Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

I finally played one of the coolest games on the Game Boy Advance, one of the best games on the Castlevania series!

The Castlevania series is one that I haven’t really explored that much, it has evolved a lot since the first game back in the NES era. However, it hasn’t really seen a lot of action lately, as no new games have been done for the series for a while. Other than collection releases, such as Castlevania Dominus Collection, which includes the titles for the Nintendo DS

Still, the series remains alive thanks to its legacy, contributing to the birth of the Metroidvania genre after the release of Castlevania Symphony of the Night in the late 90s.

Aria of Sorrow builds upon what Symphony does—although I must be clear and say I haven’t played it myself—and streamlined the experience into a pocket-sized adventure for the Game Boy Advance.

In context, this game is absolutely awesome. I can totally picture myself being a 10 year old kid with a GBA SP, and with this as the only game I own. And you know what? I think I’d be the coolest kid at school.

Think about it, the other kids have cutesy little Yoshi’s Island throwing eggs around, or they catching Caterpies in some forest on Pokemon Fire Red.

And me?

I am a super cool white-haired demon killing vampire hunter, exploring a huge castle filled with hundreds of enemies and epic bosses. I can extract their souls and use gain their powers to get even stronter. How epic is that?

Even if you are not 10 years old anymore, just go give it a go, it’s barely 7 hours long, stop reading and play it. The only excuse not to, is if you want to play Ys: The Oath in Felghana first.

But if you stay, let’s go into some of the aspects that might let you know if this game is for you, or not!

The story

You are Soma Cruz, a new character to the franchise actually, and, somehow, you are transported to Dracula’s Castle, and cannot find any way to escape. You end up there with another friend maybe it’s your girlfriend I didn’t read oops but she’ll stay in the entrance and heal you when you go check up on her sometimes.

Anyway, since there’s no exit found, you gotta explore inside the castle and see if you can find a way out. The place is full of monsters, however, after killing some of them, you realize you can absorb their souls and acquire special abilities from them.

You will face many traps and dead ends, and soon meet up with other characters that will reveal more of the story and show up during important plot events. Soon the mystery of the castle, the awakening of your powers and the motives behind the characters you meet will start to unfold, as Dracula awakens once again.

The gameplay

If you have played a Castlevania before, or the Metroid games for the GBA, the gameplay is quite similar to that.

Aria of Sorrow is a 2D side-scroller adventure game, you explore a castle, that features a variety of environments and enemies.

Like any Metroidvania, you will find locked doors and unreachable platforms that you can only access by using different skills and power ups that you can find in the game.

The limited controls featured on the GBA make this game quite easy to parse, simple button combinations allow for a variety of moves, such as performing attacks, dodges, skills, jumping and the like. Some moves are unlocked later in the game, that allow you to perform slide kicks, double jumps and other abilities I’d rather let you experience by yourself!

Here’s the killer feature of this game, every enemy has a soul ability that you can get after killing them. However, to do so is a matter of chance. Some of them can be really hard to get, while others will be obtained on the first try. This can be a bit of a mixed bag for some players.

You can complete the game without unlocking most abilities, you will be fine, it is more of a thing you can do if, like I said above, you are a 10 year old kid who owns a single videogame. Later in the game you can still find every enemy and get strong weapons that will allow farming them super simple anyway, so I don’t think this is a bad thing unless you’re a completionist.

There are a lot of different environments inside the castle, and they are quite easy to distinguish from one another, it is actually kind of surprising. There’s a library, a clock tower (classic Castlevania staple), floating gardens, an arena, the sewers, and plenty of other areas. I actually can’t recall feeling lost at any point.

There were plenty of save points, although I honestly just abused save states for this one. You can also find teleporting rooms, which were extremely useful to traverse the castle.

The map helped quite a bit, it is rather clear, even if it lacks some “quality of life” things like markers for missing items; it shows the available pathways, save rooms, teleport rooms and your current location, as well as the percentage of the map uncovered. It was instantly accesible as well by pressing select, which I appreciate.

I think the boss fights on this game are pretty good, all of the bosses had some pretty nice and simple patterns you could learn, except for a couple exceptions that would end up being quite annoying.

The sound

The GBA’s sound chip was not the best in general, and a lot of poorly programmed games and ports were kind of average at best. However, in many games they put a lot of effort into making something fitting of the handheld, and Aria of Sorrow is really one of the best in that regard.

It was great for the time, and it still sounds awesome today, if a little retro—the kind of retro indie games seek to emulate today—it is so fun and it keeps it interesting all the time. I kept bopping to the music during my playthroughs. It can be a bit repetitive sometimes, but that’s not really an issue.

There is also a bit of voice acting to be found from some characters, it is only a line or two, but it adds some charm to the thing.

The art

This game looks incredible to this day. It is so good, the pixel art is really high quality, it looked fantastic while playing it on my Anbernic RG35XX SP.

The game is in 2D and the colors just pop when played on modern screens. At the time, I imagine this was done with the purpose of improving the contrast due to the low visibility of the original GBA, but it works really well anyway.

While most of the game is basic 2D assets and sprites, the game features a few pseudo 3D elements, in some bosses and background effects, that look quite good for the time, and work well today as well. At no point does anything look out of place.

I think there is only one area in the game that looks way too bright for its own good, but even then it’s no big deal, I just felt like it had some filter on top while playing it, as the character still loked the same if it was there or in a more saturated spot on the map

The character art featured in dialogue scenes is rather nice, and seeing the contrast with the NPCs on screen, it really makes you appreciate how well designed those sprites are too. All the enemies are instantly recognizable and have great animation loops, I really gotta give props to the designers!

Final thoughts

This game is instantly replayable, as the collectibles are plenty and they are also quite easy to find, it’s just a matter of exploring around.

Games like Metroid will feature some incredibly difficult puzzles based on precise movement and that’s something that will not be present here, you can take your time and explore, instead of practicing a button press combination and perfect timing trying to get some missiles—not hating on Metroid at all, I did 100% of the items on Metroid Dread after all, but they can be a bit annoying lol.

Anyway, this game is one of those that you are just going to complete, as long as you try stuff out. There is maybe two really obscure secrets that you will be unable to find unless you think the right way, but again, no big deal I’d say!

I completed the game in about 6 hours, although I did use some save states for a few of the boss fights, I am only taking into account the in-game timer. I played the game in 10 to 20 minutes long sessions before my work schedule began.

In the end, I think this game is worth playing, and I think I will be replaying it sometime next year as well, it’s definitely on my roster alongside Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission now! It’s always fun to keep improving my times and playstyle.

This is day 79 of #100DaysToOffload

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