aria is the last castlevania on GBA and the last one i needed to finish in the advanced collection, it's also generally considered to be the best one, though i'm not sure i'd call it the best castlevania, it is tied with harmony for being the best on the system and it could even rival order of ecclesia for the best of the 2D games, though i don't think it stacks up as much for me as the 3D vanias, though i can see why many people consider it the best in the series.

the main gimmicks here are threefold, the souls system, the setting and to a lesser extent the story. the middle one being the most interesting at first glance, unlike most other games in the series this one takes place more or less in modern day, it references contemporary things like the Nostradamus craze that swept Japan and skyfish, it has guns and modern fashion and soma is just a normal looking teenager, it's really interesting and it sets it apart very well, even if it's just set dressing since the castle itself never really takes advantage of this more modern setting beyond a few references and the casts character designs, and the gun. i am getting ahead of myself but yeah you can just get a gun here, it's really weird and kind of cool when you find it, though the damage isn't great, i still used it for the entire rest of the game afterwards though just because it felt cool to use. the story is also a bigger focus now, in that, it has one, with characters and some cute attempts at cutscenes and a real mystery, it has a really fun cast with some of the series best designs and i love how it tries to tell a very ps2 structured story, with characters who come in, say something mysterious to give you direction and then leave, but on a GBA, that's fairly ambitious honestly and it totally succeeds, this game has most of the series best characters up to this point in it and its no surprise it ended up being the one to get a direct followup, i actually cared about what happened here and i liked all of these characters, soma, genya, J and yoko especially and the store owner and graham are great too, the latter having many of the games best cutscenes, they even made some of them playable in the sequel, which is cool, it has ambition for sure, sure the GBA did have RPG's and visual novels, shoutout the silent hill play novel and those homebrew ports of key VN's, but this game trying to have something approximating a story like the big console CVs had aat the time is super endearing to me and the attempt means a lot, it helps that things like *spoiler* soma being Dracula are super interesting concepts, playing as the bad guy in CV is really rad and i like how his powers tie into that and i also love things like yoko and genya hinting at a much larger world with organisations with their own motivations in modern day Japan which is just a really cool concept and its the one thing that if expanded on almost could make me care about the castlevania anime, hammer is great too just as an idea, this random soldier armed to the teeth selling you weapons in a medieval castle, it's funny.

the souls system is the main gimmick that effects gameplay, it works a little like the cards system from circle of the moon but on a wider scale and effecting every enemy rather than just the few with cards, you also can't mix and match them. how it works is every enemy has a soul and this soul will give you an ability when they drop it (sadly RNG and with some very low drop rates), some are stat boosts, some are new forms or summons, some are cool effects like lifedrain, some might give you a needed thing to progress like walking on water or flying and some are just spells like in previous games, they did away with the subweapons system and replaced it with this which i'm totally okay with, the subweapons system never felt super amazing to use in the more free-roam games and this has so much more variety and it's just easier to use, rather than needing to hunt down specific weapons when you wanted to use them, like in harmony. it also makes you want to explore more for fun and it makes grinding less of a chore, it's a lot of fun to see what new abilities you can get and the drop rates do make each run pretty unique with what skills you'll get, though in the lategame some are better than others, with many early ones being useless compared to a later one like red minotaur, whos axe has wide range and can oneshot almost every enemy in the game after a point. you can also collect different weapons beyond the standard sword, like the gun and huge buster swords, axes and even a scythe if you play the game on hard mode, i found the huge almost screen size swords to be my favourites but the gun was the coolest overall, if for the novelty mainly.

the game is probably the prettiest of the 3 GBA-vania's though i don't think its my favourite looking, while it does have the best character designs, like the best version of alucard and soma is one of the coolest castlevania protags,and the monsters are the best looking they've been on the syetem so far, but i think the castle looked better in harmony, something about that games bright colour palet and garish GBAness still strikes a chord with me more than this games castle does, it doesn't help that the castle itself here is a little more generic, water zone, tower zone, cave zone, fancy zones, all your archatypes are here and they're fine enough but compared to things like the crystal cave and THE BONE ZONE from harmony, it's just a little generic, pretty for sure especially in those waterfall caves and the zone with the pirate ship and they're very fun to play, but it is just very standard castlevania levels that don't super stick out, though i do have to give one big anti-shoutout to the hanging gardens, these are conceptually probably the most interesting section of the game with them being big identicle rooms that all connect across teleporters but they're a pain to explore and they are basically just 7 samey, confusing rooms with a few different enemies in them, i really disliked this area and it did get me to drop the game for a few days because i just disliked exploring them so much, but it is a short enough segment if you aren't going for the 100% souls so this probably won't bother most people.

