Because Soma is going to be born next month, I thought I'd play Aria of Sorrow again

Sorrow games were the worst of the Tansakuvanias.

God Tier:
SotN

High Tier:
PoR
CotM

Mid Tier:
OoE

Low Tier:
HoD
AoS

Shit Tier:
DoS

Nigga u wot. AOS is basically SOTN with shittier graphics.

Graham, Dario and Dmitrii turn 18 on the 11th of next month for what it's worth.

From what I've seen so far this playthrough the actual character dialog is handled pretty well. It's just everything else that's translated terribly.

It's actually better than SotN, as it isn't quite as piss-easy, and it doesn't double its length with some of the laziest padding imaginable.

Alucard is so uncreative with his names. Rebelling against Dracula? Take Dracula's name but backwards. Need a cover identity? Take Alucard, Engrish it up, and change a single vowel.

I remember Order of Ecclesia having an abysmal luck system too, making side quests just not fucking worth it. Luck should at least be promising enough to have half half a chance to get what you need if you're prone to combing over maps and exploring thoroughly anyway.

Oh, another thing I distinctly remember about that game is constant annoying fucking cat noises in a room early in the game as you try and figure out how to reach the cat. I don't think I ever did, hope a monster killed it, ruining those good tunes.

Is there an Aria of Sorrow GS/PAR code that increased the soul drop rate? I can find such a code for DoS (021C3AC0 E1A00000), but not Aria. Don't want to just cheat up all souls and max luck code has side effects (critical hit rate).

I don't remember having to grind souls in SotN.

Also SotN has superior boss fights and gameplay.

You don't have to grind anything in AOS either, the fuck are you talking about?
If you want to have 100% of anything, SOTN has even more grinding for rare drops and shit.
For true ending you need 3 specific ones, and they are either guaranteed or have super high drop rates, I don't remember grinding for anything.
Also half of SOTN bosses are reused as standard enemies later.

Which is why even PoR is better than the Sorrow series.

I remember that one taking a long ass time, even with the Soul Eater Ring.

Doesn't look like the credits say, and even MG doesn't have a listing of who did the translation for it in NA (they do have a listing for translator in the credits for the EU version though, from what it seems, perhaps given the need for more language options there?).

Just another reason to never play translated versions of video games

This is something that comes up in Discworld as well–when a vampire tries to hide her identity in a letter, she signs her name backwards. Vimes wonders if it's a side effect of vampirism that causes them to think this is effective.

However, I have to wonder if it's tied to some obscure part of vampire mythology. Perhaps a rule that forces them to not lie about their identity so they have to get creative about concealment while leaving the clues in plain sight

There's a common theme in Western mythologies about names having power, so perhaps that's part of it.

The soul system was cool as fuck, but it was really flawed. I remember there where a lot of cool souls which could have had some utility, but they where so weak that they where basically useless. Then you have fucking broken ones you just use the entire game. Dawn did it's soul system a bit better (It got rid of the straight upgrade souls, like 4->11 int).

I still can't get over they threw out their trademark artstyle for weebshit in dawn.

Cheaper, and they were hoping it would have mass appeal.

...

In the vampire story "Carmilla" the vampires must keep a name made of the same letters. That's an early written example of that bit of mythology.

sonyggers get out

Aria of Sorrow is just a lackluster rehash of SoTN just like every post-SoTN Metroidvania except for Ecclesia, which sort of worked because it kind of tried to be a different game.

Unless you are playing some kind of hard mode romhackgimme please, this doesn't matter at all since everything dies within 5 hits from any weapon.

Nah, it's actually relatively important in Aria of Sorrow because a lot of enemies resist slashing weapons quite well (___ Armor, constructs). This is especially so if you go off sequence: I actually wound up in the clock tower (via floating gardens) after getting double jump without even trying after getting double jump and had to use Skeleton to kill a lot of enemies in a reasonable manner (though this did stop as soon as I got Mystletain because in addition to being far better in raw strength than my other options Holy fucks everything).

Doll is good but I liked Red Minotaur. Could hit 3 times while you spam frame cancelled Claimh Solais

This legitimate happened to me the first time i saw Persephone though i felt bad killing her afterwards.

Too bad this one isn't possible.

