Here we are, two months after the fact, and Aria of Sorrow has had a bit of time to sink in. What follows is a lot of gushing, though I think it is quite well-deserved. But before that, an amusing picture:

In regards to having a new subseries - well, the story of Julius Belmont and the Demon Castle Wars were left untold, so that's an obvious idea for a plot right there. I wouldn't mind seeing Soma, Mina and Yoko back either.

The plot blew me away. Finally something new! Nuff said on that end of things, lest I spoil it for other people. So what I will mention is the replay value. What Aria of Sorrow has done here is it's given the concept of replayability a whole new meaning. I heard about the Hard mode as I was playing through my first time, and dreaded finishing the game only to start over. I'd already spent so much time collecting items and souls, you see. But then after beating the game and going to start my hard mode, I found I could start using my original file and HURRAH! I kept my inventory! I can continue building my character. I was also damn pleased to find they took away certain souls that would have given you early access to areas of the game. Pure genius. I can go for my full collection and progress through the game normally at the same time. This sure beats the boredom of having 100% and nothing left to do. I can run through and fight the bosses as many times as I like. On other aspects of the game, I love how fliud the animation has finally gotten. The huge amount of souls and weapons gives it tons of depth and the music, while a little more subdued then I'd like, is a lot catchier than the random dissonance in Harmony (I wonder if they're aware of that irony). As for anyone on the prowl for remixed tunes, just wait for it. There's shades of Sinking old Sanctuary in the resevior and one hell of a beefed up classic Castlevania medley during a *censored for spoilors* boss fight later on. The Arena has a tune that tries to emulate Symphony's awesome Coliseum music as well. But hey, speaking of battles, this game kept the perfect level of difficulty for a Castletroid game. It's harder than the laughable Harmony and easier than the demonic Circle. You will die now and then just running a gauntlet of regular enemies, and that makes the game that much more rewarding. I guess the only disappointment I can air about Aria is that Hammer's nothing more than a shopkeep, and both Mina and Yoko spend so much of the game unconscious. So much for a huge cast, eh? -Jay-

I could be wrong, but I believe it was Chrono Trigger that first introduced the New Game+ concept, where you could keep your weapons and whatnot on repeat playthroughs. This was in 1995. Now eight years later, we're finally finding it in more and more games.

It seems that nowadays people really want a lot playtime for their money. To me, some of these expectations are a bit absurd - people seem to think that every game should offer the 80+ hours of gameplay as in Grand Theft Auto, which really isn't possible in games like this. Replay features like this definitely add a bit of extension for the money you pay.

Hey Kurt, Speaking as a gamer who played Circle of the Moon but skipped Harmony, I found Aria to be much a superior game. Aria's story, with it's links to previous Castlevanias was especially pleasing after Circle's lazy excuse of a sidestory plot. If Aria had had the benefit of CD-quality music, it might have replaced Symphoney as my favorite CV. Nitpicks: -I was dissapointed to see that some of the enemy sprites from Symphoney were re-used (Such as the wolfman). Memory constraints or a tight schedule? Hopefully the latter. Same thing with the pallette swaps- Valkyrie/Erinys, Succubus/Lillith and the most blatent: Minotaur/Red Minotaur. And so on. -I hate it when the enemy descriptions just state the creature visually. Example: Giant Skeleton: "A huge skeleton with no lower body that crawls along the ground." No, really? That's just lazy. I prefer to read about the interesting details like (this is from memory) Bloody Zombie: "An eastern church soldier killed 400 years ago". These little details add personality to the enemies and make them more memorable. -I don't know if he did in Dissonance, but once agian there is no dialogue with Death. To add insult to injury you fight him about halfway through the game instead of near the end. Strange, considering he's traditionally been Dracula's second-in-command. On another note, Gamespot gave Aria an 8.6. A good score, but a little low for a Castlevania game. Could this be a sign that people are biggining to tire of the Castletroid formula and that Konami needs to take the series in a new direction with the PS2 'Vania? Graham- Named after famed evangelist Billy Graham? Daniel G.

