Alter Art

Alter Arts, also known as EX Skills, are powerful skills in Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls that can be unlocked by progressing through the story. Some heroes from the past, when summoned from the grimoires, are brought out in an incomplete state, rendering them unable to fight in the same manner as the playable characters. Instead, they are able to swap out with the current player for only a short time. In the original game, they performed only one powerful attack, and then are swapped out with the main character. In the Apple Arcade version of the game, they can be played for a while similarly to normal playable characters, and then are swapped back with the main character once they run out of health (which slowly drains over time).
Alter Arts are tied to a particular regular playable character, but can be selected for use for any playable character. They can be upgraded to be able to be cast up to three times in a round via the skill tree of the main playable character they are tied to.
==Original game Alter Arts==
In the original version of the game (Japanese Beta or Canadian Soft Launch), Alter Arts caused an assist character to briefly appear on the screen, perform a single powerful action, and then immediately exited.
==Apple Arcade Alter Arts==
In the Apple Arcade version of the game, Alter Arts can be played like regular characters for a short time. They have many of the same types of abilities as regular characters, but it is not possible to change the configuration of their abilities.
===Weapons===
Characters summoned through an Alter Art each have one weapon.
===Character Skills===
Characters summoned through an Alter Art can also have one Character Skill.
===Subweapons===
Characters summoned through an Alter Art each have one sub-weapon.
===Weapon Skills===
Characters summoned through an Alter Arts can each have two or three Weapon Skills.
===Unique Actions===
Characters summoned through an Alter Arts can each have any number of Unique Actions.
==Alter Arts Mode==
After beating stage 4-1 in the tenth grimoire, you will unlock Alter Arts mode. Alter Arts mode effectively allows you to complete entire stages from the beginning as an Alter Art, whose power scales with the items and abilities of the character you activated the mode with. If an Alter art loses all of their health, the primary character will replace them. You will not be able to re-summon the Alter Art after they die in this mode. Unlike using an Alter Art normally, you will be forced to wait out weapon skills entirely in this mode, whereas normally every time your alter art dies your weapon skill cool-downs will restart. This has particular affect on Jonathan, Richter, and Trevor.
==Trivia==
*In the beta version, Alter Arts were unlocked by reaching level 30 with the corresponding playable character. Alucard unlocked Maria, Simon unlocked Trevor, Charlotte unlocked Jonathan, Maria unlocked Richter, and Shanoa unlocked Albus.
*Despite being present and usable in the beta, Trevor was never released in the full version of the game, as it was discontinued.
**However, the game was later confirmed to be re-released and he was finally released on May 13, 2022 with his EX Move Destruction being replaced by Grand Cruz.
*Voice clips for the playable characters datamined from the game suggest that Hammer and Mina were planned as additional Alter Arts to be released later on, but were scrapped when the game ended its service.
*Soma Cruz was originally going to be a regular playable character in the original game, but after its discontinuation and re-release in Apple Arcade, he was made a support character instead.
**Coincidentally, Soma and Trevor are the only two Alter Art characters to appear as bosses and they must be defeated to unlock them.
**Soma is the only Alter Art character to have idle poses in the Elgos hub, further confirming he was originally going to be the sixth playable character.
*Alter Arts are very similar to Totems from Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon in the sense that they both allow the player to morph into another character and use their weapons and abilities, and then revert to normal upon death.
==See also==
*Summon
==External links==
*YouTube - Original Alter Arts
*YouTube - Apple Arcade Alter Arts
Category:Abilities
Category:Alter Arts