Another Castlevania title for GBA. How great would that be? Perhaps I should say, how great is that? To me, it\'s greatly great. Considering how \"Circle of the Moon\" left a little to be desired and \"Harmony of Dissonance\" was noticably better but still felt a little too much like \"Symphony of the Night,\" I\'m expecting a lot from this new one. A whole lot.

GameSpot just uploaded this info. Keep in mind that this is all from the limited style content that becomes accessible only to registered users after a period of time, so if you\'re interested, you\'d better hurry over here now!

OK, first up, the title of the new game will be \"Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow\". No that\'s not a typo. It really is \"Aria.\" Interestingly enough, it will be breaking Castlevania tradition and taking place in the future. The game will follow the adventure of Soma Cruz, the game\'s main character.

The play style is similar to that of Symphony, Circle, and Harmony (as opposed to the classic titles) and naturally has some major differences between them as well. The classic sub weapons we\'ve grown to know and love... are gone. But in their place something equally innovative. No. More original and innovative. Instead, you will be able to absorb the souls of enemies (dropped randomly as items) and gain their attacks. Instead of hearts, the attacks will use your MPs. The neat part about all this is, you can trade your collected souls with a friend over the GBA link cable. Now if that isn\'t sweet, I don\'t know what is. Another interesting note is that unlike Circle or Harmony, your character isn\'t limited to his main weapon. In fact, the way you collect multiple weapons is very Symphony-like.

Next up, the graphics. Wow. Yeah. Just \"wow\". They\'re obviously better than Harmony, possibly even good enough to compete with Symphony of the Night itself. Again, wow. Here\'s the real bonus: unlike Harmony, the music quality in Aria won\'t take a heavy hit because of the crazygood graphics. This brings up the next point of interest. The music, in fact, will be composed by the same person who did Symphony of the Night. Wow again.

In short, it looks like this will definitely fill any emptiness left behind by Harmony or Circle, and possibly be the third game on my list to grab the title of \"Modern Gaming Masterpiece,\" (one of which being Symphony) but that remains to be seen. I\'m really excited, to say the least. Too bad the current realease is set for some time in May

So folks, what say you?

[Edited on 5·4·03 by KamikazeChicken]

They mentioned on the site that the future setting was handled rather well. Dracula\'s castle retains much of its traditional look and feel, and that the game does not suffer from any cheesy stuff you might expect like robo vampires or space zombies (thank goodness.)

Still, you should really do what you can to get your hands on Symphony. As great as Harmony was, it still has quite a few things that pale in comparison to Symphony. If you find it for a price that\'s even semi-reasonable you should probably take it. If you liked the two GBA titles, you won\'t regret paying a slightly higher price for Symphony.

So how much are you willing to pay? I\'m not trying to annoy the heck out of you, just trying to lend a hand. Amazon.com has it brand new for $30 US and cheaper used... Or is that still too much?

[Edited on 1·18·03 by KamikazeChicken]

Heh, I should\'ve figured you would\'ve already tried Amazon. But the shipping to Canada thing, right, I didn\'t even think of that. That makes two stupid errors on my part all in one post.:rolleyes:

Of course there are always other methods to get it, but those tend to test the morals of some and most likely shouldn\'t be talked about here, right?

Oh, and don\'t let this stop you folks. If you have anything to say about the aforementioned new title, by all means, say it.

What I need to say about this Castlevania title?

KILL KOJI IGARASHI. NOW.

He has singlehandedly destroyed the Castlevania series already, with his \'lets rehash SotN a billion times over\' analogy. Now he plans to make Castlevania Pokemon?! Konami has Yu-Gi-Oh, they don\'t need another Pokemonish game! Plus, he wants to make an online Castlevania game..which a good amount of my friends said was bullshit. At least they know what they\'re talking about.

All in all, I think the sibling and I are going to be former Castlevania fans sooner than we thought. Guess I\'ll just have to join the Goemon crowd..

Couldn\'t you argue that any sequel is a rehash of the original... wait. I think I see what you mean. Still, greed and curiosity always seem to get the better of me before logic does, so I just gave in ahead of time. Sue me. It\'s not like GBA games cost a fortune.

All I can say is: YAY! It looks so cool! The main charcter looks like a vampire so it may have somthing to with Alucard. My bro was looking at the grapics and we both agree that it looks like an PS1 game.

