Draculvania: Music of Emotion

King of Posters
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I just finished Aria of Sorrow for the third time and gosh golly do I love that game. The first time I played it, I got 100% of souls and the weird ring that gives you infinite magic. Then I played Julius Mode for 15 minutes and put down the game for 5 years. That’s basically what I did this time except I only got like 80% of the souls. There are some weird ones! My favorite is the Waiter Skeleton’s ability, which is to throw flaming curry. The monsters go all aggro at the curry instead of you until it disappears. Great for killing Crusaders.

Wow this game is 13 years old, I am old.

I played SotN long after playing the 3 GBA games and Dawn of Sorrow. I think I understand why it’s considered the peak of the series, though Aria still has all my love.

One of my thoughts on this playthrough as I was grinding for some of the souls (god damn you Siren) is that killing enemies repeatedly actually re-enforced my relationship with said enemies. I got to know a little about who they are, especially the humanoid enemies who drop clothes and food. I think it’s very charming that Persephone carries around pudding with her all the time. I want to know what she says to the Kyoma demon when nobody is around.

If the theme of SotN is coming home, then the theme of Aria of Sorrow is finding a new home. By the end of the game that castle is Soma’s castle, and my castle. I know all the shortcuts and best ways of getting through places quickly. I know where the bizarre enemies lurk and the way they try to hide from me. I think it’s especially telling that the final “special” soul you get is the Black Panther which basically allows Soma to blast through hallways unimpeded. Soma’s increasing mobility throughout the game reflects how at home he has become in a castle that once was frightening and dangerous. The “bad” ending has Soma reflecting on feeling like he belongs in the castle, rather than on earth.

Related: as you get more of the souls you also get to know Soma’s “dark power” very well too. Certain combinations work better in different parts of the castle, or with different enemies, and I became very adept at switching souls quickly and using the different abilities with precision. I think that Soma is a terrible, awful character and the writing is stiff and pointless. Still, I at least feel like Soma and my experiences slowly overlapped until the barrier between us thinned.

MUCH LIKE SOMA AND DRACULA

Anyway this is a general Castlevania thread that is years too late because I guess Konami is dead.

I’ll be replaying SotN next if I have it in me. I started Circle of the Moon (which I could talk about maybe) but the slow pace of the game is destroying me inside.

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I forgot I took pictures of some of my favorite screens, when I remembered to.








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Aria was probably the last really good IGA Metroidvania. I like Ecclesia a lot too but it’s not very much on the ‘Metroid’ aspect.

The enemies still feel like random mishmashes of random monsters, though. Lots of stuff being made for the sake of being made; you could feel the enthusiasm of the staff on it and on SotN. It’s harder to feel that on the more yearly entries for the DS.

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Yeah, I feel like this is very true. Aria of Sorrow has this going on in a few places with Long Hallways Full Of Enemies ™ that don’t really do anything except slow you down slightly. Feels out of place. There are really bright spots, like the Inner Quarters that were occupied only by women, and the Underground Reservoir which felt very natural and cave-y. But the Dance Hall doesn’t do anything for me, and the Arena feels like a poor imitation of the same structures that were in SotN. And the Floating Gardens were much better in concept than execution.

Hi, I have played this game a lot and know the areas by name, sorry if this is way too obscure.

Anyway, Dawn of Sorrow had the problem with poorly placed enemies going on even more so. Lots of pointless stuff.

I tried to play Ecclesia but I think I got stuck on some crab elevator boss or something?? It was a bad combo of pretty hard and also not very interesting, so I ended up giving up on it.

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I played a little bit of ecclesia not having played any other castlevanias after symphony and enjoyed that crab elevator boss. I agree that the game was structurally kind of boring though.

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I’m never going to be able to enjoy Circle of the Moon, despite going in with hopes of revisiting “classicvania” physics. It feels like the worst compromise of a metroid game and a castlevania game. It’s the nega-SotN. Drab areas with boring level design and restrictive control that only serves to say “see this is exactly why metroid let you move around so freely, you have to with these expansive rooms.” It’s been a while, but I feel like the traditional slowness of the whip is also very out of place, since unlike older CVs, the game’s overall pace doesn’t match it. CotM felt like a nail in the coffin.

anyway that’s really negative but Circle of the Moon just bothers me a lot, mostly due to me being an eternal mourner of the classic castlevania formula.

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What’s the best of the classic formula, in your opinion? I haven’t really played the classic ones very consistently, excepting Super Castlevania IV. I might go back and beat one of those as a comparison to Aria/SotN.

But yeah, everything you said about CotM I agree with. I really liked it as a kid despite all that, but I don’t think it’s very enjoyable when I have actual time limitations. Can’t be dealing with this shit.

I like the magic system though. Combining cards is a really neat way of going about it, even if it gets predictable after a while.

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OH yeah and also

I haven’t mentioned Harmony of Dissonance at all! That game has the best map gotcha of all the SotN likes in my opinion. Unlike SotN where the gotcha is saved for the end, this one is in the middle where you realize that you’ve been swapping between two castles rather than transporting between one contiguous castle. It’s a neat twist, and it makes revisiting those spots you’ve been at before more enjoyable, since you can go in the alternate dimension version instead of the one you’ve already seen.

