About to play this as my first Castlevania, what am I in for?Also general Castlevania thread
>>12867336You're starting with the best retro one, all the ones before will feel worse
Good God I love that game. Imo it's better than SotN, DracX, and LoI
>>12867336It's a great game but the story probably isn't going to hit as hard if it's your first one. It's probably my favorite CV game but it does kind of rely on you having some knowledge of the previous 20 years of the series
Aria is too cartoony for me.
>>12867336It will feel retarded easy if you've played any modern metroidvania like Silksong or Nine Sols.
>>12867359>but the story probably isn't going to hit as hard if it's your first one.nigga EVERY castlevania game is the same story.
>>12867408Except this one and it's sequel
>>12867336this gameit understands that at endgame you want to go fast, and delivers
>>12867336>About to play this as my first Castlevania, what am I in for?- Among the game boy advance castlevania games, Aria of sorrow is the best.- Also, i liked Aria of sorrow more than symphony of the night because in aria of sorrow after you beat the game, you can start a new game with most souls, most weapons, most items, etc.
>>12867336It's Symphony of the Night but worse graphics, music, abilities, and world design. The novelty and soul has been stripped away. Only interesting thing about it was enemy sub-weapon drops.
>>12867336it's actually kind of ridiculous how good Aria is, really should have been made for consoles honestly
Can jannies please insta ban all “what am in for” threads? How about you play the fucking game, and then you make a thread? It won’t take long, I promise.
>>12867539SoTn is worse because you're fucked if you want to swap subweapons, it sucks it took until aria for then to remove that stupid part of the games
It's the only good GBA Castlevania, so good choice!
>>12867657>because you're fucked if you want to swap subweaponsNo, you simply walk to a spot in the castle that has your desired subweapon. Is this too confusing for you?
>>12867668Complete waste of time though, should have been equipment
>>12867657just use a axe the whole game
>>12867675There’s no need to have access to every possible weapon at all times. And the subweapons don’t function the same way as equippable weapons.
Bootleg Metroids are not real Castlevanias. Play IV or Rondo instead.
>>12867336not starting with release order is cringe
>>12867336The best Castlevania game, and also a terrible introduction to Castlevania. Just start with the NES games instead.
Start with the worse than work your way to the best. So harmony < Aria < Circle
>>12867647Way to tell on yourself, newfag
>>12868932I’m aware this has been standard on /vr/ for years. I just have a high pain tolerance, and this thread was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
>>12867336The best GBA one. If you like metroidvania style, SOTN and Portrait of Ruin are similar as is Dawn of Sorrow (which is the direct sequel). Order of Ecclesia is a bit different, and more difficult (although these are not hard games really).For 'classicvanias' I think Bloodlines is the best. CV3 is great, but a bit frustrating.
OP here, I really like the game so far. I just reached Death, got my ass beat up, and decided to take a break for now. I'm level 19 by the way, not grinding for souls and just using what I get by playing normally, so I think I might be a bit underleveled for this fight...
>>12867336Unironically one of the worst Castlevania games I've ever played. I would suggest almost any other one except Harmony of Dissonance.
Is Circle of the Moon worth playing, anons?
>>12869672It's like the Richter mode from SOTN but you can level up, collect gear etc, and the whip can be customized via a pretty cool card system (combine 2 cards to get a unique effect). It's also decently challenging, which is unusual for a metroidvania style Castlevania, but that's because IGA had nothing to do with the game.That said, the always run fan patch is highly recommended, constantly double tapping is a huge chore, and there is no reason to walk ever.
>>12867336Love this game to death, it's easily my favorite GBA Castlevania
>>12867453I'm super pissed they changed the art style in the sequel. It looked more like Voltron than the Amano-lite art in Castlevania in Iga years. Compare this image to the op's.
>>12867336Great game but it's ridiculously short when you know what you're doing. Easily the worst clock tower in the series, they didn't even try with that one. As a game Dawn of Sorrow might be a little bit better, if not for the Magic Seals.
>>12870294>dozens of tiny flying enemies that knock you off platforms>spikes everywhere are clock towers in other cv games all like this? cause i hated passing through there in aria
>>12870232They hired the same artist for Portrait of Ruin too but then replaced them for someone good with Order of Ecclesia>>12870827Yes but none of them have quite as many spikes as AoS did
>>12870294>it's ridiculously shortThat's a good thing. The game doesn't waste your time and the random soul drops give it amazing replay value.>As a game Dawn of Sorrow might be a little bit betterObjectively wrong. The seals are a scapegoat, nearly all of Dawn's additions are for the worse. Don't get me started on the crafting system.
Bump
>>12871158I'm conflicted about the weapon synthesis. In every other game you're rewarded with gear for exploration (in SotN overwhelmingly so), in DoS you get only some armor. It's nice you can get Dainslef, one of the best weapons in the game not even halfway through, but you have to farm for it, because without that you only find crap.
>>12872817Even in Aria, you get better souls by exploring and fighting new enemies. The strength of a soul doesn't scale exactly 100% with how far it is into the game, but some of the best souls are from endgame enemies, and getting new abilities can't be a bad thing.In Dawn, you get better souls by standing in place and grinding the same enemy over and over. After that, any new souls you find will likely be inferior for the vast majority of the game. Throw weapon synthesis into the mix, and now the issue compounds on itself even further.>can hold 9 copies of a soul and not a single more>soul reaches its max level if you have exactly 9 copies>spend a copy on weapon synthesis>soul gets downgraded>grind another copy to get the soul back to max level>oh, but the weapon synthesis has branching paths>to get all weapons, you need to repeat this process that many more times>when you're done, don't forget to grind up your souls back to max level again>and if you've spent a boss soul, then tough luck pal>you can't get the boss soul again, nor the chaos ring, until new game plus It is genuinely awful.And like you said, Dawn has barely any weapons that were hand-placed on the actual map. Truly amazing metroidvania design where you're barely rewarded for exploring.
