We’ll admit, there’s a great deal of nostalgia here for Symphony of the Night, but they’re undeniably useful, especially when enemies occupy a different zone on the same screen. These form more of a traditional spell caster type of soul, and we’re starting with the most basic of them, the Ghost. Moving on from our straight attack options, we now come to what we like to call the ‘spell’ type attacks. By the time it’s unlocked you might consider yourself an expert, no longer requiring such distance covering attacks, but it’s always worth keeping something on hand, just in case. If you weren’t exactly impressed with a tiny bow and arrow or a simple long sword, then surely a glowing monstrous horse will do the job, right? There’s not a great deal to describe about this, apart from the fact that it deals a very high amount of damage, can be thrown in midair and, as ever, flies across the screen in a straight line. Our final choice in the trio of straight liners is Nightmare, which for us is essentially the ultimate version of this particular type of soul.

Summons a horse to charge across the screen.

It is rather simple, because you essentially just fling a straight sword at the opponent, but it’s powerful and again, comes in very handy against targets that you’d rather keep at a distance. Yes, it’s from those annoying multi-limbed enemies that like to occupy the exact location on which you’d like to jump, usually a set of stairs, but if you can bring yourself to killing quite a few of them, you should get your hands on their soul. Perhaps you’ve taken advantage of the Skull Archer soul, but want something that feels a little meatier in terms of damage? Look no further than the Durga soul.

Throws a sword across the screen in a straight line.

The Skull Archer is firmly in the early game camp, because it’ll be out-scaled by better options after a short while, however when you’re taking down awkward large enemies and bosses in the early game, this is a great way to deal damage whilst staying safe. This makes them ideal for attacking enemies with wide ranging attacks, a lot of which are bosses.

The best way to explain the Skull Archer soul, and indeed our next two choices, are that of straight line attacks that are useful from range. Fires an enchanted arrow after a short animation delay.Medusa Heads are a great example of this, because you’re likely to kill quite a lot of them in their zones, but there’s also hazards like spikes all over the place, so having a constant health return is very handy. Think of it more as a ‘sustain’ tool that can be used to keep your health high in awkward zones. This is quite similar to the Giant Worm soul above, but a little more active, and ideally suited for healing you up when there are a lot of weak enemies present. Speaking of health regeneration, our next choice is that of the Succubus, which will regenerate 5HP every time you hit an enemy with a normal attack. It’s not pretty, but this soul has occasionally saved our behind, so it’s worth a mention alongside even the most powerful of offensive souls. Enter the Giant Worm soul put yourself somewhere safe and let your character regenerate their health. The worst of these is when you’re exploring a new zone, and you find yourself in between dangerous zones and far too far away from a save room. In reality things are never really that simple, and you’ll likely find yourself in a sticky situation once in a while. We all like to think that we can sweep and swoop around a Castlevania map, slaying enemies and gathering loot like a veritable speedrunner all day long. To fully understand the useful nature of the Giant Worm soul, you must first remove your Ego.

Grants health regeneration whilst stationary.If you’ve read our early and late game articles then a fair few will be familiar, but we’ve rounded out the overall selection with some essential choices, and a few that might surprise. Given that there’s a huge amount of them to gather in Aria of Sorrow, there are some filler spells and skills that really aren’t worth it, so today we’re going to draw your attention to those that we consider to be the absolute best available in the game. Some games have spells, relics or equipment, but nothing comes close to hunting down enemies and learning their skills. Grabbing some powerful souls is, in our opinion, the best version of a Castlevania collect-a-thon.

Castlevania aria of sorrow