Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

The life of an exchange student is not without its problems. There are the usual language and cultural barriers to overcome, not to mention being thousands of miles from everyone you know and love. Of course, it has its perks too – there's the sense of adventure, of experiencing something new. Not to mention being thousands of miles from everyone you know and hate.

Soma Cruz, the protagonist of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, certainly becomes embroiled in an adventure during his exchange visit to Japan. No sooner has he found his dormitory, put up his Che Guevara poster and lined his stomach in preparation for Freshers Week when he's whisked off on a mission to vanquish the reincarnation of Dracula.

Well, we've all been there.

At first glance Aria of Sorrow resembles nothing more than a fairly average action-platform game, with pretty basic combat and movement controls – walk up to an enemy (be it a zombie, bat or armoured guard) and press fire repeatedly. But as any fan of the Castlevania series will attest, there's far more here than initially meets the eye.

In keeping with its heritage Aria of Sorrow is a relatively freeform adventure set in a sprawling, multi-tiered castle. How the developer's managed to cram such a thing into 405KB of mobile phone memory is something that will keep us pondering for quite some time.

As you progress through the surprisingly varied architecture of the castle you acquire new abilities, which allow you to access areas that were previously off-limits. Take, for example, one of the first such abilities you acquire: Flying Armour. This enables you to extend the length of your jumps, which in turn permit you to cross that unbridgeable gap that you encountered earlier. In this way Dracula's castle – and indeed the game as a whole – gradually opens up to you. It really is quite empowering.

Furthering this sense of empowerment is the game's RPG element. As you defeat enemies in battle you gain experience points, which eventually cause you to level-up in eight core areas such as attack and defense. In real terms, it means that you become a more effective fighter as you progress through the game.

Also accessible from the in-game menu is the means to equip the items of clothing and weaponry that you pick up along the way, either dotted around the castle or snatched from defeated enemies. These further enhance your stats, making you hardier and more potent in attack.

From a technical standpoint the game's hardly stunning, though it certainly has its moments (the impressively layered scrolling moon background bit springs to mind, as do the flaming skull enemies). You'll also encounter the odd loading screen, which – though only lasting a few seconds – can prove annoying. One particularly irksome occurrence is where a loading screen is positioned in the middle of a vertical jump, which led to several confusing bouts of screen-flipping nonsense before we got a hold of the situation.

The only other doubt we have relates to how well the game meets the pick-up-and-play requirements of mobile gaming. The developer has answered that one to a certain extent with a sleep mode that saves your position wherever you are in the game (rendering the save points somewhat irrelevant), but it's still hardly something you could just jump into for the odd five-minute blast.

Regardless of these misgivings, however, we're left incredibly impressed at how The Code Monkeys has managed to condense the Castlevania experience into such a polished mobile package. It's captured the sense of adventure wonderfully, and anyone bemoaning the lack of depth in mobile gaming should view this as an essential purchase.