I don't remember if there's a translator in the credits, but I'm willing to bet that it was probably handled in Japan, since Aria of Sorrow came out worldwide simultaneously. While most of the dialogue was pretty competant, many of the enemies were mistranslated, and lot of the descriptions fell into two categoties: (A) gramatically awkward, or (B) lame. I'm all for having English game release dates closer to the Japanese (as I look in the direction of Namco) but there shouldn't be a sacrifice in quality.

Hi, Kurt. As of writing this I have just completed Aria of Sorrow and I can say without hesitation that this is the best GBA Castlevania yet. They've just been getting better. Every little gripe I had with Circle of the Moon was dealt with flawlessly in Harmony and then was improved on again with Aria. One thing I liked was the way the bosses were handled. Harmony basically had bosses that were nothing more than big enemies with nothing really threatening about them. Aria brings back the "what the hell is that?" concept that was well established in Symphony. Also, it wasn't unusual for me to die on a boss the first time simply because I didn't know how to win. Instead of simply mashing the attack button I felt the need to develop a strategy to beating the bosses. The fights aren't neccessarily hard just that so much is going on at once that you really have to just take it easy and ask yourself "what's actually happening here?" and then it becomes a piece of cake. The last fight is a good example of something that seems far harder than it really is just because the game tries to divert your attention from your actual goal. What I really liked was the fact that I found myself using technically weaker weapons for reasons such as range or attack field. That adds another level to strategic gameplay. The soul system is good for one reason. The game doesn't put too much emphasis on it. I never felt compelled to keep searching for souls outside what was required to progress and get items. Instead of "gotta catch 'em all" it was "could catch 'em all but don't really care". Tediousness (is that a word?) is something I can't stand in games and this was never tedious. I don't want to spoil anything so I won't say much storyline wise but I will say that although there wasn't too much effort put into hiding what they wanted to hide, it was pretty cool. And there were a couple developments that I really didn't expect. Overall, I can't find anything wrong with the game. Tony T. Tiger

For the most part, I was a little disappointed with the boss battles. They're a step up from Harmony of Dissonance, but nowhere do you see anything as amazing as Symphony of the Night's bosses. And did we REALLY need to see the Legion/Granfalloon AGAIN?

Although some of the later bosses were well designed. The Balore fight was well done - that required a bit of leveling up and strategy to beat. You're right about the Graham battle though - it's pretty easy once you figured out what to do, but until you reach that point, it's bitch hard.

I was disappointed with the Chaos Realm though - not nearly as freaky as it could've been, and the final battle was too easy. Again, not as bad as Dracula in Symphony, but still not up to par.

