Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

The Good
There's always a way. If you're not good with buttons, just kill some enemies, level up a bit, and make some money in order to purchase potions and items. Eventually you'll be strong enough to defeat whatever that seems to block you. In Super Metroid you may have learnt to avoid enemies as much as possible, here you'll want to kill them all, since with every enemy you kill, you gain experience points and become stronger.

If you set out to achieve 100% collection rate, you'll likely only want to kill enemies that you have not yet collected. So you will want to leave and enter rooms repeatedly to kill the same enemies over and over, while ignoring other enemies. There are very few things in life that hit a man harder than this feeling, this desire, to collect an enemy's soul. Aria of Sorrow provides this feeling.

Cool characters. Soma looks like Sephiroth, and the girl Mina is his childhood best friend and she's attractive. You play as Soma, so that's an immediate motivation to start playing (assuming you're a guy).

The environments are full of symbolism. Paintings and sculptures of angels, demons, and all those religion and prophecy stuff.

The whole "gain new powers to unlock new areas" thing is delightfully similar to Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night. You can only jump this high at first, so there will be rooms that are out of reach. In later stages, you gain an incredibly awesome ability that shoots you straight up towards the ceiling. This is by far the coolest move in any platform game ever, that even outshines Super Metroid's Shinespark. You're no longer walking or running through rooms, you'll be jumping around in rooms. You're always jumping, it's ridiculous.

Most of the time the path is clear and you'll know where to go next. You won't feel frustration with this game. You're always leveling up and collecting stuff. Satisfaction is ALWAYS there in your heart and soul.

The Bad
Some weapons and armors are useless (If you have played Diablo 2, this is like picking up a level 2 leather jacket when you're at level 30.) For example you'll see a sword quite early in the game, but won't be able to acquire it until much, much later. You'll naturally want that sword to be worth the wait, since you'll move through that room frequently, and everytime you enter that room, you see that sword, and wonder "when am I going to be able to get THERE? What ability is required for it? What special attribute does this sword have?" But by the time you get the sword, you already have a weapon that's better in every aspect. You'll want to sell this lame, newly acquired sword for money, in order to buy the Soul Eater Ring.

But seriously, this isn't even nitpicking. It's less than a nitpick. There isn't anything in Aria of Sorrow that I don't like.

The Bottom Line
100% soul collection rate may seem hard at first. After the main quest is completed, you'll probably be at only 20% or less. You'll wonder how long 100% takes. Actually, the process doesn't feel long, because it's filled with satisfaction. Everytime you collect a soul, it becomes a new spell that you can cast, but I don't even care about that very much. I collect it because I wanna collect it, not because I wanna use the spell. Every time you add 1% to the grand total, you're like "OH YEAH" "THAT's what I'm talking about". You'll want to dance. So, basically, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow invites you to dance, to celebrate 80 joyful moments in your life.

The Good
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is the best Castlevania game for the Game Boy Advance system. Harmony of Dissonance, the second of the series for the GBA, was worse than Circle of the Moon, but it had some good features that this game keeps. So, we can define Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow as the game that has the best thing from the two previous games released for the GBA.

Castlevania has nothing new on its gameplay. Now we can move our character in the air as we did before in Circle of the Moon. The essence of the game is still the same, explore the whole castle looking for secret areas (now the breakable walls are back!), collect valuable objects, complete your monster encyclopedia and rise up some levels before fighting the big bosses (as big as always).

For the first time you have no sub-weapons on your side. Those sub-weapons have been replaced by red souls (most of the classic sub-weapons of the series like the axe or knife are available as souls too), so, hearts will give you just some mana points and nothing more. In Harmony of Dissonance, hearts were useless but here they are really important.

Talking about souls, you have three types of them, the red souls that could be used as sub-weapons/special moves, the blue souls which are like special moves that will use a lot of mana (things like flying as a bat or become a monster to make more damage) and the yellow ones, which are special powers that will be always active and they don't need mana (strength up, lucky up...). This soul system really suits the game, and soon you'll start collecting all the souls, really far from the annoying DSS of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and the "strange" book system of Harmony of Dissonance.

