This series has the most fun Metroidvania gameplay in my opinion and Dawn is simply more of that. The movement and combat are still sick, and so is the feeling of progression absorbing abilities from every enemy and becoming a total killing machine. Being able to switch between 2 sets of fused weapons and stats with a button press made those mechanics even more interesting. Sadly it's an early DS title which means there's some very forced gimmicks in there. Getting a boss to 0 health, messing up drawing the symbol and then dying after is the most frustrating thing. Also one of the worst art style choices I've ever seen... the character portraits are ugly and a massive downgrade from Ayami Kojima's distinctive look. At least the spritework is still really smooth and there are some cool 3D backgrounds. Aria is the better game but this is really worth playing.

First off.. HOW DARE THEY changed the artstyle to this weeby crap.

I was thrilled when this came out since I was a huge fan of the fist Sorrow.

Aside from that, the pen utilization was HECTIC and unnecessary but it was sorta unique.

Despite the game's flaws, It still successfully captures the essence of the Castlevania franchise. It offers a satisfying blend of exploration, combat, and character progression,

just a disclaimer before you read: I went through this game by playing the Definitive Edition+ hack which changes up some of the gameplay features, meaning I technically didn’t play the vanilla game as it was meant to be intended, that said I’ll still bring up some stuff about the vanilla game and compare it to how the DE+ version handles them, oh yeah spoilers for Aria of Sorrow since this game is a direct continuation of that

so Dawn of Sorrow, looks like Konami wanted to continue the 2035 storyline so Soma and his friends are back again for a second round. I don’t know, I thought Aria of Sorrow ended off on a good note with the whole Dark Lord rejecting his fate and confronting the Chaos inside of him, but I guess there’s still some more story to tell somehow.

a year after escaping the eclipse, Soma and Mina are just chilling around talking about their day when all of a sudden they get jumpscared by a woman. she sends some monsters to beat the crap out of Soma but unsurprisingly he takes care of them rather easily before the woman goes “blah blah blah they must be a Dark Lord blah blah blah” before disappearing. her name’s Celia Fortner, a member of a cult (different cult than the one in Aria btw, yeah another cult just popped out of nowhere) that wants Soma dead so the title of the Dark Lord can be succeeded by her two cronies: Dario Bossi, a criminal who has history with arson due to his ability to control fire, and Dmitrii Blinov, who can copy the magical abilities of his opponents as well as having an extremely punchable face. Soma’s pretty pissed about the whole situation so he decides to take the initiative and makes his way to their headquarters himself, going as far as ditching the fur coat in exchange for the Seto Kaiba attire, that’s when you know he’s serious. of course, all of Soma buddies such as Yoko, Hammer, Julius, and Arikado are there as well as they proceed to repeatedly tell Soma that he shouldn’t be there and that they will handle it while Soma replies with “shut up, just let me do my thing”. the story’s a bit odd this time and a few of the characters act ever so slightly differently this time around, especially Hammer with how down bad he is for Yoko in this game, not that I blame him really. despite the very minor hiccups, I think it’s a worthy followup to Aria of Sorrow’s storyline, in a few instances I actually like some stuff about it more, such as how Yoko doesn’t nearly die halfway through so she actually has something to do this time around. I also do enjoy the villains even if they aren’t the most menacing ones compared to what we’ve seen in the past. they really are just a bunch of losers attempting to fill in Dracula’s big shoes. I’ll at least acknowledge that they gave out a few plot twists I didn’t see coming, so they’re neat in my book.

there’s no Dracula’s Castle in this one since it got permanently destroyed last time so instead you have to settle with the Diet Coke version. there’s a lot of cool areas here like an abandoned snowy village you have to go through to enter the castle, a mysterious magic lab with a secret underground area, a chapel that has some ghosts forever dancing for eternity, a guest house with waiter skeletons, not one but two towers, and some old runned down similar to the castle entrances of a lot of Castlevania games. oh yeah, there’s also a bunch of random ice blocks cluttered around in some areas, how did they even get there? I get that the castle is located near a cold climate but what benefit is there to place a bunch of ice blocks in these rooms other than to annoy Soma even further? they must be made out of some tough ice too because the only way to get rid of them is via an upgrade that lets you destroy them with the touch screen, which leads to this next segway.

