It’s a shame to ruin some of the events of AOS but you’ll be recapped as to what happened at the beginning of the game. Bascially, Dracula was vanquished from the plane of the Earth for the last time in 1999. However, a teenage boy named Soma Cruz one day in 2035 stumbled upon an ancient castle, outside his local shrine. You see, the absence of a Dark Lord is very bad PR for insane cults and Soma just happens to stumble upon one of them attempting to revive old Dracula. In the process, we learn that Soma himself is the reincarnation of Dracula. However, he manages to defeat the overwhelming chaos in that was growing inside of him and he hoped that the darkness had been banished for good.
This game is set one year after the events of Aria of Sorrow, in the year 2036. No, that doesn’t mean that there are no zombies in space suits, but you do reprise the role of Soma. While, things have been quiet for a year, there is still no Dark Lord to appease the cults. One such cult has found that as long as Soma exists and doesn’t become the Dark Lord, no one else can. So they “create” their own castle and attempt to lure Soma into coming and taking them on. In true heroic fashion, Soma obliges and heads in with the help of all his buddies from the previous game.
Dark Lord can't jump, but he can fly
The big difference that the last two Castlevania games had, despite their setting and the non-Belmont protagonist, was that Soma happens to have the power of dominance. This power allows him to acquire the soul of any creatures that he vanquishes and use their power for his own. Souls come in four different types: bullet, guardian, enchant and ability. You hold a combination of the first three and the last one acts like a permanent upgrade to your abilities.
Bullet souls allow you to shoot some sort of projectile. By pressing Up + Y, you can throw everything from bones to bombs, as long as you’ve got the soul. Effectively, this gets rid of the heart items such as the axe, cross and holy water that were prevalent with the Belmonts. The guardian souls activate by pressing R and remain in play until you press R again. The abilities range from growing a tail to summoning a beast to help you fight. Both these soul usages are governed by the amount of MP that you have. Enchant souls have some effect on your stats, increasing them a certain way.
There are over 100 souls to collect and there are many multiple combinations, as well as few that change when you’ve got two of the right ones equipped. It adds a lot to the game that would otherwise be totally controlled by a Metroid-esque way of playing to find an item to proceed. There are a few instances of this but there are others where you’ll stumble onto a very handy soul that helps you to no end.
However, the souls can be very rare. They’re fun to collect but the appearance rate is very randomised and at times be disheartening when you go very long periods without collecting any souls. At the completion of the game, we had only 45% of the total souls. At least you can go back and get more. The souls of bosses are guaranteed, though there are often questions that can be raised about the usefulness of some of them. While there may have been a few efforts to set the game apart, it shouldn’t have been at the expense of the acquired abilities eg. Double jump. They’re good and useful, there just aren’t enough of them.
Fireballs are very effective when cleaning the dust from chaneliers
We’re not quite sure why you’d walk into the castle of an evil cult equipped with nothing but a knife, but at least there are a lot of weapons that Soma can collect. However, a new addition is that of the soul combining. You’ll acquire some weapons through out exploring the castle but to get the most powerful ones, you’ll need to combine them with a soul. Each weapon can have up to nine upgrades, with some the higher levelled being a joy to wield. Each weapon handles differently and your usage will depend on preferences and situations. It’s too bad that this makes for the shop in the game virtually redundant for anything other than potions.
As a platformer, outside of the two Metroid titles and the three Castlevania titles for GBA, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is easily the one the best 2-D platformers in years. Simply because it has a level of control and polish that is unrivalled by anything else out there. Soma controls like a dream, with all his movements being precise and totally transparent. The jumping, sliding and even more advanced abilities like bounding off walls are possible in a truly seamless manner. If you mess up, it’s only your fault.
Fighting simple but varied thanks to the souls and weapons. In DOS, you’ll now come across an ability known as the Doppelganger. By pressing X, you can switch between two different equipment sets. So you can have two sets of souls, weapons and armour setup and switch between them at anytime. If anything, it can be handy when traversing long distances and when taking on the many varied and aggressive enemies.
That's a mighty big axe
The enemies, monsters and creatures are all you’d expect from this kind of game and even have an acceptable level of intelligence. You shouldn’t allow the initial pushover nature of some of them lead you to thinking that the whole game will go that way. They provide a good challenge, with reckless and careless play being heavily punished. The bosses have a mix of speedy, (relatively) small buggers and powerful, hulking beasts. You wouldn’t believe it but there are so many ways to hack through the hoards of monsters, creatures and bosses, simply by virtue of the weapons and souls at your disposal. Some bosses can be quite a challenge, so a good strategy and a keen eye for movement go a long way to helping you win.
The general mix is good but again the developers seem to have been trying too hard in making the game different and this is at the expense of many classic beasts. (Where are the Minotaurs?) The same applies to the bosses. For newbies it won’t be a big deal but vets may feel a little empty.
The DS has a couple of roles in the game, but none are major other than the seals. There are five of them and each will be needed to open certain doors and seal away the bosses after they’re defeated. This is done by following the formation in a join-the-dots manner. If successful, the boss is sealed away. If not, the boss lives to fight on and you’ll have to beat down some more before you can seal again. Since we PALGN couldn’t bare to see our DS screen smudged with our grubby fingers, we resorted to hold the stylus in our mouth while we fought. Thankfully, the game is reasonably generous in terms of your drawing ability. And the map on the top screen is much more handy then you may realise.
Drawing seals can get tricky in tight battles
Unfortunately, there are two major setbacks for this game. One has been alluded to a few times and that is that the developers try to make the game different, but the job feels half done. Issues like the enemies that you meet, the irrelevance of the shop, some abilities and items and the simple fact that Castlevania elements have been forsaken for what seems to be no good reason, don’t help the game. The second is that the game has a distinct lack of ambition. The structure from the previous three titles is followed to a key and the unique DS elements really don’t add much in terms of variety. The design suffers a bit, with a relatively small castle and at times uninspired level outlays.
However, lack of ambition can be negligible if the underlying game is solid. The good news is that the gameplay is as rock-solid as ever. As mentioned, there really have been few platformers in recent times that can match what this game has to offer. There’s a lot of secrets to explore, some nice puzzles, plenty of things to kill, interesting dialogue and character interactions, three endings to complement a good story with some great, unpredictable twists and to top it off, excellent gaming mechanics. The game lasts 15-20 hours and is a reasonable challenge. The few unlockable extras aren’t just a gimmick and the mode outside of the story, is well, interesting.
Visually, the game has stayed true to the 2-D formula and it does very well. The environments are luscious and full of subtle details. These include the snow falling when you jump ontop of a car, creatures moving in a distant background or the splitting in half when you slice a zombie and blood spurting out. There are also plenty of cool effects and at no time does the system look like it will have any troubles. While the game looks like it’s taking on a slightly darker feel than its predecessor, there is little loss to the vivid details, colours and awe-inspiring moments throughout the castle. It can make for a few dullish moments, that aren’t helped by some uninspired design. Oddly, the previous hand-drawn character portraits have been replaced by some anime images. It’s not a bad thing but they don’t quite fit as well as the others and the darker theme isn’t propagating as well as it would’ve been otherwise. Still, at least Soma actually looks like a guy now.
One of the bigger and meaner enemies
All the sound effects in the game are fantastic and spot-on, with some excellent variation being the key. However, Castlevania games have always been known for their fantastic music themes and in this regard, Dawn of Sorrow is major disappointment. The tunes are OK, but they’re hardly memorable and at times, totally out of place.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow may not utitise the DS to the max and there are a few issues concerning lack of ambition and poor design choices. However, these issues are definitely negligible in what is easily of the best platformers of recent times and easily the best (if only) classical 2-D platformer for the DS. Regardless of the concerns, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more engaging or enjoyable game of this kind. Not unless you dig through back to the SNES days. And given that most of the best DS games aren't available outside of Japan, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a must for platform-hungry and quality game-hungry DS owners.
it wouldnt be fun if i revealed everything in the review now would it
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