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I love the idea of this game letting you play is Julius and I love the upgrades that you get however there are about there's a bug that doesn't let me finish the game not even go to the middle of it. It's on the area where supposedly you fight the Headhunter if you go there no matter what you do the boss fight does not trigger, and the game softlocks. I've gone everywhere in the game and I cannot find where I need to go please fix this. This is a great rom hack and I love the concept behind it.

Found this hack today while perusing CV stuff. There's a lot of potential here, but it needs significant work to achieve that potential.

I like the rewritten dialogue in this hack! It flows well and makes sense. That's probably my favourite part of the hack.

The inventory needs an overhaul. On the status screen, the character is still named "Soma," and there's no picture of Julius where Soma's profile picture used to be (it's just a blank area). I would also suggest changing the name of the Soul Set sub-menu to something more relevant to Julius.

Saving needs to be fixed - upon reloading your file, you retain the items you've collected, and bosses stay dead, but all your items and sub-weapons are unequipped, and your stats get reset to Level 1. That last part is definitely not something you want to have happen later on in the game.

Now we get into the more functional parts of the hack. Progression through the castle is locked behind Soul Keys, and Julius has all his movement tech from the game's outset. Julius also starts with the Dagger and presumably gains other sub-weapons through static Soul stands (I played the game up to Manticore, so if I'm wrong, I apologize).

I'm not big on these design choices - mainly, I think progression would be smoother and more satisfying if Julius gained movement abilities over time like Soma instead of just searching for keys. For example, having it so Julius gains the ability to double jump after defeating Great Armor in the Study. Sub-weapons are a bit of a toss-up - from a functional standpoint, I think it would be best to have them be selectable like they are in normal AoS Julius Mode, but that may not go well with how the story progresses in this hack. I'd even suggest having them drop from candles like in SotN, HoD, and CotM, but that'd probably be an absolute nightmare to program into the game.

I see the author of this hack is the same one who put out the "Maxim Story Mode Hack" for Castlevania HoD earlier this year. From my experience playing that awesome hack, I'm confident you could go back and revamp/redo this Aria hack now and make it fulfill its potential.

Cheers!

Malaert64

I'll start off by saying that this hack has the potential to be awesome. The story is great, and adding items, different whips, and having to search for keys and sub weapons as souls is a cool addition. The game is also well balanced with appropriate difficulty curb you would expect. However the game has one game breaking bug, and that is the boss bug. As addressed in the Read Me on certain bosses they disappear, and when you reset the file you're moved back to level one. This bug especially in later parts of the game makes things unnecessarily tough, and really should be ironed out. If this can be fixed, than this will be an amazing hack.

I think this is a great idea! Giving a progressive leveling system to Julius? Absolutely wonderful! However lacking it may be in some of the other areas of play represented with Soma, it still has enough intrigue to make me play through it at least once.

I even patched it with a couple of the other character hacks, (AOS Genya Arikado Hack, AOS Zangetsu Hack, and AOS Hugh Baldwin Hack) to give the same concept to a few other whip weilders. LOL. Doing this screws up the dialogue though as well as some of the equipment you find. Still fun to run Nathan Graves and Miriam through AOS while leveling up though.

I do still feel it can be improved though. Given all of the sub weapons you could use in Harmony of Despair, I think more Red souls could've been used. Blue souls and Silver souls being used for game progression would've been nice. And Gold souls really had no reason to be removed at all, as they only auto changed various character stats. Maybe change them from souls to Enhancers. Blue souls like Final Guard, Omnia Vinitas, Bullet Shield, Barrier, these are just many suggestions for an endless amount of improvement here. My point is this hack WAS fun, but could have been much better.

Thank you and please improve if you can.

Edit: Everything, because I beat the game

New weapons, new text, and a great story! It's a shame it has so many bugs, such as:

• It still shows Soma in the pause screen
• Saving and resetting the game resets your experience to Level 1
• Saving and resetting also unequips your current soul and all your equipment (but leaves you the Alchemy Whip)
• Flailing your whip (making it spin right round baby right round) doesn't do damage unless you save and restart

On that note, why does every whip look the same when attacking with it?

