Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Java)

Konami’s highly acclaimed Castlevania series continues on mobile with an adaptation of the award winning Game Boy Advance title

JP release: 2008
NA release: 2008
EU release: 2008
Developer: The Code Monkeys
Publisher: Konami
Pocket Gamer Review: 4/5
Platforms: Java
Version Played: Java

While smartphones were already out, companies were trying to get the last out of java platforms, and surprisingly resulted in some really impressive final games for the platform (check out the very impressive BioShock 3D). Konami licensed out Aria of Sorrow to The Code Monkeys to take the Game Boy Advance game and turn it into a mobile title.

As expected, this is a very compromised port. It’s still a metroidvania, making it an impressive mobile phone game, but with a condensed map and many copy and pasted rooms to keep the file size down. There’s also fewer bosses and items to find, and it just all feels a bit small. One big sign of compromise is that all weapons now use the same sword sprite an animation – so the sword whip offers zero range benefit and two handed weapons are now slower. Which means you simply pick the one with the highest attack value.

For a mobile game, the controls are decent, but they’re still nowhere near good enough for an action game like this. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid attacks and everything is slow or stiff. At this stage, GBA level games on mobile phones weren’t even all that impressive – the NGage had full GBA ports and that had already been discontinued.

Fine

The only other doubt we have relates to how well the game meets the pick-up-and-play requirements of mobile gaming. The developer has answered that one to a certain extent with a sleep mode that saves your position wherever you are in the game, but it’s still hardly something you could just jump into for the odd five-minute blast.
Jon Mundy, Pocket Gamer

Remake or remaster?

It’s just a basic version of the original.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get this version of Aria of Sorrow.