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jp's Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)
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| [October 15, 2004 11:26:55 AM]
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I did it! I finished the game and I defeated a "Belmont" too. I may not have played other Castlevania games but I can recognize the fact that in all the other games the hero is a member of the Belmont family. Cool. (I didn't kill him....)
The actual ending was not hard at all. This surprised me a little , but I also think that my strategy (use the death soul that creates flying sickles) was perfect. Anyways, whilst I'm happy to have reached the end, I'm also a little sad. I really enjoyed this game and look forward to other Castlevanias.
As a side note, once I finished it I could restart it playing as Julius Belmont. This is cool...to a degree, because he is a totally different character that works totally different. (no items, souls, etc.). On the other hand, I don't really feel like playing it all over again just to see if there is anything different. I am curious to know what happens when you get to the fight against Julius. (will Soma, the hero, show up instead?)
My final stats for those who care:
97.8% complete (must have missed a couple of secret rooms)
Time: 10:03:11 (just the right length)
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| [October 14, 2004 11:44:29 AM]
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It seems that Graham was not meant to be Dracula. I am!
I cheated a little however...
I had found these "books" that had only a phrase on them. Obviously they are clues of some sort...probably related to the "souls", but I wasn't sure WHAT they meant, or more precisely WHERE I was supposed to put their clues to use. So, I logged on to good 'ole gamefaqs and found myself an answer.
I did what I was supposed to and...now I'm Dracula. My current goal is to defeat some evil chaos source (that is what makes Dracula evil) before it consumes me. Cool, eh?
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| [October 14, 2004 12:20:24 AM]
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I'm at over 95%. There can't be much left for me to see, right?
I finally was able to get to the last place...on the other side of a waterfall. The trick (spoiler alert) was to use a soul that turned me into a demon...this demon picked up speed and was able to "pierce" the waterfall. Woohoo!
On the other side I found a not-so-good armor (compared to what I'm currently using) and.... in a hidden room.. an AWESOME sword!
Graham...here I come, get ready to diiiiieeeee! Bwuah ha ha ha... ;-)
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| [October 12, 2004 02:19:35 PM]
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I'm getting really close to the end now. The map is at a little over 90% completion. However, I've decided to wander around a bit and find those unaccesible areas...now that they are supposedly accesible.
I know the next "boss" fight is against this dude "Graham" (who thinks he is Dracula or something like that). I've been putting it off because there is this item on the other side of a waterfall I can't get. I really want to get it but I'm not sure how. I'm probably missing some soul I need to capture. I also took a look at my list of souls and I'm only at 40% which I think is pretty low. I'll have to work on that a bit more!
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| [October 12, 2004 02:19:33 PM]
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I'm getting really close to the end now. The map is at a little over 90% completion. However, I've decided to wander around a bit and find those unaccesible areas...now that they are supposedly accesible.
I know the next "boss" fight is against this dude "Graham" (who thinks he is Dracula or something like that). I've been putting it off because there is this item on the other side of a waterfall I can't get. I really want to get it but I'm not sure how. I'm probably missing some soul I need to capture. I also took a look at my list of souls and I'm only at 40% which I think is pretty low. I'll have to work on that a bit more!
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| [October 8, 2004 11:59:10 AM]
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I'm at around 85% complete now... at least that is what my map says. Curiously, the other saved game on the cartridge (belonging to the person who sold me the game) has about 94% complete...but there is no map! I'm expecting I'll find out what that is all about pretty soon.
I've spent the last couple of play sessions doing two different things. The first one was exploring new (remote) areas that had become accesible. One of these led me to a series of 4 rooms, all really close to each other, that where LOADED with REALLY tough monsters and situations. At the end of each of these rooms there was some cool item. Unfortunately, I feel that at this stage of the game most of the items I'm finding are cool sounding but not really that good. (they don't do enough damage or don't raise my stats enough). This is kind of lame because the sword I'm using (dragon slayer something or other) is completely incredible...thus shaming everything else.
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| [October 6, 2004 11:09:25 AM]
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I've just barely scraped past the 60% completion mark and the difficulty has gone up considerably. There are places where I die in under 5 seconds without making any progress! This morning in fact, I only cleared one boss! (defeating him got me the "fly power" however....that should be very useful)
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| [October 5, 2004 06:26:08 PM]
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I just found the "awesomest" soul ever. It belongs to some worm and it helps you heal 5hp every other second (or so) when you sit still. This power alone allows for a whole new type of tactic when playing this game! I love it.
