Bonus Playable Characters: Igavanias Part 2 

Please leave any corrections here. I felt pretty confident about this one.

I think Castlevania is interesting because the gothic aesthetic comes across in imagery and style, not always color choice. Most think of muting or desaturating, but about all Castlevania either limits color choice or can be colorful. You for sure can tell it was intentional choice with Bloodstained

I was so glad to hear your positive feedback for hod. "Somebody else gets it! 😭"

Loved this, and I'm a huge supporter of Harmony of Dissonance as well. Thanks for continuing this series; excited to see you talk about the DS games for Part 3. And after that... one obvious direction you could go is covering the two PS2 Castlevania games, both of which have Bonus Playable Characters to explore. OR: Do you happen to be a fan of Contra at all? You could use that to keep the Konami franchise inspections going, because there are Bonus Playable Characters in Contra IV, Contra ReBirth, and Neo Contra.

Can't wait till you go over the DS extra playable characters

I'm so glad there's other people who prefer HoD to AoS. One main point I did not like about AoS that I haven't seen anyone really talk about, is how much they messed with movement upgrades. In Sotn, CotM, and HoD, all new movement abilities you could just use right off the bat without having to equip anything. It got SUPER annoying in AoS to constantly have to equip and re-equip souls to use abilities to just move around the castle (which looked like a regular guy's mansion, not goth or dark or spooky enough to be a Castlevania castle). It's a fine enough game, I just can't see why people think it's the best Castlevania.

I'm actually going to defend Julius Mode. Aria of Sorrow (and most metroidvanias) can essentially be split into 2 play styles: Explorative and combative. The former is where you take your time to power up and explore the map in hopes of lowering the difficulty (and optionally taking in sights and embracing world building, depending on the game), while the latter involves taking on exclusively combat as fast and sparsely as possible. Julius Mode is PERFECT for the latter and easily my preferred way of *replaying* Aria of Sorrow. While the story eventually stops being engaging after 2 or 3 playthroughs, the gameplay doesn't get to that point... Except for backtracking. Julius manages to kill both birds with one stone, since there's no cutscenes at all, essentially every boss besides the first and last is optional, and he moves super fast with his air kicks and ability to skip combat with Omnia Vanitas, which makes backtracking a breeze. Some people are underwhelmed by his lack of power compared to his *SPOILER ALERT* Boss incarnation, but here's the crazy thing: He's still pretty OP. He immediately starts out with increased movement speed, an invincible and spammable movement option, several subweapons with incredible damage out the gate, and a Grand Cross attack so powerful it's both invincible AND one-shots all the bosses in the first half of the game. IIRC his speedruns are usually even faster than Soma's, so if that's not a sign then I don't know what is.

I need part three yesterday

I was wondering if you would continue this series with the 3D games. Legacy of Darkness, Lament of Innocence, and Curse of Darkness all had interesting bonus modes and BPCs, but are never discussed because the games themselves are barely discussed.

the boss rush mode for Aria would unlock unique weapons if you beat it fast enough. i always thought that was a good addition

It's been awhile since I've played Aria, but isn't the weapon shown in-game the Morning Star, not the Vampire Killer? The VK is a whip, the Morning Star is a ball & chain. Even artwork shows the whip wielded, so just wondering on that point as many do get the two weapons confused.

you weren't lying. those really were exaggerations of Soma's movement

Julius mode was really underwhelming after seeing how strong Julius be in his fight

Castlevania circle of the moon originally have a bonus character of hugh fur time consuming he cut from the game

Your complaints of aria of sorrow boil down to "i have a skill issue"

lets be real, most of the alt characters suck and feel like last minute additions. the circle alternate modes actually alter the game in meaningful ways, each plays unique from each other. just grab a save file if you don't want to unlock them all.