Just finished Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA game but on my ds)
I never actually had time to play it before despite how great this title is and halfway through a savegame I forgot all the little abilities needed to get around so I started all over again and played it as if it were a new title. With mind focused on the one thing and determined to complete it I finally managed to get all abilities, fill up the monster menu with all the data (what drop items monsters leave) and max out my character to lvl 99 and make everything my bitch. (35hours of backtracking exploring every wall and trying to get past the puzzles to see everything) Got all 3 endings, unlocked boss rsh mode, unlocked sound mode, unlocked julius code, etc and I feel very satisfied.
Although I prefer the controls of the latest metroidvania (OOE button mashing combos) this game holds quite well over time and is funner to play on the ds (I didn't have the gba with a backlight model).
It just falls under the problem of one thing:
when you get powerful enough and you collect so many abilities (more than you know what to do with) you feel like the game doesn't offer a 2nd generation of monsters to defeat by making you fight tougher versions of them the way diablo did, so that you can have fun kicking their butts with your overpowered weapons. Yes there is a harder difficulty but you are just fighting the same ones not modified ones.
What I'd like to see is a thing where monsters get stronger the more powerful you are so that when you come back to an old room you won't see the weak ones there anymore but a modified version of the same thing with higher-level stats in order to make the fighting more interesting. It's a problem I think that could easily be changed by doing the old pallete swap trick and adding variations in attack patters so that you can have layers of enemies attacking together to keep you from getting to the other side of the room or making it hard for you to ignore them and rush to the exit. (it would also make stealth more important too)
This is something they do in survival horror games where you could go back to an old room you already explored and the time of day might have changed or something like that and a monster might come out of nowhere after you least expect it (because you thought it was cleared or the monsters there were weak)
It would give a good excuse for a player to make use of all the abilities they collected rather than have them ignore the abilities altogether and only use their fave ones.
I am now playing a "new game +" on hard, (you get to keep your collected abilities) then I will play ordinary hard(fresh game), and then play as julius belmont.
After I'm finished with this I need to play the GBA megaman zero titles, (still haven't touched the MMZ collection yet) minish cap (one of the zeldas I missed out on for GBA) and zx advent. Lots of handheld stuff still got to get through. Been playing handheld games lately because they are so easy to jump right into and jump right out of.
It was mainly those longer handheld games that I didn't managed to complete properly in the past that I'm determined to get through now, as what happened then was that I would start a game, play it halfway through, and then forget about it for months and have to comeback to it again but forgetting what I did, causing me to reset. This time was different and I would promise myself to continue until its all done. I don't like to leave a game only completed halfway.
I'm looking forward to the next
okami game on nintendo DS too. It's a shame nobody here plays portables anymore. This sequel better fucking sell! Capcoms zelda-killer and nobody gave a shit when it came out on ps2 FFS
Anyway if you still play old but good side scroller rpg adventure titles this would get a solid 8 out of 10.
It's not quite as good as OOE in terms of how you kil bosses (the fights in that just feel more epic for some reason because of the dramatic way some of them die) but it's older so I can go easier on it.
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
