The third Castlevania installment for the Game Boy Advance, bringing the tale of Castlevania to the 21st century and putting players in the shoes of Soma Cruz, a seemingly-normal guy who has the power to absorb souls of the castle's demons.
We're another day closer to the end of E3. Doesn't that sound swell? I mean, sure, it's really only just started, but there's no reason we can't be optimistic about it.
Talking of optimism, what's more friendly and inviting than a gothic castle full of demons? Not a whole lot, is what. The Week of the Randomizers continues today with Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, perhaps the second best of the IGAvania spacewhippers and certainly the easiest technologically-speaking to put through the randomization gauntlet. If you're not sure what a randomizer is and whether or not it's for you, be sure to get caught up with this in-depth A Link to the Past Randomizer LP, and maybe check some of the other Randomizers we've looked at during E3 2018 by referring to the table at the bottom of this blog. Just hit PgDn a few times; there's more than a few screenshots in your way.
Day -1: "A Arrival of a Nice Ass or Two"
The Game: Konami's Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. (Anyone looking to play it today might want to check the Wii U Virtual Console while it's still active.)
The Rules of the Randomizer: Aria of Sorrow is functionally similar to A Link to the Past in terms of randomization potential, in that so much is contingent on finding out where the randomizer has stashed all the progression-necessary items. That said, this one's a little more straightforward because of how the IGAvanias tend to gate off so much of themselves from those without the right gear: for instance, if 70% of the game is inaccessible until you find the double-jump, there aren't a whole lot of places it could logically be hiding. (Far as I know, the creator of this randomizer has ensured it's possible to finish the game by not stashing necessary upgrades in places you can't reach without them.)
That said, for as simple as the AoS Randomizer is, it can create some big sweeping changes to the game's challenge level if nothing else. You essentially have three flags you can activate: the first randomizes the souls and item drops that you get from enemies, the second switches all the item locations in the environment (including the sconces that give you special souls, like the double jump), and the third randomizes Hammer's storefront, the prices for the new items presumably based on their sale value.
The difficulty these randomizers provide, it must be stated for the record, doesn't necessarily correlate to the standard degree of challenge you'd normally be facing with the game's bosses, traps, and level design. You'll probably find a lot of powerful items early on that'll mitigate most of that trouble. Instead, the true difficulty (with AoS at least) comes from figuring out the wholly new path to the true ending. If you're not quite sure what I mean, I'll get into more detail with the screenshots, but suffice it to say that there are certain wrinkles in this randomized run that'll have Aria of Sorrow veterans (and speedrunners, especially) sweating bullets. (Oh, and since I'll be talking about true endings and such, there might be a few spoilers to that effect.)
The Playthrough:
Welcome to Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow randomizer! I didn't kill that girl, by the way. She was like that when I got here.So the intro plays out normally enough. It's been a few years since I last played AoS, but I specifically remember that the Winged Skeleton, which is a "Bullet Soul" (something you activate to damage enemies but costs hearts/mana, effectively the same as sub-weapons), is always the first one you get. It's a fairly basic ranged Bullet Soul that I imagine will be outclassed pretty quick.Right after entering Dracula's castle you get your endlessly spawning zombies. The randomizer doesn't have an option for randomizing the monster placements; probably for the best, because almost anything else can kill me at this level.I'm lucky enough to find a Combat Knife as the first drop. The range is the same as the spork I entered the castle with, but the damage is significantly improved.Likewise, the Whip Sword here balances decent damage output with significant range. It'll be my go-to for a while.Curiously, the next item I find is "Castle Map 3", which only covers some late-game areas like the Floating Garden. Not that maps are all that useful in this game.My first random soul! Got this from some skeleton small fry. At this stage of the game this Bullet Soul would require my entire bar to cast, so you know it's good.The first boss of the game, Creaking Skull, isn't much of an opponent even if I didn't have a stronger-than-usual weapon. To reiterate, the difficulty of the randomizer lies elsewhere.Oh hey, it's Orlox's Suit. One of the best armors of the game, just sitting over here near the first boss. At least I won't have to worry about dying before finishing this LP.The yellow Enchanted Souls provide a passive effect, in this case a very handy regeneration effect. Got this from a bat, which seems like a good deal.Ah, here we go. I'm a big fan of weapons that have some range to them, and the Partizan spear is a mid-tier weapon. I'm not actually sure if the randomizer includes the Hard Mode-only weapons (which are way stronger), but I probably don't need the extra firepower right now.Tee hee. Oh wait, "ripple".Here's one of those soul sconces I mentioned earlier. In the core game, they