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Reviews » Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow [DS]

Before diving right in, let me get this out of the way, in the interests of full-disclosure: I'm a bit of a Castlevania fanboy. Now, I'm not the kind of guy who's going to argue at length with people on the internet about the merits of the Saturn version of Symphony of the Night vs the PSX version (the PSX version is supreme, Saturn fanboys step off. End of discussion.), but I do really really like the series. Pretty much anything Castlevania and in 2D is going to get a glowing review from me, it's just going to depend on what level of glowing it gets. So please, bear with me if I start ranting incoherently about minute features. Oh, I'd also might as well mention that the screenshots in this review aren't mine, they were ripped directly from the Konami website.. I lack the capability to take screenshots off my DS. Sure, I could take a picture, but that'd be seriously ghetto. Right, well, on with the review, and our history lesson for the day.

Castlevania games, despite all being pretty closely related, fall into three broad categories. The original set, containing Castlevanias 1-5 (and others), is the "traditional platformer" set. They play as straightforward platformer games. You run around and kill things, occasionally encountering bosses. You kill things with whips and an assortment of powerup weapons like cross-boomerangs and axes and such. Then there's the Modern line, including Symphony of the Night and all the GBA games (Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow). These are characterized by powerups, inventories, widely varied weapons, and a huge explorable map. Think "Gothic Metroid". Then there's the third line, which we don't talk about, because it has all the horrible 3D games. Dawn of Sorrow falls in the second category, and is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow. Aria of Sorrow was itself very true to the first of its kind, and an epic groundbreaking game in its own right, Symphony of the Night.

It has been brought to my attention that there are still some people out there who haven't played Symphony of the Night. This disturbs me, but I lack the resources right now to do anything about it, so let me explain the key differences between SotN and a traditional Castlevania Game.

• You play as Alucard, son of Dracula.
• You get magical Vampire super powers. Backdash, transformation in to several forms (bat, wolf, mist, etc), double jump, etc.
• Rather than use a whip, you use everything but a whip. You get a huge variety of swords, axes, spears and so on.
• Rather than moving linearly through levels, you're exploring a castle. It's like a Metroid game, but with more zombies.

SotN was groundbreaking, and the basic transition from a platformer to an exploration platformer was kept in GBA games that followed. They had some of the other upgrades too, like a large inventory system, but none were really true sequels to SotN until Aria of Sorrow rolled along. It took the SotN format and expanded on it greatly. You were back playing as Alucard . . kinda . . you were back to using all manner of blades, scattered through a huge castle with a normal version and a bizarro version. All the SotN powers were back, and it added quite a few new things itself:

• You play as Soma Cruz, a completely new character.
• Instead of the traditional projectile weapons (Axe, Cross-Boomerang, Straight Sword, etc), AoS has a "Soul System". If you kill any monster in the game, you have a chance of them dropping a soul. Souls can then be equipped to provide you with a whole slew of new powers, generally based on whatever you killed.
• Weapons are back, but now there's even more. New classes, new super weapons, etc.

It may seem like I just went on another one of those crazy historical tangents, but I swear this stuff is all important. See, unlike SotN and AoS, games which were spiritual sucessors - unofficial sequels - Dawn of Sorrow is a real sequel to AoS. It stands quite well on it's own, but it doesn't hurt whatsoever to know the history, and the previous two games give me a good frame of reference to compare DoS to.

So anyways, the story. Castlevania games can be enjoyed quite well even if you skip the story altogether, but some of us like the story, so here goes: it's 2035. Soma Cruz and company just got over the events of Aria of Sorrow, where a prophecy of Dracula's return juuuust nearly came true. Soma was destined to take the throne, and in a couple of the endings he did, but in the "best" ending, he fought it and won, and was able to release all the souls he had dominated and relinquish his all his dark powers. A year or so later, things were just barely returning to normal for Soma, until it was revealed that some cult leaders were attempting to forcibly resurrect Dracula again, for about the 47th time. Soma was dragged back into all this when he was attacked in town and his powers of soul dominance magically popped back into existence. And so the crew got led back to Castlevania, and Soma took it upon himself to stop these cultists, feeling somewhat guilty because the only reason they're off seeking power is because he didn't take it in the first place.

Now, what does Dawn of Sorrow bring to the table? It brings quite a bit on all levels. At its base, its got all the basic stuff that made AoS so good. Souls, Swords, Inventory, Complexity. Then it expands all of those. Souls are more or less just like they were in AoS, three equippable types plus always-ons, but now there are "levels". If you get one soul, you'll get one base-level ability. Get more and the ability might change. It might just be a damage increase for bullet souls or a point-increase for a stat-modifying soul. Sometimes it might change altogether.

