I completely agree that they are THE top of the series. Portrait of Ruin also deserves to be in the conversation. Technically not a Castlevania, but Bloodstained Ritual of the Night was absolute heat and you need to give it a go if you haven’t.
I actually completely disagree with everyone on the seal system. It’s innovative, makes boss fights more than just spamming my OP setup, and an interesting way to incorporate lore with (at the time) brand new touch screen technology. I think everyone hates it because it made Castlevania (which was kind of the Dark Souls of metroidvanias back then) all that more difficult. But that’s just my personal opinion. Great video.
I think I mentioned it before, but there's rom hacks for Aria of Sorrow and Harmony of Dissonance that re-color the graphics to look more like Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow. They get rid of the problem that some GBA games had where the colors were hyper bright and washed out to account for the original GBA not having a backlight.
Yeah, and I need to figure out how to get those raw hacks onto my Steam version, however, I am going to compare the games without the mods just as they are.
Aria no contest. Better map, better story, no seal system. The combat is comparable and while I'd concede that Dawn has better bosses and more refined combat, the explorative elements of Aria's map more than make up for it.
@@darklordyianni4463 as your favorite Castlevania games. I find Harmony a bit disappointing mainly due to its poor audio. Curse of darkness was decent enough and probably the best 3d Castlevania game
I completely agree that they are THE top of the series. Portrait of Ruin also deserves to be in the conversation. Technically not a Castlevania, but Bloodstained Ritual of the Night was absolute heat and you need to give it a go if you haven’t.
I actually completely disagree with everyone on the seal system. It’s innovative, makes boss fights more than just spamming my OP setup, and an interesting way to incorporate lore with (at the time) brand new touch screen technology. I think everyone hates it because it made Castlevania (which was kind of the Dark Souls of metroidvanias back then) all that more difficult. But that’s just my personal opinion. Great video.
I think I mentioned it before, but there's rom hacks for Aria of Sorrow and Harmony of Dissonance that re-color the graphics to look more like Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow. They get rid of the problem that some GBA games had where the colors were hyper bright and washed out to account for the original GBA not having a backlight.
Yeah, and I need to figure out how to get those raw hacks onto my Steam version, however, I am going to compare the games without the mods just as they are.
IMO
Gameplay:DoS
Artstyle:AoS
Tone of the game:AoS
Characters:AoS
Story:AoS
Aria no contest. Better map, better story, no seal system. The combat is comparable and while I'd concede that Dawn has better bosses and more refined combat, the explorative elements of Aria's map more than make up for it.
HARMONY OF DISSONANCE! + Curse of Darkness.
@@darklordyianni4463 as your favorite Castlevania games. I find Harmony a bit disappointing mainly due to its poor audio. Curse of darkness was decent enough and probably the best 3d Castlevania game
@@Tommylop1982 HoD music was pretty moody/atomspheric, actually....and CoD was very good. and flexible.