Dawn of Sorrow is fun with patches to fix luck, remove touch screen waggle, add AoS style portraits and make enemies always drop souls. Easy souls makes upgrading weapons actually useful, though even with this they still do less damage than throwing weapons with the bomerang skeleton's soul.

Does that work on any version of the game, or only foreign versions?

Good taste. One of my favorites, and I still have my Japanese cart somewhere. Reminds me of the good old days bugging out the card system, overflowing the experience counter at level 99, and sequence breaking the game.

US version.

Shit

Congrats you have got over it, I still feel bad every time I have to kill theme, tho they sure did a great job of making us drop our guards probably first time we played the damn game.

Oh one thing Aria did wrong, as we got the better soul, like you said, substitute just made old souls fucking useless, and it was kind of lame, I mean they could have even made it work, if they gave us lots of soul combos, that is one thing that we all might have desired at one point, and just the simple idea of being us as the Giant Bat being able to use bat sonar made me rock hard, it was something so simple, like this game has the shit called "physics" fucking woah.

With that, the rest of your list is garbage. Nice bait, though.

What's the point?

I used to spend hours trying to look for new combos but the truth is there are really a few. As I said, I'm happy with amount rather than usefulness, but it's even better when you get a reward for using them cleverly, and even better is it's functional.
It was the biggest error of PoR, all Charlotte spells and Jonathan sub-weapons were cool and plenty, but they barely interacted with anything.
HOWEVER
You still get cool stuff like using the Dark Rift to suck Zephyr's bones like it happens in DoS.

This picture made me think two things when it was created first.

1) he is seriously commited to his girl.

2) or maybe "what are you fucking gay?"

3) he is a normal man, who saw two naked ladies and decided the wisest thing to do without simply pushing his luck, take a bath with them till things can go forward, beautiful chicks first demon later.

That being said Alura une sits on soma's lap when we summon her in DOS, and says "soma kun" in the most waifu voice ever, classy Dos.

I had it in my head that it was a common one, considering I got mine on my first kill.

They should have had it to where you get your first soul from a monster after killing x amount of them, then any further souls from that monster are subject to RNG. That way you can at least get a copy of each soul without grinding forever, and if you want to power them up with more, you have to grind for it.

I tried to keep searching for combos for over an year back them, I don't even know what sort of bullshit I tried, I tried using a final sword with the shadow knight soul in hope of some sort of buff will happen, atleast things like Giant Bat being able to unleash few blue crowd was awesome.

I might have even tried combining the nightmare with anything that looked remotely combinable with something that is supposed to be a horse, I tried to combo soul of demons to have my heart broken, whoever made few combos was a great person, whoever has the idea of soul combo was worthy of our gratitudes.

About the time stop thing, I felt like it has to do with the gamer's creativity and being able to put two and two together, I mean that is how we discovered soul combos, yet I wish some souls would be more Sherill in more ways, such ass fire based soul such as werewolf and byron being able to dry up mudman, or set wood golem on fire, their were so many possibilities, never mind.

One thing I loved about AoS and Metroidvanias overall is their bestiaries. Aria ranged from common, funny and intimidating, the Legion was amazing when you used headphones, those pale formless dudes and then the fetus inside the cage were very memorable, and same goes with Headhunter, I wished it made an appearance again, because decapitating a woman, then an old man and a lizard was shocking on a handheld game, and even more with all those years in it's collection as background. Why would he collect those heads? Why attack in it's first form as a woman with a glorified shank? I loved Headhunter.

I liked the idea of Harmony of Despair.

And filtered!

Not to mention how Balore just crushed the Bat that was supposed to be a boss, all those were some seriously well done designs, I mean they were burned into our hearts, they radiated the substance that made lots of monsters unique.

...

The idea behind the soul system was that you would trade them with other players. Unfortunately, even when the games were new it was hard finding someone else who had a copy of the game and two of a specific soul you wanted.

It was a bigger shock because Giant Bag would be a classic Castlevania boss, and to see it get killed like a bitch was cool.
Other cool designs or battles were Adramelech, Brachyura and that shadow dude in Ecclesia.

It could work with PAL or Nipponese release, I've just never tested it.

