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An overall good mod if you're looking for something different. The mix of new weapons and souls, along with an altered story, is definitely worth a playthrough of this. The only gripes I have with this game is Maria's limited sprites, slightly oversized, and some of the new weapons are underwhelming. But these are personal grievances that doesn't take anything away from the mod. If you want to try something new this a good choice to start with.

This hack is loads of fun with new weapons and changed souls and equipment. Bosses and enemies are much stronger and Maria can't take as many hits compared to Soma but she definitely is more powerful. One small issue is the post-Dracula reveal and talking to Mina afterward. I got soft-locked after talking to Mina once Maria turned into Dracula, but overall a fun and challenging hack.

Welcome to Maria of Sorrow where you're a time-lost gremlin of a girl in an altered version of Aria of Sorrow! Many weapons have been replaced or changed with new references such as Claimh being replaced with the Moonlight Greatsword!

More souls have been changed to fit Maria and it really does feel like she belongs there with the script changes as most of the dialogue is now Maria-like instead of simply Soma dialogue.

The game is much harder in this hack but you can easily use the Easy patch to return to vanilla enemy stats but certain new weapons like the Terminus Est is basically a non-holy Claimh and I would consider it fairly easy mode to use.

I would suggest removing or nerfing the oversized swords like Claimh/Moonlight and removing or nerfing the Creaking Skull soul because it's my most used soul next to Black Panther with how powerful it is throughout the game. Right now it feels like I always end the game with the same general items for my playstyle or max damage.

My one silly complaint? I'd like the armor you get from beating Graham (Dracula's Tunic) to be restored because I like the mental image of Maria wearing the oversized clothing of Count Dracula more than this new dress.

Side note: Some of the dialogue has some spacing or punctuation errors and two different armors have the same name, Elegant Dress I believe. Blue Apron is also written as Blue apron instead.

The text has an occasional error here and there. For instance, in the Clock Tower cutscene directly after the Floating Gardens, Graham calls Maria a boy.

And I believe there are some errors in the modifications made to enemies as well, such as the Nightmare enemy having 8,264 HP. That's more than the endgame bosses in vanilla. In fact, it's almost as much as Death has in this romhack (at 8,888). Even if that IS an error to be corrected later, making enemies into damage sponges doesn't really increase the difficulty OR the fun. I'd suggest to the author to make a slightly more toned-down version for players who don't want to metaphorically spend all day chipping away at enemy health.

Also, as another review said, the art for Maria's portrait clashes most terribly with Aria's art style. If that's a deliberate choice on the part of the developer, then there's no problem, though. On that topic, I believe this is the first Aria hack I've ever seen that actually replaced Soma's portrait and name on the pause screen (instead of just leaving them as they are, or deleting them entirely), so kudos for that.

The modifications made to the souls and weapons are fun, and makes the Handgun weapons usable, so that's nice.

All in all, the romhack is worth trying out, but it's not very different from the original Aria, and has a few minor issues that need ironing out.

At its core, it's a character swap with no rhyme or reason. It's very clear that Kyoski, the ROM hacker, just wanted to plunk Maria into the game and didn't really care about the whys or hows. As a like-minded individual who's made, like, five or six gender swap hacks, myself, I don't blame them. But, a little more effort could have been taken to make this fit better, in my opinion.

As mentioned in the description, there have been some minor alterations done to the script to accommodate playing the new character – Maria Renard from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood – but beyond that, the story is exactly the same, and that makes this hack seem like some sort of odd "What If?" story about Maria being born in 1999 and becoming the new Dracula. If that were the case, I could absolutely get behind this. The story as it's presented, however, seems more like an afterthought and Maria acts just like Soma did rather than being her normal, spunky, cute self. It's kind of distracting for those of us who like good stories.

On the topic of graphics, Maria's portrait and sprites both come straight out of Rondo of Blood. The portrait is from the animated cutscenes and only the color of her ribbon was changed – from green to blue, just like in Portrait of Ruin. It looks very out-of-place with Ayami Kojima's artwork and, honestly, the way it was added looks pretty ugly. The sprites, however, were imported wholesale with absolutely no changes done. This makes her tower over some characters and she even stands taller than Genya Arikado, who's supposed to be fairly tall! Again, this could easily be explained away by just saying she's a teenager, but that doesn't excuse why some of her animations don't line up with her attacks. It reminds me of playing as the main characters in the Nintendo DS games while using the "Extra Mode" weapons. Yeah, you can do it, but it sure does look funny! It's also worth mentioning that things like transformations and even being turned to stone look horrible. This is due to the changed palettes and should be easy enough to fix.

The author of this hack also promised a challenge. The bosses were bulked up, having double defense, double attack, and double hit points. Well... either I didn't play far enough in to notice, or that's simply not enough to make a significant change. Maybe I've been playing too many challenge runs or playing on Hard difficulty too much, but none of the three bosses I fought really felt any different than normal. They just took longer to kill. I dunno. As I said, maybe I just didn't play far enough in.

It's not all bad news, though. Some modifications have been done to some of the equipment. For example, short swords now attack much quicker than before – equivalent to the speed of daggers, in fact. The starting weapon has also become a force to be reckoned with. No, it's not the Knife. It's a different weapon that's fairly "useless" in the base game. I'm sure there are other good changes, too, but again... I stopped playing after the third boss.

I think that this hack needs some work to really stand out. The base concept can be pretty good, but a game like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow isn't really made for just casually swapping characters about. Look at hacks like the "Gebel Hack" or "Persephone Hack". They swap the main character out, but explain why. I'm not saying it needs to be done, of course. Removing the story elements entirely would work just as well. But, if Kyoski insists on keeping some sibilance of story in this thing, it needs work, as to do the graphics and gameplay. Until that happens, I cannot recommend this hack, though it's still kind of fun to mess around with. I mean... it's li'l Maria! In Aria of Sorrow! Even if she has no business being there, it's kind of fun seeing her in this game.