The short version: Aria of Sorrow is amaaazing. It's like they took all of the best aspects of Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance (which were already derivative of Symphony of the Night) and shaped it all together in one tidy little package. The long version: I felt like HoD improved over CotM in most respects, but I never cared for the look of the character sprites, the bosses were overly simplistic, and so forth. It's a great game, but I think it's the fluidity of control that is its biggest selling point. Turning over to Aria, when I started playing it felt a lot like HoD. It controls similarly (although now I kind of miss not having a forward dash, but I guess that'll just be Juste's signature move) and the entrance to the castle has a similar feel. But the more I played the game, the more it became clear that AoS is far and above what was achieved with the other two GBA titles. I would go so far as to say that it has its equal in Symphony, and even exceeds it in certain aspects. The voice bits that were fun in HoD have been greatly expanded to include many of the enemies as well. I think I'm especially fond of "youkouso." (welcome) The music is, of course, superior in quality (I never did buy that "limited memory capacity" bunk) and incredibly so are the graphics. Not just on the character sprites, which now look great, but even in the backgrounds which seemed so brilliant in HoD. Now there's multiple layers in almost every area, far better water/liquid effects, lots of detail in the background, and even flying bats in the distance! Everywhere! Has anyone seen graphic slowdown in this game? Because I never did. So the atmosphere is locked up. What about the story? Well it's never exactly epic in these games, but it's as good as one gets from a Castlevania title. The shot of originality in the narrative was refreshing to boot. Story gets my thumbs up. That leaves, arguably, the most important thing from the game, which is... well, the game. And it plays great! You get the same level of fluidity from HoD, but with much more variety in every conceivable way. The soul system is both intuitive and ingenious, and it gives the player an unprecedented level of customization. I was delighted to see that souls come, not merely from select enemies a la the Enemy Skill ability from the Final Fantasy games, but from every creature in the castle. Adding in randomization (and resisting the urge to collect every soul the minute it becomes available) and it means that you'll have a different arsenal at your disposal during each play through. As if that weren't enough, the array of interchangeable weapons returns from Symphony with a vengeance. Each type of weapon has its own attributes and attack pattern, making most of them unique. Add all this together and... wow. I like that the bosses are more challenging and much more creative than their HoD counterparts. I like that there's an ability that allows you to zoom like Superman through the castle's haunted halls at mach speed. I like that there are rewards to be earned from the Boss Rush mode. I LOVE that you can select your destination when you enter a teleporter, instead of having to cycle through them all to get where you're going. (Now why didn't they think of that sooner?!) I guess what I'm saying is that I'm hard pressed to find anything wrong with this game other than the thing that's wrong with every great game--you always want more when you're done. I told my friend that once the Gamecube-GBA adapter comes out I'll be playing this game inside and out, but I must admit that it'll probably be too late for that. This is going on pretty long, so two final thoughts. First, doesn't it seem in retrospect that HoD was like a practice game? The two are quite alike in their feel, but Aria is so much more polished and complete--not to mention how much better they got at squeezing performance out of the hardware. I wonder if maybe Harmony was made, not so much to be the game IGA was going for, but to give the team the experience they needed to make that game. I'll bet it helped to offset the cost of development too. Secondly, you're right, the tune named "Castle Corridor" that you hear when you enter Castlevania DOES sound like the Stinkoman 20X6 theme. 'Till next time. Christopher Lundgren P.S. Oh yeah, and something I forgot to mention: If there was one nit I would pick with the game, it's the fact that the translation apparently wasn't checked by a native English speaker. Hence many L's and R's have become R's and L's, and we see several wacky Engrish phrases like "Invisible to catch with the naked eye." Sigh. I guess nothing's perfect.

"Perform a high jump by pressing L in lid-jump", says the description for the Hippogryph soul. As bad as Symphony of the Night's voices were, Castlevania hasn't had it this bad since the Graveyard Duck.

Yo Kurt! First time writer, think the site is cool. Just wanted to comment on Aria. Personally I think its great and is a must have for any castlevania fan. Its rather addictive for a while. The new soul system rocks where you can use enemy powers againt them. I think Konami did quite well with the graphics and music this time around. However one thing they could've done to make it better is to have added horrifying screams to the legion battle like they had in SotN when all the zombies start falling off it. Also they could have added more weapons and items but they give you enough to finish the task. As for the story one would think itd be more logical for it to take place with a lunar eclipse rather than a solar eclipse since they dont occur very often, but it was very original and different which made it all the more interesting to play. So basically its a great game at a reasonable price that no castlevania fan should miss out on (its nice to see the nintendo corporation actually marketing a few new origional games for the gba rather than just keep releasing all the old snes classics with all the same graphics and music).

When Aria was first announced, I was hoping it would tie in more with Japanese mythology. Unfortunately, the only connection is to a Japanese legend about solar eclipses. You can read about it here.