Another new Castlevania? If it\'s even half as good as the last one it\'ll be worth playing. I\'m really glad to see developers taking advantage of the GBA. For a while it looked as if the handheld was going to have a line up of a few great Nintendo re-hashes and a thousand crappy \'Army Men\' games. Hoorah for ingenuity.
Alucard? Er, while that would be super awesomely great, I don\'t think there\'s too much of a connection between the two. Unless I\'m missing something and making a fool of myself yet again.

Dude, just look at the screens! He (or she) looks like a desendent of Alucard!

Relative of Alucard? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. I\'d steer toward \'maybe not.\'

Then again, if you take a look at the opening movie (which you can grab from IGN) The last sentence reads, \"The pitch black sun is holding chaotic darkness together, trying to rouse a sleeping soul as if looking for its missing other half...\" Hmm, and this Soma character sure looks, dresses, and even moves (check out the gameplay movies also on IGN) like Alucard.
Perhaps they\'ll pull one of those twisted situations such as \"he is this \'missing other half\' and therefore is Alucard, but just doesn\'t realize it yet\" or something along those lines.

Then again, I still highly doubt that. More likely than not that little line there is referring to the inevitable resurrection of Dracula, rather than any ridiculous situation I could dream up.

Then again again, what I said the first time just might be right. Now that I think about it, it isn\'t very Castlevania-like to let some random kid try his hand at felling Dracula\'s dark army. Usually the protagonist has some ties to either the Belmont family or, yeah, Dracula himself.

I don\'t know. It could go either way or I could be *gasp* completely wrong. Only time will tell, as they say.

[Edited on 1·25·03 by KamikazeChicken]

look at this picture. soma has to be a descendant of alurcard. the white hair (vampire characteristic). plus the alucard sword, look at this, man.





[Edited on 25-1-2003 by Domo-Kun]

I\'m not saying that all the right evidence to point to him being associated with Alucard isn\'t there. Heck no. It\'s all pretty obvious, in fact. It\'s just that... you know... with Japanese games, anime, all that good stuff, there are times when you just can\'t guess what\'s going to happen. Especially when you think you\'re being clever by trying to expect the unexpected, \'cause they expected you to do that, then they really screw you over with something you truly didn\'t expect.
You follow?
So in situations like this, it\'s usually safest not to assume anything. (Even though I really want to)

And if you look at the official Symphony art (especially that picture in the game case behind the CD) you\'ll notice that what Soma\'s holding is not the Alucard sword. But if you judge based on that picture, then what Alucard uses in the game isn\'t the Alucard sword either. I know it really is, just stressing a point that there\'s no real official way to draw the Alucard sword.

Still, I\'m a little bit leery about making a definite decision one way or the other this early in the game\'s life. I\'d like to learn a little bit more first.

Oh, and one more thing.
Argh! May is too far away. I don\'t want to wait that long.:madgo:

[Edited on 1·25·03 by KamikazeChicken]

Okay. Dude. We are in the age of one hundred twenty eight bit tetrahedron supportin three dimensional graphics, and you look at a flat 32-bit sprite with no face and say \"Wow!\". Well, it looks much better than the NES ever could, but in our current age I personally don\'t take it to be very special. This is just my opinion and I\'m not calling anyone an idiot or anything.

:rofl:
What, are you expecting the GBA to pump out graphics like the PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube? :rolleyes: Heck no. Every GBA game is 2D. The tired old 2D/3D argument instantly becomes invalid because of that. Besides, the graphics on this game are better than a lot of other GBA games, so that alone is enough to merit a \"wow.\" Comparing a handheld to console graphics.

1.HAYELL no, I never said that. Please refrain from assuming such things.
2. The Game Boy Advance IS capable of 3D games.

A handheld IS a console. It actually is. I\'m not saying GBA sucks, I\'m just saying \"It\'s nothing truly impressive, to me.\" Yes, that\'s right, TO ME. So please don\'t give me this crap \"Oh you can\'t compare a handheld to a nothandheld\"....
Do forgive me, my patience is so thin I cannot even bear the slightest...disagreement.

...*sigh*
I didn\'t want to start a fight. I really didn\'t. And I don\'t care to finish this one, either.

That last post was never supposed to make it through, as I changed my mind at the last minute to avoid exactly what I\'m doing now.

See, my paper thin patience tore there, and that half of me that grew up with a NES swallowed up all my logic and demanded that I defend 2D graphics at any cost.

Of course I realized how disgustingly opinionated it was all too late. Long story short, due to technical difficulties that I\'d rather not take up space explaining, the post showed up anyhow.

Stupid 56k dailup. It\'s the freaking bane of my existence. Always causing problems. *grunt* I\'ve said enough. Now more than ever, that signature of mine is very fitting.

