[Now Experiencing] [Computer Gaming]I've previously narrated the enthralling story of how I came into possession of the Castlevania Double Pack for the GameBoy Advance. I've made known my thoughts about Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and how it possibly comes from a magical gaming nirvana where nubile houris dispense ambrosia and Starcraft sequels in idyllic gardens filled with hummingbirds, peacocks, and bargain priced pre-owned games.
Now the time has come for me to record my observations about the other Castlevania game included in the Double Pack, for the benefit of posterity and the furtherance of human thought. Future generations will no doubt thank me.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is a lot like Harmony of Dissonance. That is to say, it's a 2D eight-way scrolling platformer, with a strong focus on exploration, collection and combat, and a forgivingly easy level of difficulty.
The plot, such as it is, takes itself quite seriously, and has pretensions to depth and complexity. But it's actually just confusing and shallow, and can be best summarised as follows. It's the year 20XX, magical world of the future. Soma Cruz is a white-haired gadabout who... uh... does stuff, including, relevantly to the plot, visiting mysterious ancient shrines with his girlfriend. As the game starts he's engaged in trying to get into the girlfriend's pants when, out of nowhere, an eclipse occurs.
This is bad news, as it turns out that everyone's favourite villain Dracula was, at some time in the past, imprisoned within this very eclipse, along with his castle. While your suspension of disbelief is still wavering from this revelation, Soma is miraculously teleported into Drac's castle, girlfriend in tow, where he discovers that he's some sort of powerful warrior of darkness, capable of harvesting the souls of his enemies. As any decent warrior of darkness would do, he proceeds to explore the castle, lay the smack down on its sundry inhabitants, and save the day in classic videogaming style.
You, the player, control Soma, of course. You're kitted out with some basic weapons and a screen which automatically maps the castle as you explore, and sent forth into the castle to break open the proverbial can of whoopass.
The game plays much like Metroid or Harmony of Dissonance. To start with, Soma's abilities are fairly basic, and limited to jumping like a cripple and swinging a sword as though it were a nerf-bat. This naturally means that there's a large amount of the castle you can't initially reach. However, as you explore, you'll gain "souls", which you can equip to gain new powers. Each and every enemy type in the game drops a unique soul with unique powers, of which there are a couple of hundred in all. A large majority merely give you alternative special attacks, like the ability to throw fireballs or grenades, but some key souls provide power-ups such as double jumping, swimming, gliding, and the ability to walk on water.
As your abilities grow, you'll be able to reach new sections of the castle, confront new types of enemy (including powerful boss monsters), and gain new souls. There's an RPG component to the game, too. As you explore you find new weapons and armour, which not only improve your damage and defensive capacities, but also have different styles of attack and defence. There's a large difference, for example, between fighting with a whip or with a lance. Also, you gain experience from defeated enemies, which allows you to level up and improve the fairly rudimentary system of vital statistics that governs your damage, defence, maximum health and maximum magic.
Save points are scattered throughout the castle. The spacing of the save points is considerably better than in Harmony of Dissonance, and you rarely find yourself in a situation where you're miles from anywhere to save. Furthermore, the teleporters from Harmony of Dissonance return. Once you've unlocked the first couple of teleporters (roughly a third of the way through the game), you're able to start jumping around the castle like a vampire-slaying flea. This is important, as you'll regularly be backtracking to try out newly acquired abilities in places you've visited before.
Graphically, the game's nothing special. The visuals are sufficient to make the gameplay clear, and evoke a little mood, and not much more. You'll never find them annoying or confusing, but you're unlikely to particularly remember then when you're done. Similarly, the music starts with an overwrought pipe-organ number and then meanders through a series of forgettable faux-gothic compositions. Nothing jumps out as noteworthy.
On the whole, Aria of Sorrow is a solid platforming title that's well worth playing, and is particularly suited to those who like undemanding exploration-based gameplay. Considering if you see it in a shop today it'll almost certainly be at a budget price, it's hard not to recommend it. However, it does have a few issues that are worth mentioning.
Firstly, the game is quite short. Harmony of Dissonance was not a particularly long game, and Aria of Sorrow is about 30% shorter again, containing probably less than 12 hours of gameplay all told. In contrast to Harmony's two parallel castles, Aria only has the one, although it is fairly big. It's also quite easy - probably a little harder than Harmony but still not a trial for any gamer with a little experience in the genre. Aria wisely implements a cap on the number of healing items you can carry with you, which occasionally prevents the boss battles from devolving into the potion-chugging marathons from Harmony, but you'll still rarely be particularly challenged by what the game has to offer.
The idea of collecting souls is a good one, and adds a lot of fun to the game. Every time you kill an enemy there's a percentage chance it'll drop a soul (usually somewhere between 1 and 5% off the time), which means that the forced backtracking at least gives you more shots at getting those souls you're missing.
However, you're frequently required to change what souls you have equipped. Notably, the swimming and water-walking souls have to be swapped over on a fairly regular basis. The process for doing this involving pausing the game and moving through a couple of menus, and in the water-based portions of the game this is extremely frustrating. It seems like the sort of thing that could have been mapped to a shoulder button in some way. The soul interface could definitely have used a few tweaks.
It's worth mentioning you can actually swap your collected souls with other people, but they'll need to have their own copy of the game, and you'll both need to be using actual GBAs or GBA SPs, so it's unlikely you'll get to try that. Collecting souls isn't so exciting or rewarding that you'll feel excited about swapping, anyway.
Lastly, as with Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow features multiple endings. If you play through the game without an FAQ, you'll almost certainly get the bad ending, in which you're shortchanged out of the final boss fight. Getting the good ending requires finding three specific random souls and equipping them at a certain point. This is an excellent example of how NOT to implement alternate endings in a game, and could leave you feeling frustrated and cheated if you didn't know how to reach the game's true conclusion.
Nitpickings aside, though, Aria of Sorrow is a quality release, and if you get the chance to play it you shouldn't pass up the opportunity. It made my insides do happy dances, and I've definitely added the DS title Dawn of Sorrow to my list of things to play in the future. Check it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment