This review contains spoilers
Overall: 9/10
Good:
- The most balanced Metroidvania in the series. Making it so there aren’t too many overcentralizing weapons/strategies.
- Features the best boss design in the series. Where the bosses are always dynamic in how they will attack and how the player will respond to them, and takes into account the souls/equipment the player will have at the time of their encounter.
- Souls are way more varied than they are in Aria of Sorrow.
- A great escalation of movement abilities from the time you start off.
- Presentation in everything but the official art is top notch. Great attention to detail, fun Easter eggs, and amazing music make this game an absolute joy to the senses.
- Julius mode is a pretty fun alternative way to play Dawn.
- Soma as a character has improved from being mostly a generic protagonist to someone who has drive and importance in driving the story. Something that Soma in Aria lacked until after the fight with Graham.
Bad:
- Plot is overly contrived, with many stupid reasons as to why certain characters not being able to help out. Such as Julius not being able to help out due to Grand Crossing a random door, Yoko being shunned from helping by Julius, or Arikado having his “magic reversed”. Just overall makes the games plot feel messy, when it did make sense why certain characters didn’t/couldn’t help in Aria.
- Villains are some of the weakest in the series. Celia is supposedly the big bad and yet you can’t even fight her, Dimitri is only in 3 entire scenes in the game, and Dario is just a one note gangster.
- Characters writing are overly flanderized from their portrayals in Aria. Hammer constantly talks about Yoko, Julius just immediately turns into some edgy “don’t get in my way” type of character, Arikado just loses that mysterious and competent edge to him, and Yoko is just “woman”. Which unironically was better than what they did with her in Aria.
- The Anime Artsyle is ugly on characters from Aria, and a lot of the design changes are not welcome. Julius looks like he’s Fred’s Dad from Scooby Doo, Arikado went from mysterious badass to pale looking man, and while Soma’s design is an improvement from Aria, his art design is not consistent in key art, and just looks so generic. Harmony of Despair later gave him the Kojima design, and it was however a welcome improvement.
- Souls have very low percent chances of being had. Of my 3 play throughs of this game, where I killed quite a number of enemies, I only got 3-5 Bullet Souls that weren’t either required or given to me. Which hurts a lot of this game for me, since the souls are a main focus of Dawn’s gameplay.
- Weapons may be balanced, however they’re now filled with end lag and start up lag. Though the enemy design usually takes into account for this, and there are techniques the player to do to cancel the lag, ultimately the weapons don’t feel as fun to mess around with compared to Portrait of Ruin.
- Yoko’s weapon transmutation system relies on getting souls in order to turn bad weapons/low attack weapons into good weapons. However, since soul rates are very small, it can be 10’s of mins of flat grinding for a specific soul to get up your attack points just a few points. Overall just a botched and unneeded system.
- The worst final boss fight in the series.
- The Sealing system is an unnecessary addition to the game, that just exists to force touch screen controls into the game. Which I wouldn’t mind so much, if the game stopped misreading inputs and having to refight a boss everytime I “mess up”.
Overall, I do love Dawn of Sorrow. It’s one of my favorite games in the series, however the choice to anime everyone up, and just thoroughly assassinate their characters made this the worst plot line in any of the series with a large plot structure.
The very rare soul rates, and the lag on a lot of the weapon types sadly make sense he combat and options the player has pretty small unless you go out of your way to grind. The weapons also with the really high attack, are locked behind a system that requires you to grind for even more souls, which just extends the grinding even more.
The bosses in this game are phenomenal, and though they’re pretty meh and generic until after Dario 1, bosses like Puppet Master, Paranoia, Aguni, and even Gergoth. There are a few duds like the final boss/Rahab, but overall these are cuts above games like SoTN/PoR/Aria in terms of boss design.
The game’s enemy design is also quite good for Soma, with fighting each enemy giving the chance of giving a completely new Soul, it can be addicting to fight everyone you fight. Whenever you get that soul, it can be a rush to see what I can do, and that’s really that moment to moment gameplay that Dawn exceeds in.
In conclusion, my feelings on this game are very complicated. The poor sealing system, the laggy weapon system, the over reliance of grinding for souls to have a varied play session are pretty big knocks against it. However this game shines in aspects where it is the gold standard, and though the art/plot is one of the series lows.
Even through that, this game is a remarkable experience and for those who loved SoTN, I believe that in most ways this game utterly and handily beats it.
