Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)
SPOILER WARNING!
This blog entry contains heavy spoilers for Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Please consider playing the game instead of reading this post.
Seriously. Do that.
So a little while ago, I got a bit into Castlevania (Don't question why. It's definitely not because of Hellsing... Maybe..), and I began playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, for the Gameboy Advance (on an emulator, though). It's fucking awesome!!!!
The only Castlevania game I've played before this was Dracula X for the SNES, and it was hard as HELL!! I never got around to finishing it, but I think I was like, 75% done. God knows how hard the final boss would be. Maybe I'll finish it sometime.
Anyway, what I mean to say is that nothing could have prepared me for Aria of Sorrow, since it's so different from the earlier games.. As far as I know, the mechanics are based on Symphony of the Night (which I haven't played.. Yet!), and they're REALLY interesting!! I love going around and completing the map. After I finished, I ended up with 99,6%. completion. I think that's amazing for my first playthrough.
The story was a whole other thing. Sometimes it became a bit confusing during my normal passage through the dungeons, with the interactions being all spaced out. One time I even encountered cutscenes out of order, but it was mostly because of my stupidness, LMAO. Though, the small cast of characters made it easy to follow, and I kind of grew attached to them.
.
I'm not gonna explain the plot here, since I can't really explain it properly and I do NOT have the energy. Yay!
My favorite part was the end. At first, I got through the final boss Graham Jones, then saw the ending credits. I was SO disappointed.. Like, I was almost going to just drop it, but It felt wrong, for some reason. So I backtracked a bit, to try to get 100% completion (turns out it's a bit harder than I thought, so I gave up. Close, though!), and I noticed these strange "Ancient Book" items, which intrigued me. After searching the whole dungeon, I ended up finding all three, but because of how dumb I am, I just thought they were collectibles.. But after I Looked it up, it turned out to hint at the true ending.
After gathering all of the stuffs for the True Ending, a VERY different scene played out after the Graham fight. Instead of just ending, it showed us a huge plot-twist revealing Soma Cruz was actually the reincarnation of Dracula, instead of Graham. It's insane how this can be completely missed in a normal playthrough.
Afterwards, the game presented a "Chaos Dimension" which was really disorienting and Sick As Fuck, honestly. It was a bunch of rooms from the regular dungeon, but displayed in a random and misplaced order, with some rooms leading to a dead end which had walls falling apart and revealing, presumably, the inside of the Eclipse.
The ending itself, after defeating the Chaos entity (whose battle was INSANE.), was nice. It was really pretty, with all of the characters talking to Soma and thanking him for everything. Then, Soma appeared in Mina's (his childhood friend) lap. All was at peace.
So yeah, I don't really have much to say besides that. I really liked this game. Sometimes it was a bit confusing, but that's the fun in it, kind of. I highly recommend this game for anyone who is reading this, even if you already know the main stuff... Oh, I'm just spoiling this for everyone, huh? I doubt anyone here has played this. If you have, please tell me!!
Author's note
Cross-posted on my SpaceHey Blog. If you even care.