the music is also excellent, being composed by Soshiro Hokkai, who also worked on the sword of etheria, princess peach showtime,nanobreaker, chibi robo zip lash and another of my favourite sounding castlevania games with harmony of dissonance. also working on this was Takashi Yoshida, who worked on mainly a lot of koei games, with things like monster rancher EVO, many dynasty warriors games, ninja gaiden 3, toukiden kiwami, blue reflection , dissidia NT and more recently fairy tail 2 and wo-long. it also goes without saying the OST was worked on also by Michiru Yamane, long time series composer on tons of projects like bloodlines, harmony, the ps2 duology and the DS trilogy, also on games like rumble roses, several suikoden titles, elebits, MGS4, skullgirls and bloodstained. it's an amazing OST, maybe not again reaching the heights for me that harmony did (at the time i was a little more harsh on harmony's OST and looks but over time they've seriously grown on me to become one of my favourite's in the series, such a fantastic game) but it has some amazing songs here like mina's theme which has some really cool piano tones, premnition being my favourite song in the game, it's just some random mysterious piano music used in cutscenes but it's so catchy and i really like having that one on in a loop, ruined castle corridor is one of the series best opening stage tracks and always got me hype even during those lategame soul grinds, demon castle study is also very good, it's the OST at its most GBA, it uses the systems sound super well and sounds really fancy. i love hammer's store theme, not a catchy song but it's just really cool and it feels so distinct among the rest of the OST. i like phantom place a lot, forgotten garden sounds really good even if it is by far my least favourite location in the whole game, clock tower is fantastic just like every other series clock tower theme, the most hype song in the game after that opening stage track, underground resovoire is an amazing track and one of its real standouts, again i love how the piano sounds in many of these tracks, its the fanciest sounding OST in the whole trilogy and one of the cooler OST's overall on the console just from how much it manages to convay it's atmosphere so well with the GBA's limited capabilities, very ambitious i think. fate of the devil is another amazing track, i think this played during the ending if i remember right, the theme that plays during the alternate characters first level is great but i'll talk about that after this, you're not alone is a really sweet song too.

when you finish the game you're given a big new unlockable, just like maxim mode in harmony you get Julius mode in this. it's very similar to the one in that game, albiet less fun i think, you play the game as a Belmont, whip, subweapons, levels removed and the full castle to explore, working as a short more traditional platformer experience, a lot more difficult and with nothing like healing items it's certainly a different experience, close to a classicvania than anything else, but it's a good time and i would recommend the run through, even if i think its worse than maxim mode and the basegame experience, no story or anything though, but you do get a new piece of music in here at the start of the run. the game overall is pretty long if you go for the 100% but it is a good bit shorter overall compared to harmony and it felt even shorter than circle, though this could be down to the fact it's much better paced than either of them, it's also the easiest game by far outside of some very confusing map chunks, you get so many good souls here and there's so many healing and MP items that i don't think many people will struggle with it which is a huge complement, it made it a lot of fun to play for the about 20 hours i spent with it, a quicker non-100% run will probably only take you maybe 7-10 hours though. the game would get a direct sequel too, rare for the series for sure and it's the only one of the metroidvania games to get one unless you want to count mirror of fate leading into lords of shadow 2, it's neat and i'm excited to see these characters again, that game even had 2 sequels though with different casts and wildly new gimmicks and settings.it would also be worked on by series producer koji igarashi who i talked about in the harmony of sorrow page and he's even kind of in the game since this games belmont just looks like him, he's done lots of cool things outside of the series like bloodstained, twinbee and various tokimeki memorial games. the game also had a director and he is very cool too, Junichi Murakami, who worked on what will actually be the very next game i cover, eiyuuden chronicle rising, he also worked on sword of etheria, the weirdo sunday vs fighting game, the actual eiyuuden RPG and even breeding stud. also here for this game is Ayami Kojima on the art and this games art is beautiful, some of the best designs in the series and it's up there with some of the best art too, rivalled only by harmony, curse of darkness and order of ecclessia i think, deserved a shoutout i think. the game was developed in konami but the actual subteam isn't credited as anything other than konami, so i can't really talk much about the team as a whole, it's just konami, you know the kinds of games they're known for. for ports you have a few options, the original GBA ver is there but it's the pricest of the GBA games so it'll cost you a decent amount, though thankfully it has been ported as part of the advance collection and this even has its own physical release that's fairly affordable for all the games on the system, plus dracula X, so that might be the way to go, it even helps you keep track of which souls you have and can get on the side of the screen any time you hit an enemy which is super useful, the game is very highly reccomended no matter what port, though i would have a hard time choosing weather i love it or harmony more, it's still one of the best platformers probably ever made and a shining example of how to do a metroidvania.