Touch Screen!!! what year was this released? 2005? yep, here’s your touch screen gimmicks. you want to play the game? sign your name with your finger. you need those ice blocks gone? place your finger on them. need to defeat a boss? swing your finger around like a dork. alright joking aside, this game’s going to make you use your touch screen sometimes. all of those ice blocks areas I’ve mentioned? most of them are really only in the Wizardly Lab so you don’t have to concern too much, no worries. then you got the Magic Seals. to enter a boss room, you need to collect a magic seal somewhere in the castle that’ll let you gain access to it. now boss doors, that’s ok. does it take up a couple of seconds to watch it open? yes it does, but, it’s mostly harmless. then they bring them into boss battles. right after you deplete all of a boss’s HP, you need to actually draw the magic seal in order to properly defeat it. why do you have to do this when you could have defeated the bosses in Aria without it just fine? idk. gotta find some use for that touch screen. is this bad? no, well not at first. the first few magic seals aren’t that difficult to draw, the first one is just a simple “V” pattern, easy to understand. then they get a bit more complicated and that when things change. now the actual patterns, they’re a bit annoying, but not too much. the problem here is getting those patterns down right after potentially finishing off a boss. did I mention there’s a time limit? fail to get the pattern correctly in time and all of a sudden, the boss gains more HP and you have to whittle them down again. usually getting them down again isn’t too hard, but for later bosses like Aguni and Death, a failed pattern is likely going to get you a Game Over in return. a clutch kill in any other Castlevania game is turned into a “no u” if you screw up the magic seal. the Definitive+ hack I’ve played actually removes the requirement for dealing with this at the end of a boss battle, so I can’t actually say that I gone through this experience myself outside of watching YouTube videos of other people failing, but I can guarantee I would have screwed up those later seals a lot if I had to do so. I will at least acknowledge that they give you the option to practice the seals via an option in the menu, so you can pretty much teach yourself to get better at them wherever you are in the game.

I’m assuming you’ve probably already played Aria of Sorrow before reading this review so I won’t go into detail about the Soul mechanic, but if you haven’t, why are you playing Dawn before Aria in this day and age? just like Aria, every enemy in the game has a soul you can obtain which is still really impressive. combine that with the new Doppleganger soul that lets you have two different sets of souls and equipment you can switch between anytime and you got yourself a lot of versatility. speaking of equipment, you have the option to make the weapons you obtain more powerful. Yoko’s here to help upgrade them with her weapon synthesis, free at cost unless you count souls as currency. yeah, you need to acquire specific souls to upgrade specific weapons, so you better go and save your cash for that Soul Eater Ring this time around! grinding for souls this time around wasn’t as time consuming as it was in Aria for me as the Definitive+ hack fixed how the Luck stat works so it can actually provide a significant boost to the soul drop rate. having the Soul Eater Ring, Three 7s, as well as the Ghost Dancer soul (provides a boost to your Luck stat) equipped meant that the longest it ever took for me to grind a soul was about 10 or so minutes, not too bad. as for the vanilla game, I’d imagine it’d take a bit longer to get those souls. how much longer? not sure, but if you want my advice: just try to be patient and maybe play some music in the background while you’re grinding for those souls. this does lead to a bit of a negative unfortunately and it’s that weapon synthesis is your only convenient way of getting good weapons in this game. “but can’t you find some good ones hidden in the castle?”, nope lmao. this ain’t like Aria where you can find the most broken weapon by breaking a hidden wall, the cultists at With Light are stingy when it comes to giving you good equipment as all you’ll be finding inside there are beginner and mid-tier weapons. Hammer’s shop doesn’t fair much better, ironic since he’s supposed to be an arms dealer, so if you don’t want to get your butt kicked during the endgame, you absolutely need to grind souls so Yoko can upgrade your weapons, at least you’ll get some new dialogue whenever you talk to her. if you’re really desperate though, just equip a Mandragora soul and stock up on High Mind Ups and you’ll probably destroy most of the bosses.

I forgot to bring this up in my Aria review, but that game had some pretty great bosses, and Dawn continues to throw some more cool ones at you. it starts off with the Flying Armor that flies around and flings his two swords about, then Balore the giant returns albeit much more easier to face off against since he’s the only second boss this time. there’s this weird looking Puppet Master that’s a giant head and four arms that puts marionettes into iron maidens which switch places with you if you don’t destroy them quickly. there’s also some fish monster called Rehab that’s admittedly a little annoying to fight since Soma doesn’t get the ability to sink underwater until after you defeat it. I also have to bring up Zephyr, probably the most memorable fight for some people due to all the DIO nods (stops time, throws knives, fought near a clock tower), which somehow flew past my head when I fought him myself, do not ask me how I have no clue why I didn’t get the hint either. if I have to pick a personal favorite though, it’s probably Gergoth. not only does he look like Shin Godzilla (I know Gergoth came first but you get what I’m saying) but before you face him you have to climb up this tall tower to even reach the guy. right before his second phase, he destroys the floor you’re standing on and crashes down every room you climbed earlier before the two of you reach the bottom floor where the rest of the fight continues, with the destroyed rooms remaining like that for the rest of the game, pure kino. special shoutouts go to Dario and Dmitrii, especially Dmitrii since he has the ability to copy whatever soul you throw at him. normally he’ll defeat you easily if you throw all your good stuff at him, but if you were to use something such as the Student Witch soul on Dmitrii, he’ll be reduced to flinging cats at you for most of the fight, what a jobber. I appreciate how the handheld Castlevanias have been slowly improving their bosses over time, and I’m looking forward to seeing how cool they’ll be in the next two games.

