"Igavania" generally refers to being heavy on the RPG side of the Metroidvania spectrum. These games are the most similar to Symphony of the Night or the other Koji Igarashi directed games.
I've always had these games on my backlog and decided to go through some of the highlights. I recently beat Symphony of the Night and greatly enjoyed it although it was not without it's issues or things that I feel aged a bit poorly.
► Mid game twist spoiler
I think the idea of the good ending and inverted castle were neat in theory and I'm sure back in the day it was a real holy shit moment but personally it didn't feel that interesting or engaging to me. It felt like busy work right at the last moment. By that point you have gotten all of the possible new forms of traversal and have seen most if not all of the castle already so your exploring is pretty much over. Not to mention some of the combat encounters just feel like lazy annoying enemy spam to the point you're encouraged to just mist form past everything. Some of the bosses are okay but also by this point you're so overpowered none of them except Galamoth (assuming you don't use the exploit I found on accident) were piss easy. It just felt really tacked on and like filler.
So far I've been greatly enjoying Aria of Sorrow although it doesn't have as much visual flair as SotN and they nerfed the backdash which makes traversal a little less fun. I love the addition of the glide ability though and I much prefer the selectable menu of sub weapons instead of the classic drops system.
My opinion of Aria of Sorrow continues to be high although some of the bosses have been a little more on the bleh side. Assuming there's no mid game twist like SotN I'm about 3/4 of the way through the game which definitely feels a lot shorter but that makes sense for a GBA title. Still I am missing that higher level of polish and refinement you can definitely feel with SotN. The plot is a little weird too. A lot of characters (including Alucard) seem to be running around doing largely inconsequential stuff while this random teenager is suddenly cool with fighting goblins, ghouls, and zombies with no conscience.
Also Soma's white bat form is cool.
I voted yes. These are the 2D version of realtime open world RPGs. If TES and Pirannha Bytes games are RPGs, then so are Igavanias.
"Igavania" generally refers to being heavy on the RPG side of the Metroidvania spectrum. These games are the most similar to Symphony of the Night or the other Koji Igarashi directed games.
I don't know where you found this quote but it's pretty weird. Igavanias aren't 'heavy on the RPG side of the Metroidvania spectrum'; they defined metroidvania as a genre. Symphony of the Night is the ur-metroidvania. RPG elements is what Symphony of the Night added to the formula; if a game in this style doesn't have strong RPG elements, it's just a metroidlike.
The plot is a little weird too. A lot of characters (including Alucard) seem to be running around doing largely inconsequential stuff while this random teenager is suddenly cool with fighting goblins, ghouls, and zombies with no conscience.
I don't really remember the plot but I'm pretty sure this ends up justified.
If you like metroidvanias in general and not just Igavanias, I can recommend this one:
I don't know where you found this quote but it's pretty weird. Igavanias aren't 'heavy on the RPG side of the Metroidvania spectrum'; they defined metroidvania as a genre. Symphony of the Night is the ur-metroidvania. RPG elements is what Symphony of the Night added to the formula; if a game in this style doesn't have strong RPG elements, it's just a metroidlike.
I think I got it from the Steam curator page. To be honest I just wanted to preempt what I thought would be a sizable number of people who thought they weren't real RPGs but it looks like I was luckily mistaken.
I don't really remember the plot but I'm pretty sure this ends up justified.
I know the twist that justifies it retroactively but just taking it at face value the plot is very fast to suddenly have this guy being a Castlevania protag. It's a very minor thing though I don't get caught up on stuff like that.
Finished Aria of Sorrow. Was shorter than SotN but I'd say they're pretty close in length if you don't count running around the inverted castle. I liked it quite a lot and really like the soul stealing mechanic. However requiring you to farm certain souls to unlock the good ending was a little annoying. Thankfully I naturally unlocked two out of the three necessary but I would see someone getting bad RNG and being frustrated over it. Apparently there's a "golden" ending that requires you to collect the soul of every enemy in the game and I'm definitely not going to bother with that for a short cutscene of the protag holding hands with his gf.
► Show Spoiler
The reveal that Soma is actually Dracula reincarnated is still cool even though I already knew about it. I do wish more was done with the concept though. You find out you're Dracula and then immediately go and deal with it. No interesting back and forth with his former underlings like Death, no back and forth with Alucard about the fact you're his father's reincarnation. Hopefully the sequel touches on that a bit more
Started Dawn of Sorrow and the jump to better hardware is immediately noticeable and welcome except for the character portraits. I like a good early 2000s anime aesthetic but replacing Ayami Kojima's portraits for this feels like a MASSIVE downgrade.
Really liking the ability to upgrade weapons with souls so that repeats aren't totally useless but the DS touch screen gimmicks are brutal to deal with on an emulator.
Apparently there's a "golden" ending that requires you to collect the soul of every enemy in the game and I'm definitely not going to bother with that for a short cutscene of the protag holding hands with his gf.
I did it. I put on all the +luck gear and farmed the souls. My completionism autism was too strong. Fortunately they ditched that system after Dawn iirc.
The ability to have two "loadouts" of equipment and souls you can swap between with just the press of a button is such a good improvement over Aria. There are a lot of powers that you get but having to constantly open the menu and scroll through them usually meant that I never took off some basic movement powers while 90% of the arsenal went completely ignored. Now I can have a "traversal" moveset and a "combat" moveset.
Finished Aria of Sorrow. Was shorter than SotN but I'd say they're pretty close in length if you don't count running around the inverted castle. I liked it quite a lot and really like the soul stealing mechanic. However requiring you to farm certain souls to unlock the good ending was a little annoying. Thankfully I naturally unlocked two out of the three necessary but I would see someone getting bad RNG and being frustrated over it. Apparently there's a "golden" ending that requires you to collect the soul of every enemy in the game and I'm definitely not going to bother with that for a short cutscene of the protag holding hands with his gf.
► Show Spoiler
The reveal that Soma is actually Dracula reincarnated is still cool even though I already knew about it. I do wish more was done with the concept though. You find out you're Dracula and then immediately go and deal with it. No interesting back and forth with his former underlings like Death, no back and forth with Alucard about the fact you're his father's reincarnation. Hopefully the sequel touches on that a bit more
Started Dawn of Sorrow and the jump to better hardware is immediately noticeable and welcome except for the character portraits. I like a good early 2000s anime aesthetic but replacing Ayami Kojima's portraits for this feels like a MASSIVE downgrade.
Finished Aria of Sorrow. Was shorter than SotN but I'd say they're pretty close in length if you don't count running around the inverted castle. I liked it quite a lot and really like the soul stealing mechanic. However requiring you to farm certain souls to unlock the good ending was a little annoying. Thankfully I naturally unlocked two out of the three necessary but I would see someone getting bad RNG and being frustrated over it. Apparently there's a "golden" ending that requires you to collect the soul of every enemy in the game and I'm definitely not going to bother with that for a short cutscene of the protag holding hands with his gf.
► Show Spoiler
The reveal that Soma is actually Dracula reincarnated is still cool even though I already knew about it. I do wish more was done with the concept though. You find out you're Dracula and then immediately go and deal with it. No interesting back and forth with his former underlings like Death, no back and forth with Alucard about the fact you're his father's reincarnation. Hopefully the sequel touches on that a bit more
Started Dawn of Sorrow and the jump to better hardware is immediately noticeable and welcome except for the character portraits. I like a good early 2000s anime aesthetic but replacing Ayami Kojima's portraits for this feels like a MASSIVE downgrade.
I actually did see this hack come up when I was getting the game ready to play but I was worried about all the rebalancing that it mentions and I don't want my first playthrough to be too heavily altered from the original experience.
The touch screen boss kills are really starting to test my patience though.
Last edited by Vergil on May 30th, 2024, 20:29, edited 1 time in total.
The touch screen boss kills are really starting to test my patience though.
I remember liking them by the end. I enjoyed conquering the painfully picky drawing recognition algorithm.
Did you play it on an actual DS or an emulator though? The mouse sensitivity and awkwardness of having to quickly switch from my controller to mouse is pretty jarring and I've had some close calls where I almost lost because I fucked up the symbol.
Did you play it on an actual DS or an emulator though? The mouse sensitivity and awkwardness of having to quickly switch from my controller to mouse is pretty jarring
I played on the DS, but it sounds like your setup is even more annoying and thus will be more rewarding to master.
Well yeah, that's the point. The mechanic wouldn't matter if it didn't stand in the way of victory!
It feels like a cheap gimmick though. Nothing about my ability to draw has anything to do with my ability to beat the boss. If I got to the final boss and managed to learn it's patterns, moveset, and skillfully defeated it but lost because I couldn't draw a picture of a monkey fucking a coconut fast enough I would feel cheated.
If I got to the final boss and managed to learn it's patterns, moveset, and skillfully defeated it but lost because I couldn't draw a picture of a monkey fucking a coconut fast enough I would feel cheated.
You haven't defeated the boss until you draw the monkey.
I see you voted no @Vlajdimir Ermenović I'm curious why you think they don't count as RPGs?
To me, if there's no builds, it's not an rpg. It's an essential part of the experience and part of what draws the genre together into a recognizable whole. SotN and its ilk have rpg elements, but that part simply isn't there.
There are builds though. However they are based around equipment but there is a difference between a player prioritizing strength boosting items versus intelligence for example.
There are builds though. However they are based around equipment but there is a difference between a player prioritizing strength boosting items versus intelligence for example.
I see your point, but it's just not the same if you can switch between them mid-game and experience it all in one playthrough. It ends up feeling more like picking which weapon you're going to use in Mega Man than it is creating a character in an rpg.
Finished Aria of Sorrow. Was shorter than SotN but I'd say they're pretty close in length if you don't count running around the inverted castle. I liked it quite a lot and really like the soul stealing mechanic. However requiring you to farm certain souls to unlock the good ending was a little annoying. Thankfully I naturally unlocked two out of the three necessary but I would see someone getting bad RNG and being frustrated over it. Apparently there's a "golden" ending that requires you to collect the soul of every enemy in the game and I'm definitely not going to bother with that for a short cutscene of the protag holding hands with his gf.
► Show Spoiler
The reveal that Soma is actually Dracula reincarnated is still cool even though I already knew about it. I do wish more was done with the concept though. You find out you're Dracula and then immediately go and deal with it. No interesting back and forth with his former underlings like Death, no back and forth with Alucard about the fact you're his father's reincarnation. Hopefully the sequel touches on that a bit more
Started Dawn of Sorrow and the jump to better hardware is immediately noticeable and welcome except for the character portraits. I like a good early 2000s anime aesthetic but replacing Ayami Kojima's portraits for this feels like a MASSIVE downgrade.
Nigga looks like he's about to warn Yugi about an awakening egyptian curse.
I see your point, but it's just not the same if you can switch between them mid-game and experience it all in one playthrough. It ends up feeling more like picking which weapon you're going to use in Mega Man than it is creating a character in an rpg.
Valdis Story: Abyssal city (linked earlier) makes you pick one of three protagonists and each protagonist has three skill trees, so it's definitely got buildfaggotry. I don't view build autism as a necessary component of RPGs, though.
Making Soma a stand user was also an inspired choice. Although ironically as cool as it looks the flying armor now kinda throws me off trying to gauge where I'm gonna land compared to the Aria version.