• Holy Wave doesn't work in the air (possibly intended, because it's a recolor of the Werewolf soul)

Oh, and Holy Wave and Great Axe still uses Soma's voice clip

• Axe isn't red sometimes
• Great Axe (aka Red Minotaur) has corrupted sprites in the Chaos fight
• You can't get the Abyss Whip until after defeating Graham with the Vampire Killer...why?
• Hammer disappears after obtaining the Vampire Whip
• Talking to Mina after defeating Graham softlocks the game
• Graham's second form doesn't attack
• Certain room in the Chaos Realm has a Kyoma Demon
• Sparse grammatical errors (along with the original translation errors)
• Cheese and Corndog have lingering sprites of anti-curse and anti-poison, respectively
• Julius' sprite is a pixel off the floor (was in the original Julius Mode

He also is missing sprites for holding up (preparing a Bullet Soul). Do you want some help with that? (hint hint I'd love to help)

• Julius hops in the final cutscene
• Julius Mode (after beating Chaos with Julius) only lets you use Cross (and the Alchemy whip?), and is broken overall

Again, great story, really feels like part of the official Castlevania lore!

Disclaimer: This will include spoilers and not censored in any way. From my perspective, the hack is designed for those who have cleared the original game first.

Story: I love it. It shows Julius side of the game very well and the dialogue is very elaborate. However, there are a few minor typos sprinkled throughout. 8/10

Gameplay: It's a classic Castlevania style mixed with AoS, so it defenitely is great. However, there is a minus point for it being a bit of a pain to switch sub weapons. I get that there are lots more of them in this mode, but it isn't so hard to make new sprites. 7/10

Bugs: This is why my previous review got removed. I couldn't proceed through most bosses with a special entry, such as Headhunter or Balore. And since you also go down to level 1 when you reset, it means you have to reset and fight these bosses at the lowest level possible. The only thing helping you is TAS-ing it or the weapons you can get. This includes what has been dubbed the hardest incarnation of Death yet, so it's not very fun to fight him. Let's also not forget that Chaos falls under this category too, so level 1 it too. 4/10

Overall: 7/10 Great story, a game changing bug and pretty good gameplay.

From all Belmonts in series, there are only 3, that I really like. Richter (as a villain in SOTN, curse that outdated ROB costume though), Ralf (CoD shows him better, than any other game I think) & Julius (sadly he was not very active in the story, due to memory problem). So when I got the chance to play as J in his own story mode, I was very excited. Most important for me was, that this is a modification of original game, so it can be played on many devices (I prefer portable gaming). First thing I liked was the feel of progress, that this story offers. J restores memory & becomes stronger & the story, not in gameplay only. For Soma, there was no such feel of progress in the story. Only the moment, when Graham is shocked with Soma`s powers. Also J`s bluff part was great. I cant stand foolish protagonists, that tricked by enemies every couple of minutes. Idea with replacing NPC J is great too. Gameplay side was very fun. Only Richter in SOTN gives me same feel of joy in battle (again, ONLY with the right costume). Julius got many new skills, which is another strong side of this hack. There even some moments of humor, like Dracula`s tunic, wall chicken or Chaos ring. There is even a special surprice for people, who will hack the game. Small downside of this modification is glitches, but none of them caused me enough problems, to quit the game. Even the level reset which I only got once (Headhunter could not spawn) was no big deal. I just run around, got J to LV10 & easily kill the boss, using items (I had huge amount of them by that point). And minor bugs is not something, that can stop me from enjoying the game I like.

I've been expecting a hack like this ever since I messed about with a cheat that messes with character states. But as I've mentioned at the headline, I find something really annoying which I initially thought was something about emulators or just glitches in general... Until I read the readme file. My languages can be a bit harsh(by my standards) but those are my opinions from the bottom of my heart.

1. The whip brandish move shouldn't be here if it does no damage. Though it can deal damage on some strange occasions, it definitely is not intended. One example of "strange occasions" is after loading a save file, but whip brandish damage still mysteriously disappear after a while, presumably after leveling up or collecting a boss orb. Anyway, as much as I loved the whip brandish move, if you don't want it to do damage, just remove the move completely. It doesn't do much other than telling you your attack button is stuck now.

2.That reset level and equipped item after loading save file is quite absurd IMO. Although I can understand its purpose being to adjust the difficulty of this game, its quite unbearable for me. A solution to the levels problem is either have weaker weapons/armors/accessories and keep the levels or to use the original "collect orb = lot's of stats up" from the original Julius mode. Since balancing issues will inevitable happen in both solutions I proposed, you'll have to do more adjustment :P I might be asking too much, but you can release this hack in a few versions which uses different level rules and let players decide which they like the most.

