Finished Aria of Sorrow
Mar. 12th, 2022 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkI finished Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. A great game, I enjoyed it a lot.
On Thursday it was already hard to resist the urge to read everything about the game online and I persuaded myself that reading about boss fights I had already fought would be safe in terms of spoilers. Which it mostly was, but I did also find out that the gargoyle soul would give me petrification immunity, something I had been hoping for for a while. So I farmed gargoyles until I got that soul, then did that one Arena challenge until I got Balmung, the "legendary sword of the dragon slayers," and with that – and the Medusa soul that lets me hover in mid-air and conveniently avoid many attacks especially in the second phase – I beat Balore on my second try. Now that I could become a bat I did a lot of backtracking and had already discovered more than 90% of the map when I finally faced Graham. The first time I got the short ending, then I equipped the three souls mentioned by the books, fought Julius, and then fought Chaos. That was fun!
I also got so many shiny weapons. After Balmung, which was fun to use, I then bought Ascalon ("famous sword of the dragon slayers") and almost immediately afterwards I found Claimh Solais, the "sword with a sparkling blade" – the description seems underwhelming in comparison ^^ I later also found several others, including Kaladbolg which I used against Julius, but Claimh Solais stayed my favorite.
And I discovered 99.8% of the map!
On Friday I used an online map to find the last hidden room (it had pudding) and complete the map. Also thanks to a tip online, I defeated the Chronomage and got their soul and can stop time now – that sure would have been useful before ^^
I got 72.8% of souls.
Then today I tried out the Boss Rush, and it became immediately obvious just how much my strategy in boss fights was "always have plenty of healing/mana items at hand" when I suddenly did not have them (except the rotting meat, fortunately I have the Flesh Golem Soul, but still, not much.) I narrowly made it past Death and even more narrowly past Balore (I stood in the corner to heal a lot) and then died to Graham very quickly. Hm. I thought I was probably done with this game, but now it is tempting to at least play around some more, level up a bit and maybe collect a few more souls, to beat the Boss Rush…
Unfortunately the sequel "Dawn of Sorrow" is not available on Steam and I'm not interested enough atm to try and figure out how emulators work. Maybe one day. Not sure yet I want to play "Circle of the Moon" or "Harmony of Dissonance" which are also in the Advance Collection, maybe later.
On Thursday it was already hard to resist the urge to read everything about the game online and I persuaded myself that reading about boss fights I had already fought would be safe in terms of spoilers. Which it mostly was, but I did also find out that the gargoyle soul would give me petrification immunity, something I had been hoping for for a while. So I farmed gargoyles until I got that soul, then did that one Arena challenge until I got Balmung, the "legendary sword of the dragon slayers," and with that – and the Medusa soul that lets me hover in mid-air and conveniently avoid many attacks especially in the second phase – I beat Balore on my second try. Now that I could become a bat I did a lot of backtracking and had already discovered more than 90% of the map when I finally faced Graham. The first time I got the short ending, then I equipped the three souls mentioned by the books, fought Julius, and then fought Chaos. That was fun!
I also got so many shiny weapons. After Balmung, which was fun to use, I then bought Ascalon ("famous sword of the dragon slayers") and almost immediately afterwards I found Claimh Solais, the "sword with a sparkling blade" – the description seems underwhelming in comparison ^^ I later also found several others, including Kaladbolg which I used against Julius, but Claimh Solais stayed my favorite.
And I discovered 99.8% of the map!
On Friday I used an online map to find the last hidden room (it had pudding) and complete the map. Also thanks to a tip online, I defeated the Chronomage and got their soul and can stop time now – that sure would have been useful before ^^
I got 72.8% of souls.
Then today I tried out the Boss Rush, and it became immediately obvious just how much my strategy in boss fights was "always have plenty of healing/mana items at hand" when I suddenly did not have them (except the rotting meat, fortunately I have the Flesh Golem Soul, but still, not much.) I narrowly made it past Death and even more narrowly past Balore (I stood in the corner to heal a lot) and then died to Graham very quickly. Hm. I thought I was probably done with this game, but now it is tempting to at least play around some more, level up a bit and maybe collect a few more souls, to beat the Boss Rush…
Unfortunately the sequel "Dawn of Sorrow" is not available on Steam and I'm not interested enough atm to try and figure out how emulators work. Maybe one day. Not sure yet I want to play "Circle of the Moon" or "Harmony of Dissonance" which are also in the Advance Collection, maybe later.