Balore was my favorite boss in AoS. I remember walking into the boss room for the first time thinking "ah, the bat boss, this is gonna be easy" and then immediately

The only bad thing i can think about COTM is the items system, no equipment lying around the castle to take except for that armor you win after finishing the arena and no shops, you can only get items from monster drops. when you try to speedrun the game the best you can get is a steel or gold armor, a few useful spells and two cheap accessories that can't do shit to your stats. Also some people can't stand the chunky controls like the tapping left or right two times to run and the (almost) uncontrollable jumping after running, i was never uncomfortable with the controls as they get quite normal for me.
Other than this, is not a bad game and i think is the closest thing for a classic Castlevania gameplay inside a Metroid-style map exploration game and the DDS gives the game some depth with all the magic combination you can cast with the cards. also Nathan Graves is the manliest MC of the GBA trilogy.

If you're planning to play DoS after this i suggest to grab and patch your game with this.
romhacking.net/hacks/3407/
This will make much less tedious to obtain all the souls ingame, also there's a patch that removes the stylus elements from the game if you're interested.

Alright, (1)

Pretty much, but that's pretty much why I consider it both the worst metroidvania and the worst classicvania all at once. You have to be really special to manage that.
Don't get me wrong, is by no way a bad game, is just mediocre at the 2 things it tried to emulate. Soma is manlier with the whole protect Mina.

I enjoy the Igavanias but I hate that every one of them requires me to go to GameFAQs to look up how to avoid the bad ending and play the second half of the game.

Now I'm (2) and shoo

I'd actually say Portrait of Ruin handled enemy drops very considerably better than the previous two games.

Symphony of the Night belongs at the bottom of the trash heap with Harmony of Dissonance.

Everything in this post is wrong. Maybe not PoR

You did not depended completely on drops, just some enemies gave you abilities/spells.
How'd you go about drops, user? I think metroidvanias should have the majority of it's items on the maps. Drops are fun but depending on them is a nightmare, but it's not like you require to have all souls to finish the game.

But I actually liked both, fag. HoD isn't as bad as people say, the music is pretty good once you get past the chiptune. It's only sin is the lack of customization and equipment, and being a carbon copy of SOTN.

That's a pretty big point though. A huge amount of the problems with the game are exactly the same problems that Symphony of the Night had and stem directly from trying to ape it so hard.

Don't forget the crappy controls too. Juste controls like he's made out of lead.

Honestly I'm not sure if random item drops can ever really be balanced right. I've always wanted one of these sorts of games to try ditch the level-up stat progression and handle power increases entirely with found equipment. But the problem of random drops may still remain. At that point we might as well ditch the RPG stuff entirely as a failed experiment and go back to Metroid.

Or, you could, you know, explore and get the good ending naturally.

I'm sorry they don't make the games for retards

Or what about PoR?
Muh guides

Even CV2

Except for 2 I beat all "Igavanias" without looking at a single walk through, only time I got the bad ending was in AoS because of the 3 souls meme but it took me about 10 minutes to figure it out.

If you had paid attention, you'd see that the silhouettes of the monsters are on the covers to those books.

Only requires you to get the sanctuary spell, which can be found by exploring. You never need to do quests to get the good ending.

Not an Igavania, and everyone agrees its English translation is bullshit.

I don't remember needing to complete any quests other than the very first one in order to progress through Portrait of Ruin.

Aria of Sorrow's secret ending is pretty arbitrary and cryptic though.

They are hinted as Dracula's powers, how the fuck it would make more sense to be nightmare?
That PoR bug was fixed in the european version as well. You just sound dumb, nigger.

But it managed to be worst than SOTN, since SOTN at least had shit ton of items that had cool gimmicks.
Juste is alright, he is really fucking fast and that cancel is awesome. Maxim handles even better.

The problem with handling the whole thing with items is that your old items become useless and that sucks. I'd like that all the items could be useful at all points of the game, and that at the same time all weapons had a gimmick, object combination, secret effects, shit like that, like the shield rod or Alucard sword.
Ditching RPG elements would mean dropping the exploration since the whole point of exploration is getting items. Sure, you can get power-ups, but they are boring as fuck, like Metroid or Guacamelee. I like the RPG elements if solely to collect equipment and to give me a reason to explore. If you drop them, at least do it for the item based gameplay.

Metroid has plenty of exploration without RPG shit, not sure why you say that. The action is generally more engaging than the Castlevania games that try to ape it as well.

