Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance, 2003)

My trip through the excellent Castlevania Advance Collection on Switch left me feeling like Goldilocks. Circle of the Moon was too tough, Harmony of Dissonance was too easy. Aria of Sorrow? Aw yeah, this is just right.

This is the only Castlevania I’ve played that can truly hold a candle to Symphony of the Night. It also proves that the 2D Metroidvania Castlevania design is like baking a cake: a tiny variation in the ingredients or technique can have huge consequences for the game’s overall quality.

For example, Aria of Sorrow‘s map is a massive improvement on Harmony of Dissonance. Even leaving aside the dual-castle mechanic (thankfully ditched here), Aria of Sorrow is so much more pleasurable to navigate. Warp rooms are more frequent and better placed, there are fewer dead ends that require upgrades to proceed, and the castle is smartly interlinked so any random trip from A-B can be done in five minutes max.

The frustrating thing with Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance is that Konami already smacked this nail on the head with Symphony of the Night‘s map, but it took them six years to repeat the feat.

Aria of Sorrow also perfectly refines the monster-ability stealing mechanics that they came so close to getting right in the previous Game Boy Advance games. Here you can control the ‘souls’ of each monster, granting you various passive and active abilities swiped from enemies big and small. All are fun to use, but a quiet benefit is that it makes backtracking much more tolerable as killing your hundredth Medusa Head might give you a whizzy new toy to play with.

And, perhaps surprisingly, for the first time in perhaps forever, Aria of Sorrow has a decent story. Perhaps it’s a little disappointing that the 2035 setting isn’t exploited much (no cyber-monsters…) but Soma slowly realizing his true connection to the castle is a fun ride, the supporting characters have proper arcs that develop through the story, and Dracula’s absence gives things a refreshing new spin.

The highlight has to be the amnesiac Julius Belmont, responsible for doing what his ancestors never could and finishing off Dracula for good in 1999. He provides what might be the single greatest boss fight I’ve ever seen in the series. Julius lives up to the Belmont name: using his whip to attack you from range, tossing various special items at you, and even bashing you with an item crash.

Most Castlevania boss fights boil down to pattern recognition, but Julius feels more like a fighting game and pretty much requires a mastery of Soma’s moveset (or the smarts to figure out a combination of weapons and special moves that’ll cheese him).

The only downside is that by all accounts it’s all downhill from here. I’ve never heard anyone talk about the DS games with the same reverence as Aria of Sorrow, and the various upcoming 3D games just don’t have the same pizzazz.

Oh well, onto Lament of Innocence on the PlayStation 2.