My power was out until about 11pm last night. I the meantime I got quite a few things done. Ok, I lied, I got one thing done. I beat Aria of Sorrow and now have seen all the endings. My favorite was the very bad ending where Soma does not fight off the curse and Julius comes to keep his promise. THAT is Castlevania.

In order to get all the endings, and get my pathetic 98.3%, I had to bounce some ideas off of Toups. So I called him up and we chatted like a couple of school girls for, between two different phone calls, well over an hour. He gave me quite a few hints on the ancient book 3 and waterfall puzzles, making it so that I did not have to out right cheat and look at a FAQ. Then we discussed the finer nature of illusion present in Ninja Gaiden.

I could not figure out what to do after I ended with Aria of Sorrow (what is it with the final bosses being easy in IGAvania games? I want to die a few times here please. Well, not CotM second form hard either though.) I was at a loss of what to do. I started up a game with Julius. I played for about 15 min or so, but then turned it off. I have a problem with Julius and it is the same as Maxim from Harmony of Dissonance.

While really cool that you now have this character (a Belmont this time even) it still feels very tacked on. Boss rush in both HoD and AoS has some thought put into it and a bit of rad dashed on in HoD. So then you can explore the castle again as Maxim or Julius after the game is over. You have no stats, gain no experience, and don’t even get to explore their side of the story. I think that is what I want, to explore their side of the story. Maxim had the more interesting story to explore too.

So I only played for a little while. Perhaps I should restart as Julius in hard mode.

I then decided to play Lumines. The more I play this game the more transparent it becomes. I don’t have the will anymore to play 45 min before getting challenged. Vs. CPU mode is at about the same level for me. I play for about 20 min to get to the level that is difficult then proceed to get my ass handed to me every time. It is pretty disappointing. Just a few more options and an arrange mode would have made this game many times better.

I also wanted to thank Stone for looking up the cursed tools levels for my wife while we were out of internets. She loves herself some Harvest moon.