Here we don't have two castles, just one big castle and (that's a new thing) many different characters. There are many save points during the game, much more than in the previous Castlevania games but it's not easy to progress. As in the previous games, different endings are available according to what you do during your adventure and it's recommend to reach both of them (at least, the good one).

Many different weapons are available, you have handy knifes, spears, swords, hammers... each weapon has different effects and some of them are perfect for certain moments. You'll see your equipped weapon when you use it against your enemies, that means that we don't have generic graphics for weapons, every weapon has a different one.

Harmony of Dissonance had bigger sprites, but graphics were worse than the graphics for Aria of Sorrow. Now the graphics are well-balanced and we don't have that strange blue aura on our main character. Something's similar with the sound, the music for Aria of Sorrow is perfect, as a game with this name deserves.

The Bad
The L button is useless. Harmony of Dissonance featured a new gameplay system in which you need to master your skill using the L and the R button to evade attacks, but in this game only the L Button remains and it's really useless. You don't need to use it to finish the game.

As happened before, to collect every item and every soul is something boring or tedious because sometimes you need to kill the same enemy over 50 times to get the item or soul. If you're one of those players who need to collect and complete the monster encyclopedia you'll need a lot of time and patience. Of course there are some items that will increase your luck, but it's not enough and sometimes is frustrating.

Boss Rush Mode appeared for the first time on Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and it was a nice mode to increase game's length. Here you have the same mode, but it'll take a bit to finish it and the game has no more game modes. That's just because Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance has much more big bosses.

Story is boring until you reach the end. The storyline is really depth less. Dialogues are annoying and senseless as well, but once you know how to enter the Chaos Realm it becomes more interesting and the special ending improves this weak point.

The Bottom Line
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow has the best things of the previous games and it's the definitive Castlevania game for the Game Boy Advance. It has some weak points, but it's probably the best action-platform game for the GBA. Many different weapons, special powers, enemies, big bosses and hours of gameplay make this game an essential one.

The Good
Aria of Sorrow is as close to Symphony of the Night as the Gameboy Advance games have ever come. Before you get the impression that Aria of Sorrow isn't quite as good as Symphony, or that all it attempts to do is recreate it, let me stop you. Aria of Sorrow rocks. The music rocks. The graphics rock. The inventory system? Yeah, it rocks too. Aria of Sorrow gets points in my book for one of the most rocking side scrollers made to date. Much like its often compared to predecessor, Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow gives players the ability to level up, manage an inventory system, and even absorb the souls of their enemies to give them special magical powers. All of these elements, on their own, are solid. As solid even as a level up system or inventory system in a pure RPG. There are no "gimmicks" in Aria of Sorrow, only great features. Running around Dracula's castle is as enjoyable as running around anything ever was. The castle has the typical CastleVania environments - dangerous gardens, mysterious caves, mechanical clocktowers, they're all represented here. For a game that's played on a such a small screen, KCE Tokyo has done a great job of creating mood. As far as the actual game goes, hitting monsters with weapons has never been so fun. Each monster in Aria of Sorrow has a unique behavior, one that you'll have to learn to adapt to. As you gradually gain skills, you'll gradually be taught by the game to use them. The difficulty is just right. Aria of Sorrow remains challenging without falling into the CastleVania trap of being entirely too hard (CastleVania 1 comes to mind) or entirely too easy (Symphony of the Night, anyone?). With each weapon you obtain, you gain a different range, damage, trajectory, and so forth. I actually found myself strategizing which weapons to use where. The game does a good job of pitting the environment against, and for the player. Fighting enemies on steps isn't the same as fighting them on level ground. As you play the game, you're intuition will guide you through the environments, subconsciously keeping the game entertaining to you.

The Bad
I played it on a smaller GBA screen. This game is detailed enough to look decent on a larger screen, and if a person were to have a GameCube/GBA TV Adaptor they would probably have a better time playing the game.

The Bottom Line
I can honestly say that it owns. By far the best CastleVania title to hit the GBA, heck, it's one of the best CastleVania titles to hit any platform. And that, friends, is saying quite a lot.