You're only prompted to look for energy tanks and missile expansions. The only reason the action is more engaging is because Samus can point up and down which makes it for a more challenging gameplay instead of just hitting straight in front of her. Basically, what makes Metroid more engaging is that she has a gun and the Belmonts don't.

Okay, what you're saying is exploration only counts as exploration if its optional.

whoops

I don't think that's true at all. What makes the action more engaging is that, in the absence of random equipment and level-up mechanics, Metroid games have somewhat tighter control over how powerful the player can be for a given fight.

Alright, hopefully works with Japanes-

Well shit, that's completely worthless then.

But that's also optional in Metroid, you don't need to get the tanks or the missile expansions to clear the game and they usually hidden in stupid places that require you to carpet bomb the place.
The difference with Castlevania is that you're not only looking for goddamn power ups to make your life bigger, you're looking for weapons and armors that might or might not be what you want or need. There's this special feeling you get when you break a wall and get the shield rod, for example, or get a fire sword compared to your normal looking sword.

Yeah, that's what I said but with better words. It's not like anything you get makes you hit harder, and the ones that do are obligatory or limited. I don't give a shit about that, though, if I wanted that I'd play Metroid, not SOTN. Guacamelee also went with Metroid, as in it was still close combat but no RPG elements or modifications, you depended entirely on your combos, which is cool.
What I'm saying is that no game have done what Igavanias have, not even Shantae, and it seems pretty easy to improve, and yet. I'm really thirsty for more since I lost count of how many time I went from SOTN to OoE and forth So I'm praying for Bloodstained, and so far it looks like it fits the bill as lackluster as it could be

Why? Is the Japanese version superior? Usually the european version is.

Foreign localizations of video games tend to be abominations in both directions, so I never play NA versions of Japanese games or JP versions of NA games.

You're misunderstanding what I meant. What I'm saying is that finding things like the morph ball, spazer, missiles, and screw attack, or even just the next area to go to, are also part of exploration.

Neither Dawn or Aria have critical hits. That's SotN where when you play on luck mode you want to find the Baselard and then everything melts in a sea of crits.

It's like a 1% drop rate supposedly, and luck in Aria of Sorrow is utterly worthless.

What patch is this? I actually tried codes on my flash card once to get rid of the seal drawing and make souls drop 100% but it made some hilarious side-effects like Rahab's fight attacking in a random way.

When playing level 1 hard mode of PoR my bread and butter was using Dark Rift a lot because it nullifies so many attacks. Time Stop was also super-helpful. Occasionally she'd use explosion or chain lightning to attack.

Alura Une best monster.

That's because the very best items are random but the game gives you plenty of strong ones so you don't have to farm. OoE does this too. DoS is the stupid grindy one.

I get your reasoning but it's pretty meaningless if you're just going to pirate the ROM. Pretty sure there isn't that much of a difference, you can always look for the regional differences, and if you don't find them online find them yourself you sound like that kind of autist

You're right, I misunderstood, but what I said is still true, that's not exploration per se, you're on a set of rails to get to the end and the only motivation you get to stray of it are some items that just inflate your life or your missile since the important stuff is usually mandatory and sometimes skippable
You can clear Castlevania without ever getting the shield rod, but it's pretty nice to have it. I don't remember the last time Metroid had a completely optional area like Olroc's Quarters either because there's no point for the game to have it, since you don't have to grind anything, Metroid is pretty straight forward.

Probably, but I'm also autistic enough that I'd rather just play it in Japanese and never acknowledge the foreignized version at all, even if it means putting up with the god awful stylus shit.

It is exploration, as you're not actually shown where you're supposed to go (and in the games you are, you aren't shown how to get there), and there are a number of pathways for you to try out. It doesn't matter if it's what you have to do, you're still exploring, looking around to find the path ahead.

Yeah, and those pathways usually contain just enemies or hidden power tanks or missile tanks. At the very least in Castlevania you usually get one or 2 items at the end of almost all hallways, plus enemies for grinding and drops, which makes the branching paths more engaging. In Metroid they're just annoying.

Do as you please, user, in perspective they both are terrible options anyway.

Dark rift is one of the most fulfilling spells. Some of Charlotte spells are pretty damn good, Jonathan doesn't have anything as satisfying to use as subweapon, even when leveled up.

I can see we just aren't going to agree. I consider the fun of exploration being the journey, but you seem to value the destination more.

