GuestLog in

While the game feels refreshing with the new code of paint, room rearrangement, balancing of weapons and enemies and map progression it has one huge flaw.

IDK what went wrong, if this is the newest patch being buggy but there are several graphical errors in the backgrounds of many areas, and the more you explore, the deeper you go into the map the more they start becoming noticeable until the point where it is actually borderline impossible to navigate them, and even if you are able to do it via trial and error there are rooms that load improperly, the collision is off and pushes you out of frame, restarts the game, kills you, or freezes the emulator.

I patched it several times, the same copy, a vanilla copy, used different emulators, started over and over again but the same issues showed up in the same places, I cannot progress and because of that I can't finish it, therefore I cannot recommend it.

Often hacks that attempts to remodel a whole game often commits the fatal mistake of being too hard or too unfair. Aria of Sorrow Alter however tries its best to avoid both, providing a fresher experience to an already great game. However, it's not short of its flaws (which are more of nitpicks I'd say):

1. There are some rooms where the enemies that spawns changes depending on which side you enter the room from or sheer randomness, and nothing hints that.

2. Luck is very, very, VERY low, which in turn makes getting all souls too much of a pain.

3. Many souls still feels useless (a lot on the Enchant Souls) or still irritating to use (Undine and Skula), even if there are less areas where those are needed.

4. The Death Arena, as others pointed, is not very fun. I would say it's too flat and the variety is not very interesting, even if it tries to be a homage to Nest of Evil and CotM's Battle Arena.

Some suggestions I'd like to give for the future:

1. Add a (powered up) gun in the Death Arena.

2. Add an armor with passive HP regen (possibly Death Arena reward?).

3. If both above are done, expand the Death Arena, but adding a whole new set of rooms that can be accessed independently of the others, maybe branching DOWN from the midpoint?

4. Stack souls functionality. Like having Skula function as both Skula and Undine.

5. Make it possible to carry Black Panther to NG+ (Bloodstained, for an example, does that, allows for some sequence breaking, but who cares really?)

A lot of time has passed since the initial version of this hack hits the Castlevania hacking scene, yet this hack remains one of the best renditions towards Aria of Sorrow. The usage of extensive ASM mods and new functions introduced in this hack is simply fantasic. Being able to instantly warp back to Hammer the Shop Keeper's side is gold. Wow-hoo! I wish a similar function could also be applied to the unedited game.

Map-wise, this hack changes about every map location, fully rearranged all the obstacles creatively. My most favourite part would be when you initially entered Clock Tower for the first time, everything is stucked still with music muted, then after triggering a button everything became alive with music on. I really can't forget how it impacts me that the AoS' base engine is still capable to generate new functions and new ideas. And in late game the hack offers a Circle of the Moon-style Death Arena where you can't use souls and you'll need to actually horn up your skills to get through it. I must agree one thing that other reviews said; some rooms tend to have much more enemies in the same screen, if your character level is not high enough, you'll be in troubles. Despite this minor grief I think it's a cool throwback addition and the Arena concept is once again pulled to its greatest usage.

What I feel really disappointed is mainly at two sides:

• 1. The Julius Belmont fight is located somewhere deep in the cave rather than the Floating Garden. This means the good background details when Julius performs Grand Cross is nowhere to be seen. It gave me a major letdown since most of the traits in this hack before this fight are really, really good.
• 2.The removal of guns and Positron Rifle. I don't know if they're actually removed from the game but given there's so less information available for this hack the hope is little. Being unable to obtain the Positron Rifle disappointed me albeit only a small fragment.

In conclusion, despite this hack is still not the absolutely perfect rendition, it shows GBA homebrew and Castlevania hack scene still has life powers and it's a must try for all Castlevania fans, regardless if you're offended with hacks of not.

Before I start, yes I recommend it, it was a decent challenge casually up until I gunned for 100%, then it went downhill.

