I’ve been meaning to do a write up of Aria of Sorrow like my other two GBA CV writeups but I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about it. It’s the closest antecedent to Bloodstained IMO, in that it kinda misses the magic of SotN but is really comfy and pleasing and vaguely maximalist on its own. In other words,
I want to live there, which is I suppose appropriate for the plot, but I took hardly any screenshots. It doesn’t sing but it does hum along. It’s fine.
Booting up SotN immediately after made me realize that what Aria of Sorrow is missing is Early CD-ROM energy. Just loads of sound effects and artwork and videos just because. It’s a little too purposeful and clean to have that chaotic “what the hell do we do with all this space” feeling that SotN (and Myst??) has.
Anyway that’s all.