Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Playthrough (Game Boy Player Capture) - Part 1

This is part 1 of my capture of me playing through Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the Game Boy Advance. This is not an emulator and was not played on the Wii U Virtual Console. This footage was recorded directly from my GameCube using my Game Boy Player with progressive scan mode enabled (you'll need the GameCube's component cables to do this and your model of GameCube must support component out as well). I'm playing on hard mode.

After Harmony of Dissonance was released, I started seeing previews for the third Castlevania game on the Game Boy Advance: Aria of Sorrow. This time, however, I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about the new game. Instead of featuring a Belmont or a similar character, Aria of Sorrow featured a high school student who wielded swords and axes and other weapons aside from the classic whip. The game as a whole also seemed to have a very strange setting. The graphics and the music just didn't seem like Castlevania to me.

As a result of these odd changes, I didn't pick the game up when it was released in 2003. However, by 2004 I started to change my mind and decided that I should probably give the game a chance. I picked up a new copy of the game off Amazon (before the price started going up) and played through the title with the help of Nintendo Power.

As I had suspected, the game did have a very strange feeling about it. The enemies and music felt very unorthodox for a Castlevania game, and even Soma's walking animation seemed strange. However, the gameplay was solid. My main complaint, though, was that the weapons didn't have much of a range to them, which made combat rather difficult. But this issue got better as the game progressed and I picked up better weapons such as the Claimh Solais. The new soul system worked well, but farming certain souls ended up being a bit tedious.

This is possibly the hardest of the three Castlevania games on the Game Boy Advance. Notwithstanding that fact, I'm completing the game on hard mode because it gives you access to special items such as Death's Sickle, which, as far as raw damage goes, is the most powerful weapon in the game (not factoring in its dark attribute). This is actually my first time completing the game on hard mode. I think I've only beaten the game twice before.

Nintendo Power printed a partial guide for this game (including a full map) in Volume 169 (the June 2003 issue), so I'm using that to help me get through the game. I'll be keeping track of the bosses I've killed in each video.

In this first part I created a new save file and obtained the Grave Keeper soul, which gave me the back dash ability, and the Flying Armor soul, which gave me the slow fall ability.

Creaking Skull boss fight - 8:24

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the GameCube's component cables at 60 frames per second. I'm using an original model Game Boy Advance as a controller via a GameCube/Game Boy Advance Link Cable.