Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Review

The tactical soul system is one of the best progression ideas Konami ever had. Killing an enemy can grant its soul, and souls are your spells, your familiars and your passive traits, so every trash mob in the castle is a potential build component and the temptation to farm one more drop never stops. Because the drops are random and plentiful, two playthroughs genuinely diverge. The castle itself is compact and legible, with a map that rewards reading rather than wandering, and the pace is faster than the console entries because a handheld session needs to reach somewhere in twenty minutes.

Soma's story is also the most interesting the series attempted, a protagonist slowly told what he is and given a choice about it, with a real ending gated behind understanding the fiction rather than a checklist. The costs are hardware ones. The sprites are smaller and the backgrounds plainer than the PlayStation work, the soundtrack is thin through the original speaker, and it is short. The finest handheld Castlevania by a clear margin.