He does however have effective subweapons like Bible, offensive form, and shuriken. Darts too if you backdash-cancel the animation. My favourite trick though is to use time stop with the knife subweapon and fists, it's literally Dio Brando.

Wait, the knives are affected until time begin again? Holy shit, user, I have ti give that a try asap.

Actually, I value more what you find along the way. What's the point of taking a branching if all you find is a dead end? At least a potion makes the trip more or less worth it. But yeah, not like you're in the wrong either, user, is just a matter of taste, I understand that Metroid can be perfectly enjoyable because I like it as well, is just that I like Castlevania more for how it makes things. There's people that like sequence breaking as well.

Yeah. Better is to use the bwaka knife since it continues to do damage while sitting in mid-air. Knife subweapon is just for style since you can stack a couple of sets at once.

It's multiple patches that all appear to work with eachother (check romhacking.net under Dawn of Sorrow), plus an AR code (021C3AC0 E1A00000).

Here come objectively correct scientifically proven igavania tier-list:

SOTN

AOS

OOE, COTM inb4 not igavania

POR, HOD

DOS, that multiplayer one, whatever the fuck it's called

Since this is a Castlevania thread, anyone here remember Curse of Darkness? I've been playing it and while I hate the weapon progression ranging from "you're gonna use this for an hour more" to "implying you'll get that drop," it's still a kickass game.

Do all patches work together without problems? Any chance of a prepatched link with all of them?

Harmony of Despair is pretty much the Destiny of Castlevania: the moment you realize that what you're doing is an endless grind, you hate it. Fun with friends though. If it weren't for the community dying off, I'd still be playing it. Thank christ.
Who /blendersoma/ here?

Sucking dicks is fun with friends.

Not having a stupid souls system is why I like Julius mode more than the main game.

This. I never bothered getting all souls, it's just a waste of time. It sucks because there is all this cool content which you'll never see, but whatever.

As is every terrible thing in life, user.
I actually met some damn good people because of Harmony of Despair. While I know it's objectively a 5/10 at most and can't stand playing it, damn if I don't have fond memories associated with it.

how many of the DS castlevnias are good?

also how was LoS

OOE is good.
The fuck is LoS?

the reboot thet everyone forgot, the console and handheld versions are massively different I was wondering if anyone has tried either

There are no good 3D castlevanias period.
I guess that extends to modern day ones as well.

the handheld version was 2.5d though

Castlevania beat em up?

But muh Lament of Innocence/Curse of Darkness

All three were good, though the first two had generic artstyles. Lords of Shadow was cancer, don't ever go near it.

All 3 DS games were good in different ways.

The first LoS was pretty good, MoF was the worst Castlevania game I've ever played and LoS2 was bogged down by incredibly stupid ideas. The best part was the artstyle, though.

I honestly like Curse of Darkness. It had incredibly boring level design, but I really liked the crafting system.

Weapon progression might be shit, but hell if it isn't varied and fun to use. What I actually hate is those familiars progression.
Just look for them in romhack and install the ones you think are better.

It tried to be something like esports at that point. It would have been better if they did what they tried in portrait of Ruin, a co-op Castlevania game. Imagine exploring a castle with 4 persons at the time. I can think about a few problems, but sounds better than stage based gameplay.

I bet you turn off items in smash.

They are all good.
As for LoS, is a nice game but a terrible Castlevania. I'd say it's better than GoW. The 3DS version have a PC port already, but it's shit.

Curse of Darkness is pretty good, fam.

This is what 3D castlevanias will never get right, but it's hard to do vertical platforming in 3D enviroment.

Fuck claimh solais is a cheap weapon in this game.

I think there are only three enemies that it doesn't beat the absolute shit out of.

I feel like this is a wise time to mention a certain game made by a castlevania fan that was popular in year 2010 if I am not wrong, and had some potential, only the aristocrats who knew java mobile game had hidden treasures, played this Chinese game.

I want to play SOTN
never played
what's a good site to download the ISO?

No one ever complained about it being hidden in the goddamn ass of the castle under the huge ship, with no hint as well because getting it was seriously worth it.

Emupara has always been great for me to download the roms, even the PSP roms.

Any way to download those games? They look neat, the protagonist is in Castlevania Fighter.