Also, the Jonata Guitar recolor is not compatible. V1.02 will completely break Death's Arena with glitched tiles galore. V1.0 fares better, but it still has plenty of glitched tiles, including glitched platforms on the forbidden area locking some paths outright, causing the pillars to be solid on the floating garden and causing the platforms on the tall room next to the samurai armor location to all lose their collision.

That out of the way, the problems with the hack only really started when gunning for 100%, it became a frustrating mess.

The hack does have some interesting concepts, like doing away with the required soul drops completely for an item you find instead for the true ending and changing the requirement to enter the forbidden area from Undine+Rush Soul to hit a button to turn off the waterfall. It messes with the sleep mechanic with Hint Card 2 and it upgrades the enemies in some rooms as you progress through the castle. There are 2 loop-around points on the sides of the castle and it is overall more connected than vanilla.

Initial navigation through the castle is extremely linear and somewhat of a slog though, late backdash was something that I hated. As for boss choices, changing the great armor boss for a Shadow Knight was an interesting twist, but adding Man-Eater as a boss was annoying, the room for that does not give you enough room to dodge, so it's a given it will hit you quite a few times.

I still don't know the location of the sky fish, completely missed it and it's the last soul I need to get, as a bonus, since this is a romhack, there's no info on it online, in part due to the creator not releasing much info on it with the intent to keep it low on spoilers. This hunt for the last straggler isn't helped by the fact that many rooms vary what spawn in them depending on which door you enter them from, it's a neat feature, but absolutely hellish in trying to 100% the game, since it means I can't be sure of what is on the rooms I've visited.

Death's Arena is a feature that is similar to Order of Ecclesia's Large Cavern, but its execution is significantly worse. (Originally through of the Nest of Evil, but it's really more similar to the Large Cavern in some features) Let's break it down: In the Arena, equipped souls are disabled, this completely murders the combat variety you have access to. Interesting challenge concept, but you're cutting out the game's main feature to do it. In the Arena enemies are stronger by a large margin, this mostly catches people off-guard the first time they attempt it. It's just a number inflation as well, so nothing special here. Every 2 rooms you are given the choice to abandon your current rum via a slide gap.

It honestly picks the bad parts of the Large Cavern to emulate. The number of BS rooms is about the same. No means of continuing from the middle. The stat inflation somewhat emulates the new enemies present on the Large Cavern, them being the Demon Lord, Double Hammer, Weapon Master and Jiang Shi. At least bailing out costs nothing, opposed to needing a magical ticket to bail on the Large Cavern, but Mina's Talisman has its use blocked completely in the Arena.

In the Arena there are four rooms that just stink of BS with how their enemies are laid out, them being the second room featuring Gargoyles, that one you're immediately assaulted by 3 Gargoyles, with an Erinys on standby ready to aggro as soon as you move a quarter of the screen in and a Gladiator doing drive-bys in the room. Impossible to avoid damage. Not to mention I managed to softlock Julius in this room because a Gargoyle flew too far off-screen to the point the game shut its AI off and the room kept me locked in it. Second BS room is the first one to feature Red Minotaurs, you enter the room and there's one Red Minotaur, a Biphron and a Werewolf aggroed on you from the door, even with divekick it's incredibly hard to avoid damage. Third BS room is the one that features Lubicants, you enter this room and there's a Skull Millione immediately aggroed on you, a Basilisk walking towards you pressing what little space you have and a few Lubicants on standby on the middle of the room ready to aggro on you as soon as you enter more into the room. Fourth BS room is the Succubus room, 6 of them, 3 of which immediately start moving towards you, damage is unavoidable here if you lack hippogriff or dive kick. It's also a simple enemy spam type of room. The bosses on the Arena are alright, the Death room has spikes added for extra challenge, but that backfires massively if you have the spike armor, put that on, stand on a spike and watch as each guard text gives you a massive amount of i-frames, completely cheesing the fight. The other boss is Balore, unmodified apart from the stat inflation.

