When I was playing Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, I kept thinking back to past Castlevania games that I kept internally referencing against Bloodstained, Aria of Sorrow in particular is the game I compared with it most. After I finished Ritual of The Night, I did wonder to myself if I had, had rose tinted glasses on after all these years. It's always been the best of the GBA Castlevania's which in my mind is pretty indisputable. So, I put my memory to the test and booted it back up again. Firstly, when compared to Bloodstained, it has style. Don't get me wrong, Bloodstained has a look and it's by no means ugly, but it lacked style in my opinion.
The map is large in AoS (Aria of Sorrow), and takes a good six to eight hours to completely explore. RotN (Bloodstained) took me around 12 hours to finish, but unlike AoS I had to do some grinding in places. You can also travel fairly quickly in AoS, you move faster and the rooms are generally smaller, it keeps the pace up. Though I will give RotN it's due, it had more warp rooms and at least one of those warp rooms was next to a save point. No such pleasantry in AoS.
Progressing through AoS is linear but at least it's cohesive. You can get lost in a few spots especially if you forget a place that a new ability would allow you to explore. I was at the mercy of online guides to get the true ending for RotN, so much of it was poorly explained and not communicated through the level design and my god they made swimming convoluted.
Player handling is fairly equal between the two. They seem to move at roughly the same speed, the attack animations seem practically identical although in AoS there are some pretty overpowered weapons not too far into the game that make the rest trivial. I found no such trump card weapon in RotN but both games suffer with greatswords being the best weapons to use thanks to their high strength, area of cover and ability to skip the attack delay by jumping.
Souls and Shards next, wow these two games are really similar. AoS has fewer souls but less overlap with fewer balancing issues, but even still there are plenty of forgetable souls you can acquire. RotN has a ridiculous amount of shards but most of them are useless. RotN also suffers from having some very overpowered shards that just eliminate the notion of experimentation. RotN combat does rely more on Shards that AoS does on Souls, so you could argue RotN does better with the mechanic.
Enemies and bosses, got to be the most divisive category here I think. Enemy wise, AoS has the advantage of familiar faces really, there aren't as many foes here but there is enough to keep the game fresh and other than the Valkyries and Medusa heads, none are especially annoying.
RotN on the other hand is a different story, lots of reskin enemies (and giant versions in the late game, whoo for more crap!) and so many enemies just have a ton of health. I was at level 45 by the time I finished the game and there were still plenty of weaker enemies that still took three or more hits. The only demon I found who gave good hauls of EXP still took six to seven whacks to beat. Definetly tedious and irritating, especially when it crams so many areas with far too many enemies. AoS only does this sparingly, there are places that are crammed and annoying and in the late game there was a bit that made my blood absolutely boil. But not a patch on RotN's constant mob slog.
Finally onto bosses and I have to admit the bosses in AoS are largely forgettable. I like the head hunter and Balore seems a fan favourite, but yeah, not the most exceptional bunch. RotN has some cool boss designs and in all honesty, actually exciting boss mechanics, namely when fighting humanoid bosses. This is something I didn't appreciate when I was playing the first time around but after replaying AoS, I did miss the complex bosses of RotN. The only thing they screwed up is giving every boss far too much HP. The battles dragged out way too long.
Lastly just some random things, both games are actually very close in damage received and HP totals. RotN probably has higher hitting attacks than AoS and you can get comboed to buggery where AoS gives you invincibility frames. What really does sway things further into AoS's favour is the fact that restorative items do not cost a fortune in the shop. In fact, making money in AoS is much easier that RotN. AoS may have been too easy but RotN was too stingy and the health potions were not as effective either which coupled with the drawn out boss fights meant you had to be near perfect most of the time to succeed.
Considering all these points, I still favour AoS over RotN The only thing I would actually take from RotN and put into AoS are the boss battles, because they're genuinely the best thing the game had to offer.
I'll be honest though, Aria of Sorrow isn't as amazing as I remembered it. It's still a good game but it's perhaps overly linear and a few areas are a bit bland to explore, like the floating garden for instance. I would still recommend playing it today if you haven't but it might be a while before I return to it. Bloodstained on the other hand, I don't think I'll ever get the yearning to replay.
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