AoS/Soma Any% No 0HP

Soma Any% No 0HP is the most popular speedrunning category for Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It allows various movement glitches to be used to complete the game quickly, banning only the 0HP glitch and Extended shop glitch.

Major glitches used

TODO

Standard route

Start

• Baselard manip
• Creaking Skull manip

Manticore manip

The simplest way to exit the Ghost Dancers room with the correct RNG is to simply hold right. Alternatively, you can save 0.5s by doing a full backdash followed by a full jump when you reach the edge of the top platform, so that you land on the edge of the platform below and slide off. You should exit the room with RNG index 43 / 0x1A609F0A.

Crouch version

1. Walk left to the top of the slope, then perform a boosted backdash down the slope.
2. Hold right, then immediately after you walk off the slope, press R+attack simultaneously
   • Check Soma's legs to ensure he's doing a falling attack rather than a standing one.
3. Get knocked to the right by the rotating skull enemy, then drop through the platform as soon as you land.
   • If you get knocked to the left instead, this means your R+attack input was performed early while you were still standing on the slope above.
4. Wait for Manticore to walk forward a bit, then hop and hit with a falling slash, followed by a second slash immediately after landing.
   • If Manticore starts its fireball attack instead of walking forward, this means you waited too long to fall through the platform after landing on it.
5. Pause slightly until Manticore lowers its head to begin its tail attack sequence, then do a standing slash and buffer down+right to crouchslide forward.
6. Do three crouching slashes under Manticore's tail stab attack, then stand up and slash again. Cancel the standing slash into a boosted backdash and buffer left during the backdash.
7. While moving to the left, whiff a slash after Manticore begins walking left again, so that the Creaking Skull swing hits the rotating skull before Manticore's tail and body.

Tail dodge version

This version starts the same way as the crouch version above, but instead of a crouchslide to get under the tail attack it uses a boosted backdash after the third standing slash to dodge away from it instead, finishing with two whiffed slashes.

Tutorials

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxPNetnTeQR8TojtpUCas_fTM89K1Tri0

Complete Any% No 0HP video tutorial playlist by Chewy4u