Also the colors are garish and I Really Appreciate That.

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I’m gonna be completely honest and say that I haven’t played Rondo of Blood or Bloodlines, and only some of Castlevania Chronicles/Vampire Killer, but they’ve all been buried in my backlog long ago. A few years back I played the hell out of the original CV in a personal choice to stop scaring myself away from “hard games” (thanks in large part to Game Center CX) and completely fell in love with how meticulously paced it was. At the time I would tell my friends it was a “perfect game.” Nowadays, I can see that the powerups aren’t the most balanced (all you really need is holy water, and even then using that to cheese Death is more of a circumvention than a solution).

I haven’t played CV II but no matter how many times I consider approaching it, the legacy of its bizarre design flaws deters me. CV III is supposedly a good sequel, but I remember there being at least one level where you’re required to wait for blocks around you to melt away, I think? It was so weird and I hated it. The mechanic of sticking to ceilings with one of the characters was incredibly difficult, too. There’s also the argument that having that many character choices dilutes the focus that CV I had, similarly to how Portal 2 dilutes the Portal 1 structure. But your mileage may vary on that kind of thinking. I never beat CV III, but maybe some day I will give it a fairer shake.

SCV IV is technically incredible and fun, but the loose-whip mechanic largely destroys the difficulty, and takes away from the “dance” that you do with enemies in a classic CV formula. Love using it as a swinging tool, though! Wish that factored in more.

CVC/Vampire Killer seems perhaps closest to the original forumla and pacing, since it was made around the same time, I think…? There was a particularly great fight with a boss on a deteriorating raft, from what amount I played.

Oddly enough, despite what most people say, the more playthroughs I watch of the N64 iterations, the more I wonder how a classicvania could have worked well in 3D. It has a lot of similar design philosophy, albeit clumsily implemented.

Konami’s relationship with Castlevania was always pretty weird (looking at the Japanese titles for the games, you can see their confusion), but it always bummed me out that they opted for Metroid clones and then eventually God of War clones (the worst of all possible timelines).

EDIT: oh wait you asked which one I thought was best. Until I get Rondo of Blood, Bloodlines, and Vampire Killer played through, I’m probably going with the original.

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Man, although I’ve played them, mostly I’ve just watched every Castlevania TAS there is, and I know exactly the places you are talking about, even if I watched them at Maxim-speed.

Ecclesia’s crab is a love it or hate it boss. It’s not really hard, but it requires a bit of patience. I like it, personally.

CotM has bad everything feel. There’s nothing in there that clicks with me. (Pretty funny that new TAS tech continues to be found, though. Sure, let’s just walk on air so we can make this jump, why not.)

Harmony of Dissonance has a neat gimmick but theres’ a problem where literally half the rooms in the castle are just zigzag staircases. I literally can’t remember more than a handful of places that aren’t just having you walk up and down diagonally. Music is probably the best of the portable games; its rough sound really works in its favor.

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I loved Aria’s selection of weapons. I love that the legendary Excalibur is a usable sword but because Soma isn’t Arthur, it’s still attached to a gigantic rock and in effect becomes a gigantic hammer. Also because it takes place in the “future,” Soma also gets a Positron Rifle from Eva along with the Lance of Longinus.

Speaking of guns, I totally did a run of Aria using just handguns. It took forever but I felt pretty cool doing it. Until I got to bosses with a billion health. Actually, I probably never finished that run, oops.

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Aria’s just missing a good soundtrack, and maybe a bit of weirdness overall. The instrumentation is so dinky and flavorless and it does a huge disservice to any of the decent compositions, like the themes for the castle corridor or chapel. It seems like each of the GBA entries has something significant and good about it that the other titles lack. Circle of the Moon has a castle that feels spacious, big; Harmony of Dissonance has brazen weirdness. With Aria, it’s harder to say, but maybe it’s just… general balance, or the pacing. Its castle is much better designed that Harmony’s and if it doesn’t have the spaciousness of Circle’s it at least has cool things to look at.

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oh actually you know what I basically did get the 3D castlevanias I wanted in the Souls games

carefully planned enemy placement with encounters that are specifically tailored to how the interactions between enemy and player work on a moment to moment basis, and you have to think about your choices before making them, because they’re dedicated and can’t be canceled partway through

funny that it took til DS2 to get a whip weapon, though. not that it was any good.

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Problem solved in Bloodborne?

SB thread turns into Dark Souls thread, news at 11

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Haven’t had the opportunity to play Bloodborne yet! Looking forward to that, though.

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Dark has three whips.

Here are some recent edits I did of Aria joints




Also,

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Oh, you’re right! I have no idea what I’m talking about.

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That stairway is fantastic.

Also, HoD I think has a very underrated soundtrack. It’s pretty amazing to hear it fight against the low sample quality.

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Today-ish I learned that that one “Koumajou Densetsu” Touhouvania fan game has a sequel!

Also, does anyone know if there are any Castlevania romhacks that are worth writing home about? I’ve been exposed to more interesting hacks in general lately, so my hopes are up.

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where’s aderack when you need him