Before I start the review I'm going to make clear I played a mod that restored original portraits and got rid of the magic seal mechanic.

The final DS game I played
Story wise I see it as pointless, the first game with Soma wrapped up the story wonderfully so this just felt completely unnecessary from a story perspective, especially since it felt like just a rehash of the basic plot of Aria.

Gameplay wise it's similar to the rest of the DS trilogy with the slower movement and solid combat. I honestly don't know what else to say with this game that hasn't been said in the other DS reviews.

Very disappointing follow up to Aria of Sorrow. You're basically required to grind souls unless you want to keep using lower-mid-tier weapons and magic all game, but the luck stat's busted and doesn't affect soul drop rates, so you either have to grind to afford the 300,000G Soul Eater ring or spend the extra time it takes to get power-ups without boosts. Either way, you're gonna spend a lot of time grinding.

The aesthetics of this game feel lackluster as well. In terms of music, I feel like Dawn of Sorrow doesn't have many memorable or enjoyable tracks, which is a letdown for a Castlevania game. There is also, of course, the infamous art style, which I don't hate as much as some, but still think feels out of place, especially when compared to Ayami Kojima's work.

Overall, the core gameplay loop is still as enjoyable as any other IGA-produced Castlevania game, but there are a lot of other flaws that hold Dawn of Sorrow back from being a truly great game.

A solid entry all in, but I do think it's a fair bit weaker than the sublime Aria. Mostly because the game doesn't really give out good weapons at all, you're a lot more reliant on getting low-drop Souls for key parts, and the Magic Seal system that requires weird touch screen gestures is a pain in the ass. (I actually resorted to using the No Touch Screen mod because I just could not do the last one at all. And I just finished Trauma Center!)

Still, good game, worth a playthrough, did hand-wring over giving it another half-star.

It is without a doubt not as bad as people make it be, not even the rune system is as bad as they say, it made me lose like once or twice but pretty fair and not too annoying. The gameplay is good as always even better in some places the graphics are a pretty nice upgrade, specially those interactable environments like the cars at the starting area (that was legit incredible wish more games had it). But sadly the story and the portrait and visuals (cover, ui art etc) are quite a downgrade from the gba games, it literally threw away the castlevania legacy to become anime, and a bad one at that. The story is really bad with the shittiest villain so far and the most forced story in the post SOTN games. Somehow it had the worst final sequence of rooms followed by the coolest end of game final boss. Still overall a pretty good game sadly the story, artistic style and the more child friend nature brought it down a bit.

I'm torn on this one, cause while I legitimately liked it at points there's so much here that prevents me from liking it as much as the previous games. Well I mean for starters I downloaded a patch to get rid of all the magic seal touchscreen bs, It did help out my experience more but even looking past that this one isn't as memorable as Aria of Sorrow in my honest opinion. I got lost way too frequently and the game isn't really good at telling you or pointing you in the right direction to go in all the time. The story is just ok, the gameplay is ok, it's just an ok game not much more I can add, if you're going to play this i'd highly recommend the patch for it since you can bypass all the annoying touch screen magic seal gimmicks easily that way.

Very fun game with a decently interesting story. I enjoyed the character progression from the first game, despite there not being too much of it. As most Castlevania games go, the story and characters are the least important part. The design of the map is pretty good, and the controls and combat have been improved from Aria and a few of the souls have been as well, but the use of the touch screen is a needless gimmick that interrupts bosses and wastes time. On top of all of that, the grinding for souls can be ridiculous at times and completely ruins the flow of the game at times. The game could be a 9/10 if the seal system was completely replaced by keys and you were guaranteed an enemy's soul the first time you kill them. I've heard of a version that removes the touch screen mechanics, but as it is, this game is really fun, with a lot of room for improvement.