around than being entirely innovative (not a bad thing). Areas from the original game that players might have found annoying (like the Floating Garden, for instance) have been reworked and the Chaotic Realm has been fully integrated into the map along with a bonus Arena dungeon taking the base game’s Arena (which I still have to beat). All of these changes regarding the map design are 100% positive and I have practically no complaints. You may have noticed that I haven’t given the game a 10/10 as I did with the original Aria, and I’m going to get to that. Along with a brand new map Alter boasts the QoL changes I mentioned earlier. The drop rates for items and souls have been increased pretty drastically I feel, with soul drop rates in particular feeling way better than the original game’s, even if the rates haven’t been increased drastically or anything. To go into more detail about the drop rates for items I will have to mention the game’s difficulty. Aria is by no means a hard game, with most of the game’s challenge kicking in by later levels. The difficulty progression in Aria, and Alter that matter is amazing, with the first big challenge coming in the form of Balore, which in and of itself is a really great fight, but it is truly where I feel the game’s difficulty takes a step up and despite how lackluster the Graham fight is with it being incredibly easy to cheese through with the Claimh Solais, the boss encounters after this are superb. To get back to my point, part of Aria’s failsafe in terms of difficulty were its items. At no point was the base game ever lenient on you in terms of item drops, as evident in soul drop rates along with the rates for items to drop being incredibly low without at least the Rare Ring. I mention this because I don’t find a lack of item drops to be a bad thing because for the most part, most weapons function the same fundamentally and unless you’re delving into some high-level Aria tech you probably will be choosing your equipped weapon based on its stats rather than how it functions (although I can see some people abstaining from using a powerful weapon due to how slow it is), as opposed to souls which introduce a whole new layer to combat and movement depth, along with souls being a driving force in keeping the player engaged in base Aria. By changing the drop rates for items Alter kind of ruined my experience because I got a really good weapon drop straight out of the gate. Keep in mind that these latter complaints are pretty much just nitpicks and I only bring it up because I want to balance this review out so I don’t have to give it a 5 star rating because god knows I try to keep it in check. Other than that incredibly minor issue that I probably went way too in depth on the game is flawless, a masterpiece of romhacking and I wish for all romhacks to be like this one day.
Check out Aria and this if you haven’t already, it’s the apex of the metroidvania genre
2 Comments
You probably got particularly lucky because weapons didn't drop that often when I played this, but even raising soul drop rates is controversial for some people. I personally agree that item rates don't need tweaks from vanilla but souls do, however I didn't get any item that felt like I shouldn't have had.
Still I don't think it's unfair to grade this only as almost perfect even without that nitpick, but to me personally this hack has taken over as a comfort game when it comes to Aria.
Still I don't think it's unfair to grade this only as almost perfect even without that nitpick, but to me personally this hack has taken over as a comfort game when it comes to Aria.
yuraniera
1 year ago