3.Just as jm102887 mentioned, fighting bosses with little HP/MP and low stats can be really annoying because grinding is not a choice for not going straight into boss room can result in boss not spawning. This looks the least fixable so to solve this, you can either somehow find out how to prevent this from happening or adopt my suggestion on the level rule so that going straight from save room to boss room without grinding won't be so big of a deal.

4.This is sooooo minor compared to the above stuff but I think it's still to be reported so here goes nothing: The Enemy Data for Tsuchinoko is to be edited. Since Soma Cruz isn't in this story, the person who proves Tsuchinoko's existence should be J.

Despite all those problems above, at least 3 outta 4 of them should be fixable. Besides, this hack looks and is very promising so I'm very much looking forward to future versions of this hack.

Ok, let me just say this because I try to be fair. I HONESTLY DO LIKE THIS HACK. Now that that's out of the way, here comes the but....it's not....very well polished. Anyway, let me do my usual breakdown, though I must also warn that I have yet to fully complete the game:

STORY: Now THIS I like for sure. It reminds me of the Ada side stories in Resident Evil, the "What was this other character doing while we followed the main hero?" kinda quest. For the most part, the dialogue has indeed been done to refer to the fact we are now Julius (J) as opposed to Soma, and for the most part, everyone seems to react as one would expect, particularly the amnesiac Julius. Interestingly enough, the NPC Julius is "replaced" using an idea we've only heard about in one other game, and I like that idea (Won't spoil it. Play it for yourself :P)

GAMEPLAY: So this plays just like a slightly watered down version of Soma's story, but not as bad as the original Julius Mode. You do indeed find new equipment, though new whips aren't overly common. As a result, you're either going to depend on your sub-weapons a lot, or get used to not having a lot of physical strength. However, Julius DOES whip faster than Soma swings weapons, so that IS a plus. You do gain levels, but for some reason (And I'm not sure if this was the author's intention or just one of the many bugs this hack has), quitting the game and restarting from a save strips you back to lvl 1. It isn't the BEST way of doing things, but it does sorta simulate how in the original games, you had to build your strength back up no matter where you continued. Speaking of simulating old games, Julius does NOT regenerate MP. While it isn't hard to regain it from heart drops, it does make it so that boss battles can be more intense as you will have to depend on items you have to regain MP, which isn't easy when Julius has a harder time collecting funds.

BUGS: This is where the "But..." comes from: This game is RIDDLED with bugs galore. In fact, for the most part, the Readme seems to be a list of noted bugs and glitches, most of which really can't be fixed. The worst one by far is the glitch in which certain boss battles won't trigger, meaning Julius simply walks into a room and is locked in, unable to exit, forcing a restart....which forces your levels back down to 1. "Okay, so I'll just grind a bit before I face the boss then. Problem solved!" Well no....because I've done that myself and find the glitch STILL triggers. It only seems to succeed if I go immediately from a save room to the boss in question, thus meaning I have to face bosses at lvl 1-2. As a result, I have barely any strength to do damage, and MP that is gone in seconds. This is the absolute most frustrating part of this hack as being forced to Lvl 1 every boss is infuriating. Another glitch seems to involve Julius "hopping" on the ground if he is underwater. While this isn't a gamebreaking bug, it is making the Underground Waterway area almost a nightmare to even go through. There are apparently a few other things, but I don't want to rag on the game. Simply read the Readme to see if the things there are things you can work with or not before downloading this.

MY RATING: 5.5/10 I really, REALLY want to like this. I like the story, I like the combination of Soma's mechanics into Julius's own story, I like the rearranged placement of a few things, all that....but the glitches and bugs really mar what honestly is a good game. The difficulty isn't high, but being forced to lose strength simply because one bug leads to another makes it hard to want to continue. "Hopping" along the ground underwater leaves me fighting with myself so much that I can't even face the enemies properly, so I'm losing HP and resources simply cause I can't move properly, and though I know High Jumping is how to handle it, it's a finicky maneuver since Julius REALLY needs to be in the air to do that instead of his shadow sliding move. Give it a try if you so desire, but you REALLY need to exercise a lot of patience if you're going to. Otherwise, to the author, you've got a good thing here, so if you polish it up and get rid of the most frustrating bugs, I could EASILY give this one a 9+