What I should have said is what I\'m going to say now...

2D not good enough? Hey, sure, you\'re entitled to an opinion. I am as well. I feel that no matter how visually impressive 3D graphics get, there will always, always be games where 2D graphics are much more fitting. Castlevania being one of them.

And here I am, apologizing for something that could\'ve been avoided had my bloated ego not clouded my judgement...again. And this time to someone who openly admits to having a thin patience.

...shit.

While I also don\'t want or intend to start a fire fight, I\'d have to agree with Kamikaze on this one. As beautiful as 3D can be, some situations just call for classic 2D action. Which is one of the reasons I\'m so excited about Capcom\'s upcoming Gamecube title Viewtiful Joe. God dammit I\'m changing the subject again. Forget I said that. Back to Castlevania.

Exactly. 2D is still a viable, pretty damn good platform to build a game on. Look at what Capcom can do with sprites. (Darkstalkers, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Breath of Fire 3 and 4, many others) I mean, it\'s just awesome.

In my opinion, Square could\'ve done FF\'s 7 through 10 in 2D, and got the same point across.

Anyways, enough of that. Since ya\'ll were debating over this Soma Cruze guy being Alucard\'s relation.. Well, actually, I believe he\'s yet another descendant of Sypha, from CV 3, and Carrie of CV64 and LoD. I -think- that\'s what he is..have to make sure.

And about the picture..so what if he looks like Alucard? Juest looks like Alucard. Richter has the same type of face as Alucard. Simon did too, in Miss Kojima\'s artwork. The gal draws em all looking the same, of COURSE they\'re all going to look related! She still draws very beautifully though, and is my favorite artist.

Also, you were mentioning the resurrection of Dracula, Kamikaze? I don\'t even know if Dracula is -in- this game. I really doubt he is..I remember the sibling mentioning that Dracula was excluded from this game.

But..in Japan, the series was called Akumajo Dracula. Now, over there, it\'s called Castlevania. So yeah, they took the Dracula part out for a reason, they don\'t want him in the games anymore. Myself, I think Dracula makes the goddamn series what it is. I don\'t know what Konami is on, but I don\'t like it.

Just let me get this out of my system before I say the important stuff: In addition to Capcom\'s fighters, Guilty Gear X really desrves a mention among impressive 2D games of today. I really don\'t see why there aren\'t more people who like this game.

I finally got around to reading the GameSpy article yesterday. According to them Dracula may not be in the game, like Hollow mentioned. Still, that seems weird to me. That\'s like saying Dr. Wily isn\'t in a Mega Man game; not logical and probably a blatant lie.

But Soma being related to Alucard... I know, it does sound ridiculous. But it just doesn\'t seem right to introduce a new character who doesn\'t have any ties to the characters of the past. I just don\'t know what else to say about the whole thing without sounding like a total psycho.

Maybe Soma is related to Sypha? That\'s a good idea, probably one I would\'ve agreed on had I not read the GameSpy article. It looks like there will be another character named Yoko who\'s related to Sypha.

And I\'m gonna have to take back that comment about Soma dressing like Alucard. Yeah. http://www.classicgaming.com/castlevania/aria/art-soma2.jpg

That\'s what I said about Mega Man X-sorry I didn\'t read the whole post, I saw \"there are times that call for 2D\". However, Capcom decided to be an ass and screw around with games every time I like the style. This happened with Metroid, Star Fox, and Mega Man X.

I just found out that Soma (the main charcter) is not related to Alucard and he is not a Belmont. He\'s just a regular teenager in the year 2035.

I\'m bumping this topic again rather than making a new one.

The North American version should be here in a matter of days, May 7th to be exact, if everything goes as planned. Provided everything does go as planned, the Japanese version will follow the very next day. No info yet on a European release.

Also of interest, a recent issue of EGM had some of the first screenshots of the upcoming PS2 title. Check them out here.

[font=Tahoma] You might as well get the ROM too, KKC (j/k) [/font]

AOS spoiler, highlight at your own risk!

You should too. That whole day of waiting between the two releases has gotta be murder. (j/k)x2

By the way, got any new info on the PS2 game that might not have made it over here yet?

Ah, new info again. Good news for any European board members. Your version will arrive a day after Japan\'s on the 9th.

Why am I so stuck on providing info for this game? Just trying to kill time \'til I get mine, that\'s all.

[font=comic sans ms]I actually played the Jap version. Lemme say this: It is awesome.

Aewsome game, worth the buy![/font]