Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

2025-07-13
When Symphony of the Night is your parent you're kind of fucked as games go. Everyone's going to be sizing you up to your sire. "You know Symphony really had a better soundtrack." "Symphony had better art." On and on. There are many strategies to deal with the burden of having an exemplary parent. Drinking, doing drugs, having sex with strangers are all really good and cool options that I'd personally recommend. But there are others. Circle of the Moon, the eldest child, chose to walk a different path, the "Fuck you, dad! I'm different!" path. And while there are a lot of haters for ol' Nate Gravey, you gotta respect that changeup of a more focused action game with the curveball of DSS, especially after Symphony laid down such a clear blueprint for a banger game. Harmony of Dissonance chose the failson path. Initially promising with that nice growth curve of exploring and getting stronger but then you realize your ears have been bleeding for the last hour from the soundtrack and the pacing due to the dumpster map makes you want to remove the cartridge and put it in a blender. So then what path does Aria of Sorrow take? The most boring of all: it's tries to be just like dear ol' Dad.

That's not to say Aria is a boring game. Sure, some things are outright boring. Despite Soma's lithe, pretty-boy, anime ass looking like he could run a mile in 4 minutes, he slogs around Dracula's castle like he took too many trazodone. And while the soundtrack doesn't approach Harmony's dissonant depths, it is dull, sounding like they took Symphony's music and cut out all the best songs leaving something merely fine. Everything else is great. Great map, great arsenal of weapons, great power curve, great bosses. And that's the thing, it's great and nothing more. It doesn't improve on any single thing Symphony did, and in fact does almost all of them a bit worse. And in not trying to do anything particularly novel it ends up feeling a bit "We have Symphony of the Night at home".

You could say well bu-bu-but the souls, Trash. First the drop rate for half of them might as well be zero. And two most of them are useless. It's like someone holds out a big bowl of candy and every time you reach for one they go, "Uh-uh, not that one!" And then when you finally get a candy, you tear it open and it's a fart that's been hermetically sealed in plastic. Ah which fart this? Persephone, that gives me a demon vacuum cleaner ability that restores HP when I use it on demons. But it heals for a whopping 5 hp and can only be used at a range that almost guarantees I'll be hit and take at least 10 points of damage? Nice! The end result is most of the souls just feel like items or abilities under a different name. This is the "soul" that lets you double jump, here's the "soul" that lets you glide. Ok, man. I'm gonna go use my "soul" that boots up a more interesting Castlevania game.

For all my snark, Aria of Sorrow is great though and it's not without its own unique charms. The dumb little poorly translated bestiary entries that add a little lore and connective tissue to the world. Like the one for Werejaguar that tells you he "Works on his straight punch so he can defeat Weretiger". Cool, dude, love to hear what motivates you, Werejaguar. Or the Underground Cemetery that is the only zone with no music because it's replaced with people wailing paired with the sprites of walking corpses milling in the background. How about the part where since this game takes place in modern day one of the weapons is "Handgun" and Soma can just shoot up Dracula's castle with it? And ooo some stellar bosses. Headhunter's swapping heads to turn into different mini-bosses is a wonderful idea for a boss but I gotta hand it to the the double-final boss with Julius and uhh Giant Black Hole With Eyes And A Snake Thing. Julius especially is fucking fun because you just unlocked the Black Panther ability which finally gives you Nate Gravy's dash from Circle of the Moon and you and he are both dashing all over the place trying to fuck each other up. Combat in Castlevania normally feels very slow and tactical with a focus on positioning and plonking your big sword in the right spot over and over and over. But the Julius fight was frenetic but still tight. An all-timer.

Aria of Sorrow is a great game but it could have been more and I level that claim--that accusation--because it's so good. Circle and Harmony chose different paths and shat themselves up somewhere in the process. Aria nailed pretty much everything. And then stopped. Why? Why make a game in modern times and then only add "Handgun" and some other vague bits of modernity. Why not add rocket launchers, mechs, or some other crazy bullshit? I'm sure the answer to "Why?" is a boring one like "Well, we had to ship a game in 2 years and we ran out of time." Either way what we're left with is a merely great game. I guess it's not so bad.