>>12870232There's a hack on cdrom that changes all the sprites for AOS style. It's awesome, I'm playing it right now
>>12873426There's one of these for Portrait of Ruin as well with QOL/bug fix stuff like the best vanilla Dawn of Sorrow hack has.>>12873259Yeah that's the worst part of Dawn of Sorrow is that there's no boss rush to farm the souls, you have to NG+ to make and have everything. I think Luck was also a broken stat like it was in Aria as well so the droprates on items and souls were shit and couldn't be properly boosted.
>>12867336I came here to post this >>12867337, and I'll add if you truly haven't played Aria before then you really should consider playing "Circle Of The Moon" and "Harmony Of Dissonance" first. Aria was my first, and It ruined the other two games for me.
>>12873470>I think Luck was also a broken stat like it was in Aria as well so the droprates on items and souls were shit and couldn't be properly boosted.Eh, I think that specific issue may be a little overstated. It's true that Luck is broken, but it's not like the drop rates rely on it, they're not that bad even without it.Eg. I played SotN on Luck Mode while wearing any luck-boosting equipment available. I farmed the enemy item drops like you would farm the souls in a Sorrow game, and believe me, it took a lot longer to farm the items in SotN.Also, Aria and Dawn's drop rates could still be increased by means other than Luck. You can wear specific items, like the Soul Eater Ring or the Rare Ring, and you can play on NG+ Hard Mode. Both of these increase drop rates considerably.
>>12870232not only the new style was bad, also the annoying spell to defeat the bosses.
I love the Julius mode in Aria, even more broken than Maria in Rondo. It's basically just go in and humiliate the whole fucking castle
Why does X86Kvania go so ignored? I'm playing it again and this might be my favorite game in the series, it takes a lot of elements of CV1 while also building upon them to have an identity of its own while providing a good challenge. Beside not having many official ways to be played I don't see why this game isn't as revered as games like III/Bloodlines/Rondo.
>>12874504I don't know man I feel the X68000 game might be the worst classicvania outside of the portable ones. It's just an uncreative remake of the original that is difficult not in a satisfying way like say Castlevania III but in a cheap annoying design way
>>12873730In the steam version of the game they did NOT fixed that problem: there are no options to disable the spells in the boss fights.
>>12874504Because 95% of all people who played it played the godawful PSX port; and even that isn't a lot of people
>>12867337>the best retro one,anyone who actually thinks like this should not even be on this board. Even if we're JUST comparing casualvanias, SOTN rapes this game.
>>12874429>Julius modeare you talkign about playing as richter (or someone who looks just like him) after you beat the game normally?
>>12875148>>12874504It wasn't included in PSOne classic (unless hacked)
>>12875660No richter is blue julius is brown and red
Holy fuck, Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance is such a slog. I've explored 113 percent of the game map (out of what I looked up online is a 200 percent map) and the game still hasn't given me any fast travel yet. If I get caught in a dead end, I have no choice but to backtrack. It also hasn't given me any new traversal abilities beyond the low slide and the double jump that I got way early on.Give me a reason to keep going. A lot of the time I'm just spamming the dash button to get to the next room as quickly as possible. This is the first Igavania game I've played in years, but I don't remember Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia being this much of a drag. I don't remember this much backtracking.Also, holy fuck the music is ass. I know now why people don't talk about HOD music like ever. There were 2-3 good tracks at the start of the game, but all the music after like the first 30 minutes of the game has been shit.
>>12875341>SOTN rapes this game.Maybe if you're a dumb nigger with no taste, I see why you might think that
>>12875836We warned you how awful the pre-Aria GBA games are
>>12875768how do you get him? is it worth to play the game again with julius? i played for like 5 min with richter and it felt like it'd just be a boring challenge run with his limited moveset
>>12875861Well, I never got that memo. The only thing I knew about HOD was that its colors were dogshit because of how Igarashi and his team had to work around the limitations of the GBA or some shit like that.And it's true. This game is garish as fuck in terms of colors. Beyond this, nobody mentioned the long list of other problems this game had, particularly the pacing, which, again, isn't helped by the lack of any fast travel. I really should have gotten like 2-3 extra traversal abilities by now. The only thing I really like about this game is the spell fusion system, but even this system is flawed as fuck, because of how slow your MP regen is. You're still mostly just using your whip. And you'll be whipping a lot, especially against the game's spongy-as-fuck bosses, each of which has like a bajillion HP combined with only 2-4 moves per boss.I have no intention of playing Circle of the Moon after this. I looked up a few bits of people playing it and it looks even duller than HOD somehow.
Also, I forgot to add: This game has ZERO breakable secret walls so far. What the fuck? 113/200 percent done and no breakable secret walls for roasted chicken or hidden items?
>>12875890CotM is not nearly as bad as HoD. Not even close. HoD is widely considered the worst Igavania, and deservedly so. CotM is... different, a bit rough around the edges, but it has a lot of great qualities. For me, I'd put it in the same camp as OoE: you either love it or hate it, but it's certainly not a bad game.
>>12875867Beat the game one time and name your new save JULIUS. Its like richter mode with no equipment and broken.
>>12875836I hated Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance: the main character feels slow, the music is horrible, the portals transport you to the alternate castle instead of transporting you to other areas of the same castle, etc.
how hard is cotm, bros? it looks interesting but i suck at these games