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| [October 4, 2004 12:12:56 PM]
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I'm a little over 50% through and the difficulty has been ramping rather sharply. The last two boss fights have been a LOT more difficult than before. I've had to resort to using healing potions and other knick knacks just to stay alive.
I've consciously decided to avoid the standard solution that most people take when facing tougher odds in an RPG. In other words, I'm not "farming for experience". (or, killing lots of easy monster to get experience and level up). This is an easy thing to do in this game if you have the patience since each time you enter a room all the enemies are "reset". However, I trust that the designers have taken more care than that and allow for the player to play his way through without having to resort to such cowardly tactics.
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| [October 1, 2004 11:09:57 AM]
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I'm not at around 40% completion.
After teleporting back to the entrance to stock up on healing potions I decided to re-visit some of the places I had previously explored. In particular I wanted to see if I could get to some spots that where previously unreachable. Not all of them where, but I stumbled upon some completely new (and large) areas. Wow. Didn't see that coming!
I've been really amazed by the huge variety of enemies this game has. Some of them are really cool too. It goes to show how much care went into this game (unless Castlevania games always have boatloads of enemies). Anyways, the latest enemy is a giant chicken! Hahaha! No, seriously... It is a cockatrice (that looks like a gian chicken) that can petrify you by shooting beams from its eyes. It pretty much looks as funny as it sounds. The chicken is also pretty fat.
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| [September 30, 2004 12:17:32 PM]
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I'm up to about 26% through and I've been learning some more about this game.
One of the things I was curious about was gold. You see, when you destroy most of the lighting fixtures you get coins (worth a random amount of gold). I'd been accumulating these things for a while now (I had over 3,000 gold) and was wondering what the point was. Would I find a store later on?
Well, sure enough, I run into a dude that looks like some US Military commando, or something like that. He basically implies that he has set up shop at the entrance of the entire castle. The entrance? It would take me at least 30 minutes to walk all the way back there!!! Ugh.
Once again, a few minutes later I discover a little room with a teleport! Yay! I can now teleport between these rooms including the entrance. That should definitely save some time...
I love it when the things you need (teleport) pop up just in time. It shows that the designers did their job!
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| [September 29, 2004 12:02:41 PM]
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This game has some really cool stuff! When you defeat enemies there is a chance that you will "capture" their soul. This gives you a special ability that you need to have activated. The special ability can be an attack, defense or some other thing. Neat!
Apparently some of the "souls" are really rare and hard to get...so, the game gives you the option of trading them with other people who are also playing the game! How cool is that? It's sort of like a Pokemon-collect-them-all but with abilities your character can use in-game. Hmm...very interesting....
I'm already 20% throught the game and I just learned how to use some of the abilities (yes, I had to dig out the manual to find out that UP+B does that...sigh)
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| [September 27, 2004 11:58:08 AM]
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It is interesting to note the parallels between this game and Metroid:Fusion. So far, the action elements are relatively similar in terms of control as well as "feel". You run, jump, attack. Also, the levels seem to be structured similarly. There are places where you jump up a lot, places where you go down a lot, etc. In fact, even the map is similar!
On the other hand, Castlevania has a lot of RPG elements to it, while Metroid had very few. In Metroid you got new weapon-modes, more health bars and stuff like that. Here you get experience points and level up! You can also change your equipped items and so on. I'm not sure how much of Castlevanias RPG flavour is really RPG or whether it is simply "more options and configurability' dressed up as an RPG. In other words, if Metroid allowed me to go to a screen where I could swap out the different weapons and so on, would I be calling it an RPG?
Anyways...the game is fun though the save system was not very intuitive. (you have to press "up" in a special room. I got it to work the first time, but I'm not sure if it was automatic or just a fluke. Anyways, I had no idea what to do in the second save spot I reached...so I fumbled around like an idiot and then hit Gamefaqs (since I had the game manual at home). Oh well.
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| [September 24, 2004 04:39:29 PM]
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I have friends who have sold their souls to play Castlevania. I think I first saw a Castlevania game on a NES at a friends house. It was ok. I didn't like the whole whip thing. Give me a machine gun or a sword...but a whip?
So, my relationship to Castlevania games has been tepid at best. I've never played more than 5 minutes on any one. Never saw the reason too, they just weren't that interesting in my eyes.
So, here I am with a "new" Castlevania game willing to give it a try. After all, I was tepid towards Metroid and had a blast with Metroid:Fusion! I might as well hunker down and see how it goes. For now, my impression is "What? This thing is like an RPG!?!". Interesting...very interesting.
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