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What a Wonderful Night to Talk About Castlevania

AXE OF THE BLOOD GOD | Kat's still wandering the desert, so Nadia, Anthony, and special guest John Learned team up to talk about the 15th anniversary of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

Axe of the Blood God is our weekly RPG podcast hosted by Kat Bailey and Nadia Oxford. You can find the previous episodes here.

Kat's on her way back to the salt mines (she missed the vodka, which we distill from only the finest potatoes), but she's not quite here yet. Ergo, you get one more Blood God episode with myself and VentureBeat's Anthony John Agnello.

On this week's episode, we talk at length about the RPG-ish Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow [download link here]. We're joined by a very special guest: John Learned, a righteous dude who knows a lot about Castlevania. John's Annotated Symphony of the Night video series is to die for if you're any kind of SOTN fan, but his RPG knowledge base doesn't stop there. John also wrote a wonderful feature about Final Fantasy XII's unique localization, in addition to a piece about the process behind Vagrant Story's memorable translation.

We also talk about how the Nintendo Switch Online service might affect retro RPG downloads, and we go over our wish-lists for Square-Enix's E3 2018 presentations.

Kat's on vacation for a few seconds more, so it's Anthony and Nadia again, along with special guest John Learned! This week, the trio talks about the excellent features John wrote for USgamer about Final Fantasy XII and Vagrant Story's localizations [4:00], the big news about Nintendo Switch Online and how it might pertain to RPGs [8:45], and what we hope to see at Square-Enix's E3 2018 press conference [22:10] before launching into our main topic: The gem that is Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow [43:46].

Music from Axe of the Blood God is courtesy of Lena Chappelle, who has also contributed the themes to Active Time Babble and Roleplayers' Realm. I also use music from the RPG Music Pack over at rpgmaker.net. Check it out!

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