Anyway, whole area needs a ton of redesign, it's basically asking players to abuse save states to get through it, and the reward is just way too strong, Excalibur is the same size as Claim, swings just as fast, is about as strong, triple hits and has no element so it destroys most enemies. Oh and its multi-hit doesn't suffer from the same janky hitbox as the final sword.

Julius mode is a bit dumb, you can go straight to Graham and hit a whooping 3 damage with the whip while he hits back in the 100's, Julius' stat growth with each boss defeated is gigantic though and you can use Death's Arena to power up Julius pretty easily, given that he can freely use sub-weapons there. A fully powered up Julius only ever takes 1 damage from Graham, no matter the attack. At that point the only things that can deal more than 1 point of damage to Julius at a time are spikes and the stat inflated enemies from the arena.

The best Aria of Sorrow ROM hack ever! The changes are good and made the game even better. Aria of Sorrow is almost perfect, and this hack was able to make the game longer and with more content in all the aspects, amazing!

Death Arena is a very cool callback to Circle of The Moon, making the game a lot more challenging for the players who wants a more complete experience.

Chaos Realm is a different thing, I appreciate that it is in the normal castle and has a connection with the forbidden area, but it doesn't looks great as the classic one, it's just gray and so straight.

Anyway, the best AoS ROM hack, a must play for Castlevania fans.

No much more to say not said by other reviewers. Maybe not perfect, but the best Castlevania hack. Interesting design, pure fun and absolutely recommended.

(For those that want to enjoy an easier, more fluid experience, Dev Anj's Luck and MPRegen patches are compatible.)

Edit: the more I play, the more I like this amazing hack and the more I admires the author's privileged mind. As if it was an original Konami's creation, it shows pretty linear at first, just to open bit by bit as you simply feel the progression generally more cohesive and the rewards more sense than in the original game, without making backtracking excessive or tedious.

I don't reccomend the Luck patch unless you are a very casual gamer, since it somehow breaks the experience as intended (some souls are very easy to acquire, and some are true rewards to stubborn and pacient players). Maybe I'd reccomend the MPRegen one, especially since faster magic regeneration means less time to wait to be a bat again (neccesary a couple times), and a caster Soma able to destroy some foes faster to do the backtracking more fluid and tone down the difficulty of some bosses.

Tl;dr: it feels like a Konami original creation, it overcomes the original game in some aspects, which turns this hack in one of the best and more addictive metroidvanias I've played.

Has you unable to use souls (even yellow souls) while enemies deal damage as if you're on Hard and not wearing any armor. I get that everyone wants a challenge but this is just... desperate.

Not even to mention how meaningless Excalibur and The Void make the endgame with how massively overpowered these weapons are.

I would suggest nerfing those two weapons, and proportionally, let players use Souls in Death Arena. Souls are like the main shtick of this game, you don't see Portrait of Ruin's Nest of Evil blocking you from using Subweapons and Spells either. Maybe add disabling Chaos Ring and Use Items, as well as passive healing like Giant Worm and Alura Une.

The rest of the game is topnotch, though. 9/10.

This is an amazing patch. It completely revitalizes AoS with a new map, additional items in the walls and plenty of minor tidbits to improve it. The only issue I found is that it's very easy to not realize what is going on with the Clock Tower and instead assuming there is a bug. Basically, the Clock Tower has broken down, and you need to "wind" it by pressing a button. This reactivates all traps, foes, etc. and lets you enter Death's room. Sneaking a line into dialogue would probably help with this.

Wow. First off, the brand new map is great - it's denser, more convenient and it has a lot of truly original ideas put into it. Instead of the sectioned-off, dungeon-like areas the base game had, this hack felt more like a single cohesive, intertwining map, which I liked a lot.

Aside from the map, there's so much extra stuff this absolute beast of a hack adds that I could just go on all day. If you loved the original or just love "metroidvanias" in general, this hack is a must-play. It's basically a completely new game in itself and I'd say it's at least as good as the original. There were some changes I found questionable, but they didn't ruin the overall experience, not even close. One hell of a job well done!

