Game:

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (2003)

Duration: 7:32:21

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A longplay of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the GBA.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow was developed and published by Konami in 2003. This installment takes place in the year 2035 when a pair of high school students, Soma Cruz and and his girlfriend Mina Hakuba, are magically taken to Dracula's castle while watching a lunar eclipse. Once he arrives, a dormant power awakens in Soma. A strange man tells Soma that his new power gives him dominance over the monsters he finds there. Wanting more answers, Soma heads to the throne room.

This addition to the series uses the "Metroidvania" style of open exploration introduced by Symphony of the Night, but adds a new layer of gameplay by providing every enemy in the game with a soul that can be captured. Each of these individual souls have their own unique power which can be equipped by Soma to use in battle. This provides a great amount of variety for the game which compliments the Metroidvania play style perfectly, making Aria of Sorrow an often-mentioned contender with Symphony of the Night as the most popular Castlevania title.

In this longplay, I acquire every available soul, which earns the best ending to the game, and explore the entire map. Even though I use some soul sets more frequently than others, I try to at least demonstrate what every red and blue soul does, though I may have glossed over a couple (yellow souls just provide stat buffs or passive effects). I do not play the game like a speedrun, so there is some backtracking and grinding for souls, though I tried to keep it to a minimum (the Valkyrie soul in particular was stubborn). There is also a part where I stand in spikes and heal repeatedly; what I'm doing there is generating enough money to afford the Soul Eater Ring by using the Mimic's soul, which converts damage into money. As its name implies, the Soul Eater Ring increases the chance for enemies to relinquish their souls, cutting down on grind time in the future.

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