have specific souls that are often required elsewhere, but not always. I suspect a few extra were added in by the randomizer, but I can't be certain.At any rate, this is definitely one of the Guardian Souls (the blue ones, which have an active effect if you hold down a button) that you're supposed to get early in the game. The extra hang-time while gliding down gets you to a few new places.Oh hey, I just saw the E3 trailer for that. Seems really cute! (This game's Giant Ghosts are not cute, unless you have a thing for big skulls.)So glad the game didn't choose to randomize the save room locations also. Then again, I'm not quite sure how you'd pull that off.I'm sure this was a weapon or an accessory at some point. Not a random cream soda. Hey, when you play a randomizer, expect to lose as often as you win.OK, now here's where we get slightly spoilery. In the core game, the Ancient Book items gave you hints of the three specific Dracula-related Souls you had to equip before fighting the game's antagonist, Graham. If you don't recall, they were the Giant Bat (change into batform), Flame Demon (cast a trio of fireballs), and Succubus (vampiric health drain).However! The randomizer has also randomized the three Souls you need. If the true horror of this isn't dawning on you yet, it means you need to find all three Ancient Books (which could be anywhere) for the hints you need for the three new true-ending-essential souls (which, again, could be anywhere). "Ruler of the water kingdom" probably refers to the Triton enemy, but it's highly unlikely I'll get his soul from killing him.Ah rats, it's another Ancient Book but I can't reach it yet, not without a double-jump or the bat form. At least I know where to come back to later.One of the grey Ability Souls (unlike the others, these are always active and don't need to be equipped). I'm pretty sure this is the first one you're supposed to get too; it's used exactly once to access a new area, but is really just a handy ability to have for tough fights.Meanwhile, this Black Panther is a Guardian Soul I'd normally get late that would be big news if I was speedrunning the game. The sheer speed you can move at with this soul will make backtracking a lot faster.The Gold Ring's a nice item to get early. It's an accessory that doesn't give you much in the way of stat boosts, but will cause enemies to "drop more money". What this actually means is that the cash value they normally drop is upgraded by at least one tier: so a 10G coin becomes the next highest, which I think is 50G. It also makes all 100G bags into 500G and 1000G bags, so your cash reserves can build up pretty quick with this bad boy.This giant mouth stays shut unless you look away, which means it's the one place you need the Gravekeeper's back-dash to enter. It's fortunate I just found it then.The Great Armor's a tough boss if you don't have any weapons with a decent range to get past his shield, but the Partizan makes short work of him.I'm fairly sure you get this Ability Soul relatively early also. The slide is needed for a few areas I'd passed over already.The Final Guard is one of the toughest enemies of the game; essentially a bigger and meaner version of that Great Armor boss I just fought. The soul, as you might expect, is very strong also. I might keep this around for boss fights.Finally. The first big important traversal upgrade, and I had to complete a pixel-perfect jump to reach this room. Really could've used this a few seconds ago.I've neglected to show off some of the newly randomized drops from enemies. The bat, for example, has been dropping some very interesting items...Hammer's store has been randomized too, as I stated earlier. I don't think he'll sell key items, but he sure has some powerful late-game stuff. If only I could afford it (I didn't get far enough to test it, but Hammer's inventory increases after specific bosses in the core game, so it might occasionally get new stock the same way in the randomizer also).Before we stop, I just wanted to make sure that the Ability Souls I've obtained were found close to their original order. It could be that the randomizer left their placements relatively static for the sake of not screwing everything up. In which case, all that's really changed is the loot and soul drops.
Aria of Sorrow doesn't quite have the expansive range of alternative paths that A Link to the Past does, but I sort of suspected that might be the case. If it wasn't for the fact I was more familiar with Aria of Sorrow, this slot might've been taken up by Super Metroid and probably would've reached a similar conclusion. There's a lot of funnelling going on in these spacewhipper games; they want you to fight the bosses in a semi-set order, reaching new traversal abilities in the areas behind each boss room, and use that to access a higher-level area with the next boss in the sequence.
Taking away the traversal-enabling items, which seemed to be barely randomized, you essentially have the same kind of progression-skipping and item "cheating" that we saw in EarthBound yesterday. Fun, especially if you've beaten the original game more times than you can count, but it doesn't really shake things up in a significant manner beyond the insidious challenge of determining and finding the new correct trio of souls for that pivotal boss fight. If anything, I may have preferred the silly humor of the EarthBound Reshuffler's sprite switching and name generators, but I also think the whole item randomizer idea is still perhaps a little more apropos to a spacewhipper.
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