Julius Mode is back, now in the flavor of Castlevania III! you got a Belmont, a Belnades, and an Alucard, all to your own luxure! unfortunately it’s not a true Castlevania III experience because there’s no playable DaNasty so I have to give this mode a 0/10. that time in Dracula’s Castle last year must have done a number to him because he’s not nearly as broken as was in Aria. he moves slightly slower, he lost the Omnia Vantias, and his uppercut barely reaches that much distance. thankfully Yoko and Alucard are here to aid old boomer Julius’s apparent weaknesses as Yoko has a backdash that covers a lot of ground while Alucard can fly around as a bat like he could in Castlevania III, all three characters have their uses so you’ll for sure be using all of them during your playthrough. overall it’s pretty similar to the one in Aria, even down to having little to no cutscenes, which admittedly is a bit disappointing since this game’s Julius Mode is supposed to take place right after the bad ending so it’s kind of a missed opportunity to have some dialogue here. that said it’s not really a major problem and the mode is still fun to go through so I’d recommend it if you want more Julius as well as Yoko and Alucard.

the game looks great, it’s pretty much a continuation of how Aria looked except with bigger character sprites, nothing to really say much here it’s just really nice. of course I have to address that elephant in the room, and that’s the new artstyle for all the characters. Ayami Kojima who did the artwork for most of the Castlevanias since Symphony of the Night is noticeably absent in this game. as far as I can gather, IGA had a new artist with a much more anime-inspired artstyle to take over for this game as he wanted to start marketing the handheld Castlevanias towards a younger playerbase. as for the new artstyle, it looks….fine. I’m not going to go into a rant about how the new artwork is bad because it’s not Kojima or how it looks way too anime, on its own it works and in one case it’s actually better as the new portraits are a lot more expressive than the ones in the previous game. if anything, the biggest problem with the art is that they’re directly following off of Aria, which can be a big whiplash if you’re playing the two games back-to-back. I really think IGA should have at least let Kojima stick around for Dawn so the jump wouldn’t be so jarring; you wouldn’t make a sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles and have a completely new person make all the character artwork, right? the Definitive+ hack implements the Kojima portraits from Aria in as well as giving the new characters their own styled portraits as well so if want to have them in Dawn then the hack has you covered. on the flip side for the people that actually prefer the vanilla art (I know you’re out there and that’s okay I’m not judging you) there’s an optional patch to keep the original portraits alongside all the improvements that come from Definitive+.

probably going to be a hot take, but I’m not feeling the music in this one as much as I’d like to. Obviously the soundtrack isn’t bad, quite good actually, but interestingly I found the tracks in Aria to be more memorable and catchy tracks despite Dawn having better audio capabilities. that said, I still enjoyed what I got to hear so I’ll go through the tracks I’d like to mention. A Fleeting Respite is the prologue for this game and as well as the theme that plays whenever you meet up with Yoko and it’s a fine soothing track to hear when you want to rest and get those weapons upgraded. Pitch Black Intrusion is a great piece to suit your infiltration of the hideout you’re heading towards, elevated by taking place in the cool Lost Village. Dracula’s Tears is a very groovy track for a spooky magic lab, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t find any jazz remixes of it online. Scarlet Battle Soul might be my second favorite track in the game, it really gives Dario and Dmitrii more of a threatening vibe unless we’re taking the cat ammo into consideration. Condemned Tower continues the trend of the tower areas having great music and has a similar thing going like Aria’s Clock Tower with it starting sinister at the beginning but becoming bombastic later on. Cursed Clock Tower is pretty alright at first but that second half gets pretty intense and foreboding, I enjoy. Into the Dark Night is definitely my favorite track, this is without a doubt the “time to kick ass” theme, and to no surprise one of the bosses that gets this theme is my main man Gergoth, another epic win. did you know there’s an unused track called Amber Scenery? it’s pretty much a remixed arrangement of Subterranean Hell and hoo boy what an arrangement. the track already starts off excellently but it just keeps better the longer it continues, and god man they even went and brought in that PIANO near the end. me when the best track doesn’t even get used in the actual game

what’s there left to say? great sequel, great game, great Soma. I will surely miss seeing these goofballs but it’s not everyday you get a second game to appear in so they definitely ate good. Dawn is a bit flawed in some areas but I’d still say it’s an excellent Metroidvania, even if I’ve pretty much enjoyed every single one I’ve played so far. if you’ve played Aria of Sorrow yet somehow haven’t played this one yet, go and fix that because this should be high on your to-do-list. apparently though the next two Castlevania games are peak. maybe. well I hope they are so yeah, I’m just gonna stop typing and move on to those ones now. bye

in the end, Hammer never scored….