I guess downloading the game is not so hard if you follow my instruction, I can't say this is spoofing either since the game is very low profile, however their happens to be a sequel of this on the Android, it is called "castle of shadows", Google it up, I should not need to tell you further, that is unless you wish to play the chinese java cellphone game, then its another thing.

Bump

I was able to successfully locate a sprite tile 8x8 of Nathan that I was looking for and overrode it with junk, but to actually accomplish something? Man

How come Soma looks like a tranny if he's supposed to be Dracula?

Because Dracula does look like tranny?

Because Ayami Kojima only knows how to draw fujoshi shit.

That's not to say the gameplay wasn't good.
I think I just can't get into the grim goth atmosphere and I never was a fan of vampires.
Oh well.

Trannies aren't that beautiful, user.

Ayami Kojima is probably a fujoshi, period.

In nipland, nobody really cares if men are effeminate, or even if they dress up as women.

Ironically, they also regard tough bodybuilder guys as likely to be gay, much the same way we westerners see crossdressing men as probably gay.

The Burgers really fucked the Japanese people. Killing anyone with a drop of testosterone in their body.

It was that way long before they were even westernized; westernization actually discouraged a lot of the things that they just sort of accepted, like gay samurai, prostitution, and phallic luck charms.

Bump

Are you implying they're not?

It's generally not assumed to be true as much as with guys who dress in drag.

I can actually say the contrary. It's only natural for some men to want to be dressed as a woman since they usually wear prettier clothes. There's a difference between wanting to be a woman and wanting to dress like one, and the later reflects admiration and attraction towards them.
Now, for body building, you should have an unhealthy fixation with male body and looks which, if you ask me, is pretty damn gay. Most body builders I know are already metrosexual anyway.

...

It's not me, user, just look at Japans culture involving okamas. I see why a man would like to dress a woman without being gay, but I can't conceive a man putting oil in his muscle standing close to other barely naked man. It sounds gay as fuck.

Japs are sick fucks that fuck squids and pillows.
Fuck japs.
You are gay.

I'm cool with that. At the very least it beats DoS/PoR, and whatever the ever-loving fuck was going on with Judgement.

You've been watching too much stupid shit. Wanting to sex men is gay. Looking at Michelangelo, wrestling, or being in the same changing room as other men is not.

Super-irony since a lot of BL and yaoi is girly-men.

Waifu dakis are for hugging cuddling and snuggling, not fugging.

The thing to keep in mind is that a lot of that is more aimed at women than actual gay men, who I presume generally are more likely to be into the bara subgenre.

Appreciating human body, whether men or women, is not gay. Now fixating on male body specifically and to the extremes is completely different. Michelangelo had average muscles, he wasn't a damn body builder.
For any straight man being in a changing room should be awkward and you should always maintain your view above shoulders.
Yaoi is a fantasy for women, bara is what actual fags enjoy.
That was Iga being a fan of the Death Note artist, but the guy completely missed the point of Castlevania, it seems.
Also, my pic is better than yours, but nice panty shot.

They are sick fucks, but not only gay, the guy men aren't the ones that look like women, if something, those are the most popular with women.

Utter bullshit because the yaoi faggotry has guys who look like sissies, at best.

Sure
No

Woman like faggots because real men are too much to handle, kinda same as why some men like futanari, that is unless we all here believe BL readers are not degenerate whores worthy of being burned alive.

The design was not all that bad but the artstyle has always been disturbing, in dawn of Sorrow soma looked relatively nomal, but calling it Fujo shit might be an extreme, because those faggots happen to like men who literally look like woman.

Non-bara yaoi anime/manga does have it. So does shonen, and shoujo, and josei, and seinen…

Effeminate men being depicted everywhere only serves to prove my point that it's not a big deal over there.

His name in Japanese is Arukado, so really all he did was change a single character

Alucard's not a vampire though. He's a dhampir

All this luck based drop talk makes me wonder, what the fuck is it with japs and grinding? It's present in so many of their games that there has to be some kind of cultural reasoning behind it.

They just don't know better, they are used to games being like that, they don't know the basis for anything better and, honestly, I don't think there's one either, because, sure, you have things like Metroid, but there's so much you can do with it. Grinding gives you a reason to do the same thing over and over, as cheap as it might be, it's effectively like speedrunning.