Good:
- The most balanced Metroidvania in the series. Making it so there aren’t too many overcentralizing weapons/strategies.
- Features the best boss design in the series. Where the bosses are always dynamic in how they will attack and how the player will respond to them, and takes into account the souls/equipment the player will have at the time of their encounter.
- Souls are way more varied than they are in Aria of Sorrow.
- A great escalation of movement abilities from the time you start off.
- Presentation in everything but the official art is top notch. Great attention to detail, fun Easter eggs, and amazing music make this game an absolute joy to the senses.
- Julius mode is a pretty fun alternative way to play Dawn.
- Soma as a character has improved from being mostly a generic protagonist to someone who has drive and importance in driving the story. Something that Soma in Aria lacked until after the fight with Graham.
Bad:
- Plot is overly contrived, with many stupid reasons as to why certain characters not being able to help out. Such as Julius not being able to help out due to Grand Crossing a random door, Yoko being shunned from helping by Julius, or Arikado having his “magic reversed”. Just overall makes the games plot feel messy, when it did make sense why certain characters didn’t/couldn’t help in Aria.
- Villains are some of the weakest in the series. Celia is supposedly the big bad and yet you can’t even fight her, Dimitri is only in 3 entire scenes in the game, and Dario is just a one note gangster.
- Characters writing are overly flanderized from their portrayals in Aria. Hammer constantly talks about Yoko, Julius just immediately turns into some edgy “don’t get in my way” type of character, Arikado just loses that mysterious and competent edge to him, and Yoko is just “woman”. Which unironically was better than what they did with her in Aria.
- The Anime Artsyle is ugly on characters from Aria, and a lot of the design changes are not welcome. Julius looks like he’s Fred’s Dad from Scooby Doo, Arikado went from mysterious badass to pale looking man, and while Soma’s design is an improvement from Aria, his art design is not consistent in key art, and just looks so generic. Harmony of Despair later gave him the Kojima design, and it was however a welcome improvement.
- Souls have very low percent chances of being had. Of my 3 play throughs of this game, where I killed quite a number of enemies, I only got 3-5 Bullet Souls that weren’t either required or given to me. Which hurts a lot of this game for me, since the souls are a main focus of Dawn’s gameplay.
- Weapons may be balanced, however they’re now filled with end lag and start up lag. Though the enemy design usually takes into account for this, and there are techniques the player to do to cancel the lag, ultimately the weapons don’t feel as fun to mess around with compared to Portrait of Ruin.
- Yoko’s weapon transmutation system relies on getting souls in order to turn bad weapons/low attack weapons into good weapons. However, since soul rates are very small, it can be 10’s of mins of flat grinding for a specific soul to get up your attack points just a few points. Overall just a botched and unneeded system.
- The worst final boss fight in the series.
- The Sealing system is an unnecessary addition to the game, that just exists to force touch screen controls into the game. Which I wouldn’t mind so much, if the game stopped misreading inputs and having to refight a boss everytime I “mess up”.
Overall, I do love Dawn of Sorrow. It’s one of my favorite games in the series, however the choice to anime everyone up, and just thoroughly assassinate their characters made this the worst plot line in any of the series with a large plot structure.
The very rare soul rates, and the lag on a lot of the weapon types sadly make sense he combat and options the player has pretty small unless you go out of your way to grind. The weapons also with the really high attack, are locked behind a system that requires you to grind for even more souls, which just extends the grinding even more.
The bosses in this game are phenomenal, and though they’re pretty meh and generic until after Dario 1, bosses like Puppet Master, Paranoia, Aguni, and even Gergoth. There are a few duds like the final boss/Rahab, but overall these are cuts above games like SoTN/PoR/Aria in terms of boss design.
The game’s enemy design is also quite good for Soma, with fighting each enemy giving the chance of giving a completely new Soul, it can be addicting to fight everyone you fight. Whenever you get that soul, it can be a rush to see what I can do, and that’s really that moment to moment gameplay that Dawn exceeds in.
In conclusion, my feelings on this game are very complicated. The poor sealing system, the laggy weapon system, the over reliance of grinding for souls to have a varied play session are pretty big knocks against it. However this game shines in aspects where it is the gold standard, and though the art/plot is one of the series lows.
Even through that, this game is a remarkable experience and for those who loved SoTN, I believe that in most ways this game utterly and handily beats it.