This is one of those games that would be one of the best for me. Unfortunately, I learned some things about it and had to lower the score.

I love doing Luck builds in Castlevania games! Igavania games are weird about their drops and it's fantastic. You can get coffee, or a suit, or a magic vacuum that steals souls - it's so interesting. I'm not into grinding into games, but Castlevanias are the only ones where weird stuf you get pushes me to kill an enemy a few more times. So I pretty much lost all interest in the game when I discovered that in this game, Luck stat is borked. How do you manage to do this?!

Dawn of Sorrow is even more reliant on enemy soul drops than its predeccessor. Not only do you get cool abilities, and need them to progress sometimes, but also you need souls to craft better weapons.

So I went through the majority of the game getting steamrolled because I refused to switch out my Dancer Soul and my dumb 777 shirt, which, turns out, was all for nothing, since getting past 36 Luck gives you like a 0.001% bonus every level and Dancer souls don't even raise the luck that counts towards the appearance of souls. What.

More Junk Food. It's hard to say something about the Igavanias when they're all basically the same game and my opinions don't really change.

Good sprites, good music, too easy, fun anyways, blah blah blah.

The touchscreen thing is whatever, i guess it'a a pain in the ass for those in emulators, luckly i managed to find a really cheap used copy a few years ago.

The anime style for the characters was a big downgrade.

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.

I'm tired so I will keep it brief. This is about as good as Aria for the most part, but I dislike the random change to a generic anime aesthetic and the focus on grinding. The final boss in particular is so bad that it makes me never want to go for the good ending ever again. I have no idea how you're supposed to beat that shit without going out of your way to tediously farm for overpowered gear and souls. Weirdly enough, the Magic Seals didn't bother me much at all. They could have tutorialized it better though. It took me a long time to figure out that precision hardly matters when drawing them compared to speed. If I ever replay this, it will definitely be with the portrait mod.

I dunno maybe there's a pretentious and cool reasons everyone loves Aria of Sorrow but Dawn of Sorrow takes the cake for me.

It feels so good to play. The souls are more fun than last time, areas are memorable, enemies are mostly fun. I actually even half-way gave a shit about the story this time around.

Dawn of Sorrow is a real stand out for me in terms of boss battles though. Each one looked sick and had a fun pattern to figure out. The final boss battle looks stunning but is not actually very fun or interesting to fight.

This is probably my favorite Castlevania game so far! I can't wait to check out the other DS entries.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow certainly lives up to its name. "castlevania DS", meaning it's castlevania for the DS, with shoehorned in touchscreen mechanics to boot. Other than the drawing of magic circles to kill bosses, Dawn of Sorrow was a flat and derivative sequel to the much better Aria of sorrow. The map feels smaller, the abilities feel less expansive and impressive, and once again the final boss is an absolute nightmare. Not even the artstyle can be a worthy continuation, losing the gothic style and replacing it with cheap anime.

Esse jogo não é ruim, longe disso. Mas é um downgrade absurdo em relação ao seu antecessor, que é indiscutivelmente um dos melhores jogos da saga.
Todas as mudanças que esse jogo fez, foram pra pior, enquanto nada além da tecnologia e o tamanho do castelo parecem ter progredido.

O traço gótico perfeito da Ayami Kojima foi trocado por um traço de anime genérico que mais parece um isekai ruim de temporada.
Os vilões não tem sal nenhum, e nem os 3 juntos tem a presença do Grahan. que já não era muita.
O sistema de selos foi a pior adição que poderiam ter feito. É insuportável e responde super mal, te fazendo perder tempo e paciência.

O novo sistema de armas também não gostei. No jogo anterior você achava todo tipo de arma única e poderosa explorando o castelo, o que recompensava o jogador por explorar e progredir. Aqui só existem versões genéricas de armas, que você precisa upar em formas novas usando almas, gerando um grind super repetitivo toda vez que você quiser upar sua bendita arma. É um saco.

Eu fiz parecer que o jogo é uma bosta, coisa que ele não é. Ele mantém a maioria das qualidades do Aria, como alto conteúdo, variedade de estilos de combate e almas, etc.
O ponto é que ele é uma sequência que ao mesmo tempo é um passo pra trás gigante, com nenhuma mudança realmente boa, o que me impede de dar uma nota melhor.
No geral, é um jogo competente e bom, porém fica MUITO atrás do jogo maravilhoso que foi Aria of Sorrow