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Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is an action adventure game that originally released on the Game Boy Advance in 2003. I've never actually finished a single Castlevania game before, but with the Dominus Collection recently released, I wanted to at least try this one before committing to it. Speaking of, this game isn't part of that collection. I played this on the Advance Collection, which came out in 2021. The game takes place in the year 2035, and follows Soma Cruz, a Japanese exchange student who is magically teleported to Dracula's Castle for some reason. Soma is attacked by monsters, and after beating them up, he absorbs their souls. You see, Soma has a special power called the "Power of Dominance" which allows him to absorb the souls of monsters and utilise their abilities. So, you know, like Kirby, but nowhere near as cute. Using this power, he has to explore Dracula's Castle, and find a way out. This is one of those Castlevania games that are structured more like a Metroid game (Hence the term, Metroidvania). Instead of various stages where you have to get to the end, it all takes place in one massive castle, and it's surrounding areas. Much like Metroid, the goal is to find your way through this labyrinth, find new abilities and use said abilities to get to even more areas. Rinse and repeat, until you get to the final boss. The key difference between this and Metroid, however, is that Castlevania utilises an RPG style level system. Killing enemies will eventually make Soma stronger. Alongside that, you can also find or purchase equippable weapons and armour to boost those stats even further. Or just stumble upon a sword that's bigger than you are, that works too. What's also noteworthy is how the souls work. Every enemy has a corresponding soul, and you have a chance of getting it whenever you kill one. Equipping these souls will allow Soma to use certain abilities. But what's interesting is that some optional areas need a specific soul to access, you could go through the whole game without getting what you need, so I'm not sure how to feel about that. Aria of Sorrow isn't the first Metroidvania I've tried, by the way. That would be Circle of the Moon (Known as just "Castlevania" in Europe), but I bounced off of that game because it was very unforgiving. Aria of Sorrow is far better in it's difficulty curve, and I'm glad I gave the series another crack with this one. Even if the fight against Death was a humongous difficulty spike, but that seems to be a pretty standard thing with Death. Shout out has to go to the animation this game has. Castlevania games since the shift to Metroidvania has some of the most satisfying animation in games. When you can bust out a victory dance at any time, well... The soundtrack is also top tier, but that's nothing unexpected for Castlevania. That series has an amazing batting average for soundtracks. So yeah, my first completed Castlevania game, and I very much enjoyed it, so much so, that I went and got the Dominus Collection afterwards. And speaking of that... Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is another action adventure game that originally released on the DS in 2005. Like I mentioned before, I played this on the Dominus Collection, which released last week. As the name implies, this is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow, you know this because the intro immediately spoils the big twist of Aria. Soma is once again dragged into action when a mysterious cult wishes to create a new Dark Lord to replace Dracula. This is bad, so Soma has to reuse his Power of Dominance to stop this. When it comes to gameplay, this game plays very similarly to Aria of Sorrow. A big Metroid style map to explore, and lots of souls to find along the way to augment Soma's abilities. It's just a simple refinement, but that's totally fine. I will say that the bosses are way better though. They are probably the highlight of the game. OK, bad example, but trust me, they're great. (Seriously though, REALLY!?) All in all, they play similarly, but I prefer Dawn of Sorrow. So I'm gonna use the rest of this post to point how excellent the emulation options are in the Dominus Collection. Being a DS game, Dawn of Sorrow naturally uses both of the screens on the console, but the footage I posted above actually shows three screens. The original game had those two screens on the right as an option for what you had on the top screen, but the Dominus Collection allows you to display both at once. Very cool, and having the stat screen was quite helpful in solving a certain puzzle. As well as that, there's save states, and a rewind feature, which I never used, but the biggest change would have to be the option to draw seals with button inputs. I've heard some horror stories on how imprecise drawing on this game can be, so this is an interesting workaround. It works well enough. Can't imagine what trying touch controls with the imprecise Switch screen would be like. Don't plan on finding out. But yeah, that's it. I'll likely carry on playing through this collection with Portrait of Ruin. -
By Happenstance · Posted
Band-Maid are excellent, managed to see them live twice before they seemed to stop coming over here. Dice is another good song if you want somewhere to start. -
Trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Junji Ito's Uzumaki, which releases 28th September: Looks gross, which is to say that it looks perfect. I'll take five more, please and thank you. -
Per VGC and some content they had come out of a trip to Asobi's studio in Tokyo last month, a presentation shared with them during the trip seemed to suggest that 5 speedrun levels and 10 challenge levels are planned for the game's post-launch free DLC, though obviously it's not clear if plans have stayed the same. I'm praying that speedrun levels are coming to this thing. Spawning out of that same trip is the below excellent video from VGC in which Nicolas Doucet shares some of the philosophies, design and team strategies, and whimsy behind Astro Bot – having watched the video, fair warning, it spoils a couple of Bots we've yet to see and so might be one best saved until after you've played through the game. But again: I really implore that you watch this. We don't get enough of a look at how games are made these days, period, and for PlayStation it generally seems to be saved for massive AAA offerings with fully produced documentary-style videos, like the ones we've seen for The Last of Us and God of War before now. I mean they still go through the effort of drawing up ideas with pen and paper, and there are some great insights to glean from that! Yeah, I definitely think it's worthy of a discussion at least, even if I do feel like it also blends into a conversation a number of us have had on here before a number of times of there being a pretty skinny - but generally still very strong in terms of quality - list of first-party offerings on PS5 this gen, even just when compared to PS4. I think the problem came about with the myriad of studio closures and the focus then being pooled into GAAS, something I think everyone was against – sure, it makes business sense...but about as much business sense as using your quarterly earnings to buy lottery tickets. The success of Helldivers 2 has been enormous and yet is the only serious justification so far for PlayStation's GAAS initiative which has seemingly floundered if it hasn't altogether been quashed – again, just go buy lottery tickets before you sleep on the piles of cash made from being the gacha machine the PS5 is with games like Genshin, not to mention the upturn it's going to see next year when GTA VI releases and Shark Cards make their dreaded return. I don't know if Astro Bot puts any dent in their plans, but I guess with Nintendo, even when IP gets left behind, those teams go onto flourish in creating a number of other games, and it very rarely seems like Nintendo has much of a misstep in terms of project management. Naughty Dog comes up a lot here, and with good reason – this is PlayStation's premiere studio and they haven't announced anything new which has seen the light of day - i.e. not a remaster or a remake, and not the now-cancelled multiplayer Factions game - since PSX in December 2016, when Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was revealed to be a standalone title having evolved out of being mere DLC for Uncharted 4, and The Last of Us Part II was revealed for the first time. They literally haven't announced and released a new project since before the Switch launched, isn't that absolutely nuts? I said it when this game first got announced, but the layer of irony cannot be overstated of PlayStation salvaging Team Asobi from Japan Studio, and yet having their game be THE tentpole, stinger reveal for that State of Play we had earlier this year. But, yeah, I do think it's a worthy conversation...just maybe for another time, and I don't think that leaning on IP and "politics" (?) alone is a fair assessment of why this game has been recognised the way it has by reviewers around the world, as has been suggested earlier in the thread. For now though: the hype train is rolling and it is absolutely not allowed to stop I'd definitely be curious to hear/your thoughts if/when it comes to PC, which I agree with you really needs to be the case. Curious as well how they adjust their approach to some controls and the use of the controller considering just how heavily tied into the hardware of the PS5 the thing is – having not yet played this yet but having played Playroom with the DualSense, it pains me to think about experiencing the game without all of those features in tow.
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This is an interesting article here. Some people on Era are trying to play "Whataboutism" by claiming Nintendo are just as bad with Smash, but I don't think that's comparable in the slightest. If we take the franchises that haven't had a new release in the latest 2 generations, we have Mother, Ice Climbers, Game & Watch, R.O.B, Punch-Out, Duck Hunt, and Banjo-Kazooie. And that last one's not even on Nintendo! Not every IP should live forever, but it's the sheer magnitude of dead franchises that Sony pretty much ignore that I think the linked article is trying to point out, and I agree with that. That said, can't wait for this to come to PC, I'm really looking forward to a Mario Galaxy structured game, especially after how disappointing Odyssey was, so I'll be hanging out with @martinist in that strip club.
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