Wow...just....WOW. I NEVER play a game through in one sitting, but this one I did, so that speaks volumes about how good this is.

THE MAP: Already from the start, even playing a few moments encourages a lot of hope. I've seen other hacks try to change the map, and the result is often underwhelming. Either they look bad or just don't seem very inspired. This one, on the other hand, makes every area feel natural despite the rather drastic changes made to each locale. Some of them are shuffled around in terms of where they are exactly, but never is it in a bad way. The game feels big, the locations are very well done, and it's not difficult to get anywhere...and I don't feel like ripping my hair out cause I can't find anything or figure out where to go, lol. I will say that some of the locations feel a little smaller than before, but that could be to accommodate for the completely new and optional Devil's Arena. Still, none of the places feel too small, nor do any of the larger ones feel like they "overstay their welcome" so to speak. Also, I wanted to point out that I originally didn't care for the Floating Gardens, either its layout or its strange method of everything not connecting quite like you think. This hack makes it just a single, large area up top next to the Clock Tower and I'm perfectly cool with that.

GAMEPLAY: And now the real meat of this utterly delicious hack. Gameplay is the same as before, your standard AoS-fare. You do gain +15HP/lvl as opposed to +12, but you also start out with 120HP less than the base game does. Honestly I didn't think there too much of a difference, but it was noticeable. What really makes this game shine is the fact that there's LEGIT PUZZLES! None of them are hard or crazy or anything, but a handful of the areas have a specific theme they revolve around, such as shifting the water level a bit in a few areas of the Underground Waterway, etc. My absolute favorite was the Clock Tower. I'm not going to spoil it, but I want to say that was where my mind DEFINTELY was blown and I realized what a true gem I was playing. All I can say is...WOW...if only the base game had this kind of creativity...

FUN: An absolute HECK YES!! As I said, I don't play games through in one sitting, but I played this all evening and finished it in a single night. I simply HAD to see what else was here. I didn't 100% the game, but I found a lot of new things in terms of puzzles, environmental changes, new items, shifting of where enemies were, and enough so that I just wanted to keep going. Admittedly, the Devil's Arena was aggravating, but mostly in the same vein as Circle of the Moon's Battle Arena, which I felt it was more inspired by than the Nest of Evil from Portrait of Ruin. The reward is well worth it, in my opinion, but it was more difficult getting through this than CotM's Battle Arena, though that's probably due to not being able to stack 99 each of every healing item :P

MY RATING: 9.8/10 What can I say, really? Just about everyone else's review says it all as well. This hack is an absolute blast to play. The castle is marvelously well done, the addition of creative puzzles that the environment is designed around is fantastic, and the feeling of wanting to know what's just up ahead that constitutes the true joy of playing a Metroidvania is worth feeling again. Is this game COMPLETELY perfect? No, but it hits all the best notes and does it with a bang ^^

Ah Yes! Here we are at the piece de resistance of the AOS Hacks!

This is by FAR, my favorite hack of any GBA Castlevania! The way the castle route has been rearranged is so invigorating. It is like playing a brand new game! The background work is exquisite. So spacey and airy and bright in those places that were cramped and dull before. It's just beautiful. More exposed background sets the mood better for each area than the original. This is how the original game should have been in the first place.

I also loved the new secrets, gear, and items! Any one who has played Aria of Sorrow MUST PLAY THIS HACK!!! And anyone who has not played the original should play this instead, if given the choice.

I really wish this could be merged with Dawn of Symphony, or Persephone Hacks. This castle layout is my favorite, with Yukuutski no Fantasia as a close second. I just really want more reasons to replay this over and over.

Thank You So Much!!!!! Now go do Harmony of Dissonance, and SOTN NOW!!!!! lol.