Weapons changed too. In both SotN and AoS, most weapons were just scattered around the castle. That was your primary method of upgrading weapons, you just went around and found a new one. DoS changes that altogether with the Weapon Synthesis system. In DoS to get new weapons, you need a weapon from a certain class and a certain monster soul. Combine the two of them at Yoko Belnades' shop and you get a new weapon. This is pretty much the only way to get some of the best weapons in the game. It makes the weapons more accessable, but to get some of them it means sacrificing some ridiculously powered boss souls, and in other cases it means repeatedly harvesting some of the most infuriatingly difficult monsters in the game for hours on end, something you never really had to do in AoS, unless you wanted some of the super bonus items. It also makes exploration somewhat lackluster. In previous games, if you found a hidden room you were pretty much guaranteed some kind of magic weapon of mass destruction, but most of those rooms in DoS are stocked with worthless crap like some super high quality food item. I'm kinda torn on this, I like it because it makes collecting souls actually useful. But on the other hand, I liked finding stuff easily in the castle. Weapons also have new abilities: apart from their standard attacks, many weapons also have augmented attacks that suck up a bit of magic power. Some axes have an ability where you fly up, do a huge slash that can hit multiple times and do extra damage. Katanas tend to have the ability to hit for higher damage multiple times in one movement. This adds a bit of variety. Not a whole lot, but enough to be interesting.

Inventory is also changed somewhat. DoS brings the "Doppleganger", an ability that makes it so you can switch back and forth easily between two sets of weapons/items/souls. This makes the now-more-important soul hunting easier, since you can have a "power" loadout with all your +STR souls, cheap-attack souls, super-guard souls, high-DEF armor, best weapon, etc. And then on the other side have your super high luck loadout for better chances of getting souls. This also makes it easy to cancel powers, just don't equip the same souls on both loadouts. This probably ended up being the most-used addition to the game for me. It was really worth adding, and was probably even better than the two-weapons setup from SotN.

DoS adds other stuff too, like the requisite touchscreen usage. The first use of the touchscreen you'll encounter is the "Magic Seal". To finish off a boss in DoS you have to draw a seal to suck up the boss into one of those patented Castlevania Glowing Spheres. Seals start off easy enough, one's a big V. One looks like a sideways 4. The later ones, though, those can screw you up. Especially the level 5 seal. If you fail to properly draw the seal, or if you do it too slow, the boss will gain back some health and you'll have to wear him down again and then re-draw the seal. Sure, it seems like a gimmick, but it's not TOO hard, and it gives touchscreen input.

Second touchscreen thing you'll come across is the ice bricks. One boss gives you the ability to tap the screen to break certain bricks. It isn't just used as a section-blocker to keep you out of certain areas before you should be there. There's a couple puzzles in the game that require you to use this ability, like one where you have to bounce an explosive energy ball around like you're playing jezzball. Similarily, there's also a sliding-tile game that shifts rooms around, this is controlled with the touchscreen, and it works pretty nicely.

One of the touchscreen interactions that isn't the most apparent thing out there is the ability to direct your familiars. Familiars have been around since SotN, and they've always been pretty retarded. Despite their stupidity, higher level sword familiars have always been unstoppable machines of death. Well, now if you've got a familar summoned, if you tap somewhere on the screen he'll go there. Tap an enemy and they'll attack.

The DS's second screen also doesn't go unused. You can either have it display a screen with your stats, equipment, and info on the last monster you killed (including info on what they drop if you've seen it drop, and how many of their souls you've got), or you can have it show the map. This might sound like a somewhat lame or mundane usage of the screen, but it really works well. It means not having to pause all the time to see what you're doing, or hitting select every two steps to see where you are.

Overall, Graphics and sound are also ramped up in quality. Nearly all backgrounds in the game are 3D and move as you walk around. They're not super amazing 3D, but they're 3D, and they're better than any of the other 2D Castlevanias. The sprites are probably the best I've come across in any game in a long long time, it's just so rare to find a really really good sprite-based game anymore, and I'm absolutely ecstatic that Konami is still out there making them. Effects are also better than any of the GBA games, everything is so much more fluid, but then, I'd really hope it would be, considering the hardware upgrades between GBA and DS. Oh, and the sound is better than any of the GBA games, but the SotN soundtrack still wins out. The DoS soundtrack comes pretty close, but the SotN soundtrack is still better quality. All the Castlevania Classics are in there, but you might have to go digging for them. For instance, the only place I've found "Bloody Tears" was in the main area of one of the secondary modes of the game. As for the new tracks, it's the same high quality stuff as always.