Hey Kurt, I recently finished playing Aria of Sorrow and I absolutely loved it! While I liked CotM and HoD, AoS is the first sequel since the now-legendary Symphony of the Night to really get it right! Here's a breakdown: 1) Story - The storyline is awesome! Although somewhat predictable to us longtime dedicated fans, it's still a great feeling when a new plot element is revealed and you're like "Ah-HA! I knew it!!!" The cast of characters and unusual story really add a lot of depth to the game. 2) Graphics - I think AoS has the best graphics since SotN. CotM's graphics, although clean and polished, were a little too simple and repetitive. HoD were the complete opposite: very detailed, but grainy and rough, and a little choppy at times. AoS are not only beautifully detailed, but also crisp and clean, with very smooth animation, giving the environments, cast, enemies, bosses, and even weapons a lot of personality. 3) Music - CotM was a nostaglia factory for CV music, but Konami can't regurgitate CV remixes forever. Then came HoD... I liked HoD, but I was *sooo* disappointed with the music. It was grainy and irritating, with a few notable compositions like the Chapel but overall weak and repetitive. The only good musical tracks were the Vampire Hunter arrangement for Simon/Boss Rush and the ending theme during the credits. When I heard that, I almost cried thinking to myself, "Why couldn't the whole game sound like that?" Mind you, the sound effects were top-notch. Contrast this to AoS... the music and compositions are wonderful! Lots of great new original tracks, like the Forbidden Zone and the Arena. Music has always been such an important aspect of the CV series, and AoS does not disappoint! Add to that the top-notch sound effects and plenty of voice clips and you're left with a memorable audio experience that draws you back into Dracula's domain once again. 4) Control and Playability - SotN rocked because of how quickly and easily you could thrash and evade using the myriad of cool moves, spells, and attacks. Comparatively, it's GBA offspring, HoD, was a little sluggish and slow to respond. Not that Juste didn't have some cool moves, but his main weapon, the whip, was unwieldly and not-at-all fun to use like the bad-a** repertoire of weapons Alucard had at his disposal. AoS's Soma, however, is fluid and a joy to control! First of all, his inventory of weapons is very cool, from the Handgun (anybody feel a RE moment with "Uses 9mm Parabellum Rounds"?) to the long-bladed Osafune katana to the ridiculous sword-in-the-stone Excalibur. Some of Soma's weapons are a little unwieldly, but purposely so, as oftentimes the game forces you to choose between a more powerful, cumbersome weapon like an axe or hammer or a faster, less powerful weapon like a knife or sword. Not only is there a lot of customization to Soma via his equipment (like Alucard), but add to that the more than 100 souls-in-four-different-varieties and you have almost limitless combinations of cool attacks and support effects. So now all you obsessed gamers who absolutely must have EVERYTHING in the game must now only eek out a common drop item and a rare item, but an even rarer soul power from each denizen of the castle, including some bosses and some *very* elusive monsters (*ahem* No.82...) Also, this is the first Metroid-style CV where Lv.99 is an attainable goal! (WHAT?! 1 exp. for a Guardian?! Aargh, I guess it's back to Poltergiest swords and Mermen...) All in all, I thought AoS was a wonderful experience, not only because of the great graphics, story, and music but the original elements as well. IGA *really* delivers on this installment. Hopefully Konami doesn't screw up the new PS2 Castlevania... ~ R.

I wouldn't say the story is genius - my brother figured out the whole plot within five minutes of playing the games, but it's certainly a good step in the right direction. I do find it amusing that Mina's character exists almost solely as a red herring - outside of the initial attack, she never becomes the victim of Dracula like so many vampire-related stories.

That about covers everything there is to say. Now, onto Lament of Innocence. We've already talked about Castlevania in 3D awhile ago, so I think it'd be better to concentrate on something different. Looking over the Castlevania Dungeon forums, it seems that there are many people not happy with Koji Igarashi and his handling of the series. Some are angry that he keeps making Symphony clones; others are annoyed that he seems to ignore certain games in the Castlevania timeline. So, what do you think? Is he milking the series too much, or is he guiding Castlevania into a new age of glory?

Kurt, who thinks August can't come soon enough.