I thoroughly enjoy this hack. There are neat new mechanics to some areas (which I won't spoil :D) that really freshen up the gameplay along with the all new castle. Small changes like being able to access save points and teleport areas from both sides add more nuance as well. Any fan of Aria of Sorrow should give this a play. The author even listens to suggestions from reviewers, so my only suggestion for an improvement/addition would be for a new story as it gets just a tad boring going through the same AoS story again. Please do more hacks!

P.S. (spoilers ahead) I'm currently at the end of the game and am looking to get the Count's Ring (as Hint Card 3 suggests) to go defeat Graham and get the good ending... but where the heck do I find the Count's Ring?!

Edit: Alright, I found Dracula's Ring in the Top Floor and defeated Graham, Julius and Chaos. Currently sitting at 99.8% map completion :/. I absolutely love this hack and would definitely play it again on Hard mode if it actually adds difficulty.

Edit 2: 100.0% map completion, woohoo! Here's a pic: https://imgur.com/cI4W3tj

This is a great hack. I really enjoyed playing it. Thanks a lot to the developer! I haven't found a way to contact the developer, so I'll write here. I may be wrong, but I think it would be a good idea to ban the possibility of accidentally selling a plot key item. Thanks one more time for this awesome hack. Recommend everyone to play.

Hello, created an account just to review this hack.

I'm quite impressed with the hard work put on this, never saw much work on the Castlevania hacking community besides pallet/sprite swap, this one is definetly different, new castle layout, new mechanics coded in some areas, it really gives an fresh experience as the author wants, that is the Castlevania hack i would recommend everyone to play without any regrets.

I am so very much surprised and enjoyed this hack - first of its kind to "alter" the castle map to make it a LOT more fun to explore. I like how the save points and teleport rooms are placed (i hate what they did on PoR), I like how you implemented other stuff in the game which I really haven't fully understood most of them. But overall, this hack is the best there is!

If I'm allowed to give you a constructive criticism, please hear me out. If it's possible to change the locked door that looked like the boss door into a different one..because at first I thought the game was broken that i was not able to enter a boss room..only to realize you can open it on the other side instead. Some castle mechanics were not clear, for example on how I stopped the waterfall, or the "box and spikes" puzzle on the last part of the castle..I didn't understand any of those, nor what I did to solve what..it just happened when I get back to the previous places that was locked before, it was opened without me knowing why. The description for the "enhanced ruling" and "control the castle" is pretty vague that I'm not sure anyone without hint from other people who luckily figured it out will know what they are for, as well as the Hint 2 secret (tho I understand that it's a secret but..) maybe you could add hints from Mina for more information about these..or some more hint cards or pop out texts (like "You feel the sound of water slowly fading.." or something).

Other than these minor suggestions, I love everything new about this game. It's like a better map design than the original. The additional Death Arena is super awesome too!

I hope you make more like this even on older CV titles such as Harmony of Dissonance (pls give that game JUSTICE) and/or Circle of the Moon.

Your efforts will always be remembered. You're the best!

I played this game countless times, on so many systems that can emulate GBA, I can't thank you enough for this, feel like a remaster, remake, game of the year, all DLC, or just pump up edition of the game, so many new things, tweaks here n there, all map new, arena is awesome, fix of freezes, so many things, as a AOS fan, I just love your work.

PLEASE, make a part 2, a new hack, anything you desire with AOS again, same policy of this one, brand new map, stuff, I love the feeling of play Aria of Sorrow 2, wouldn't mind a 3 ;)

Also, what's up with the hint card 2? What should I do in that room lol XD.

Well. Very interesting hack. It will be very difficult to beat him. I especially liked Death Arena.

This is the most surprising and interesting hack of Castlevania AoS I have played!

The whole castle are remodeled, which gives me a brand new experience. I had to explore many places to find the route. The map design is very ingenious. Many places have original puzzles such as three boxs, the up and down of water level, the stopping time in the tower. These new puzzles also wonderful parts of this hack. Some weapons, armors and accessories are changed and have new functions. The most startling item is Mina's Charm! Which can let me return to Mina everywhere and anytime.