Gameplay works like . . well . . like every other contemporary Castlevania game. You wander around, explore, find things, kill bosses, get powers, and the powers let you kill things faster and unlock larger areas of the castle. Eventually you're an unstoppable killing machine, and you win the game. One nice thing to mention here is that all the base gameplay mechanics are retained. Triangle jumps, double jumps, backdashes, bat-transformation, upside-down superjumps, these are all pretty hard to screw up. Most importantly, multi-hit combos are back. With a fast-enough weapon, you can still pull off three hits manually. Jump, right before you land, attack. Once you land, your cooldown is reset so you can attack again. Now backdash, your cooldown time is reset AGAIN and you can attack a third time. With a suitably fast weapon you can do this all day long. I suggest skipping the backdash attack and following up with a magic attack for your third hit. This combo can take out damn near anything early in the game with a katana.

On normal mode, the game isn't really all that difficult. There are some sections that get repetitive if you decide you want to upgrade weapons, and thus have to harvest for souls for ahwile, but it really isn't that bad. Personally, I beat the game on my first run with around 99% of the map uncovered (I'm apparently missing a hidden room somewhere) in about 15 hours. I took my time in a lot of areas, got the best ending, got most souls, and got the ultimate weapons in four categories. About endings: there's three of them. You can get all three in one runthrough, and it doesn't require you to do ridiculous hunting crap like the extra endings in AoS.

So, replayability. Like any good modern Castlevania game, you get a hard mode no matter what ending you get. Hard mode is . . ur . . hard. Enemies have more hp, rare things are more rare, etc. If you're into that sort of thing, super, but at this point, I want something more. Dawn of Sorrow delivers. By getting the second or third endings, you unlock "Julius Mode", which lets you play as our Belmont-of-the-week. Like Julius Mode in AoS, this brings in your traditional gameplay style. No souls, no complex inventory, just straight up whip action. DoS goes the extra step, and expands on this mode even more. See, Castlevania III had three heroes. Well, four if you count the crazy pirate guy, but he doesn't count. You had Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard. We all know Trevor's descendants. Aria of Sorrow brought in Sypha's descendant 'Yoko Belnades', who returns in DoS. And Alucard, well, Alucard is always around. Julius mode brings these three together in an alternative gameplay mode, giving you modern-day Castlevania III-style gameplay in the setting of DoS. Let me tell you, it is good. It is the best unlockable I can rememeber from any Castlevania game ever. Furthermore, it's the first gimmick-mode I've ever actually been compelled to play. It changes things up just enough to be as interesting as the original mode, and increases the difficulty since there's no souls, weapon upgrades, or inventory items to help you out. I'm sorry if you feel spoiled by reading this, but it's just such a good mode and adds so much to the game that I feel it should be advertised on the back of the damn box. Oh. And there's also Boss Rush mode. But seriously, no one cares about Boss Rush mode when there's Julius mode.

As far as Other Stuff, Castlevania DoS also makes use of the DS's wireless capabilities. First, there's a basic soul trade mode, where you can swap around what souls you've got with your friends without having to worry about lame things like cables. There's also a multiplayer mode that's basically a time-attack race. I haven't personally had a chance to try these out, as I lack friends with DS's, but hey, maybe you have friends with DS's.

Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Sure, it's highly derivative of it's predecessors, but when you get this far in a series, anything is going to seem somewhat derivative. Despite that, it's still an amazing game well deserving of your $35, or in my case, my $170, since this is the game that made me buy a DS. Circle of the Moon made me buy a GBA, and here we are four years later with Dawn of Sorrow making me buy a DS. It seemed fitting, and I don't regret the purchase whatsoever. If you're a fan of the series, this is an absolute must-buy. If you're not a fan of the series, I suggest becoming one, but it isn't necessary to enjoy it. But even if you're not a salivating fanboy, if you can enjoy a 2D exploration/adventure platformer, you'll love Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.

Screenshots © Konami

Castlevania: DoS - DS

Presentation

I can't compare it to other DS games, but I can compare it to other Castlevania games. Across the board, Castlevania: DoS is the best looking / sounding / etc 2D Castlevania game ever. It far exceeds its GBA predecessors, and meets or surpasses the high-points set by SotN.

Gameplay

Castlevania: DoS doesn't do a whole lot of widespread innovation like SotN and AoS did before it, but the experience it provides is still good enough to rank it among the best 2D platformer action/exploration games I've ever played.

Replayability

There's a ton of gameplay locked within that little game card. Two main story modes, three difficulty levels overall, plus boss rush mode, plus tons of stuff to collect in all modes. A lot of times I'll say I intend to go back and play through these extra modes and never do, in DoS they're Worth It.

Value

DS games are pretty cheap. I'm usually lucky if I get 25+ hours out of a retail PC game, so for $35 I feel like I got a steal.

Overall

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is an amazing game. For fans of the series, it's a clear must-buy, and even worth going out and buying a DS for. For DS owners looking for a game that's finally actually deep and complex, and not entirely based around touchscreen gimmickry, it's ALSO a must-buy. So please, go buy this game immediately.