Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow
by Konami
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Video Game Reviews of Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow
Customer Review: Way beyond virtual dogs and cooking minigames
Summary: 5 Stars
Another killer exclusive on the DS, Castlevania Dawn Of Sorrow impresses with great visuals, great tunes (crank up the score!), and alot more. I would give a shoutout to Konami for not making another gimmicky game that is fun for about 2 weeks, then fall flat. This game has more than enough to keep you busy for a while. It's a great game for the DS, and works very well on the DS as well. The magic seal mechanic is great, and with two screens, the top screen never has been more unique. You can finally see the map or stats right there! That may not sound like a very cool asset, but for the people who have been playing Castlevania since ever will find that so useful. Since Castlevania's dungeons are easy to get lost in, it's alot easier to get around and the fact that you can see what exactly the stats are without pasuing is a great thing. And besides, the lower screen is no longer flawed by anything taking up the beautiful scenery.
I'll first start with the graphics. One of the designers said that they chose to stick with the 2-D graphics because they felt that the DS is a great portable for expressing 2-D visuals. The DS is WAY more powerful than the GBA, so with the power of the DS, they were able to create a lush, colorful, and eye intruging adventure. Castlevania never looked so good. Simply some of the best graphics I have seen on the system (for 2-D, anyway). 3-D visuals just wouldn't do justice, expecially with the blurry, stark, and blocky Castlevania game for PS1 (please excuse my lack for a name).
Like I mentioned before, the sound is simply an audiogasm (grow up). Great, and I mean GREAT, music for a handheld. This game has a great soundtrack, and it's a soundtrack that I really enjoy along with Lumines and Sonic The Hedgehog. Can't say much else. The sound effects are good too. Everything so far is sharp, and the presentation delivers.
Castlevania has been renowed for it's presentation, but also because the game is very fun and addicting. It's just fun to explore the castle and kill the many enemies around. The enemies are not run of the mill, and the bosses are a sight to see. A stone hulk with a giant arm and laser beam eye, a massive floating suit of armor, and a puppet master that attacks with magic instead of attacks. IT's creepy stuff, but the bossea re unique (the puppet master does not look anything that you porbally imagined before). The core gameplay itself is snazzy. Addicting hack n' slash and fast tactics, marred with totally awesome weapons and lot's of other gameplay goodies. Addicting as a game on the console, Castlevania has enough fun with it to last you for at least a month. It's solid, simple, but fun gameplay, littered with traps and a healthy dose of pure, jumping and sliding action.
Any cons? The fact that you can't save anywhere is annoying like Darth Kommisar said. A thing that kind of wasn't cool is that there wasn't any real touch screen features besides the magic seal, but it's not so bad, because the game is so solid enough, and the two screens alone are very great. IT's also a 100 new game in the series, so it will be a whole new game. Cons or not? You decide.
Customer Review: One of the best games ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
It has been a long time since I have wanted to play a game all the way 100% through. Probably since Symphony of the Night actually. I'm the type who beats a game, shelves it, and may or may not play it again later. I don't typically worry about getting every single thing in a game completed. This one, however, I spent hours getting every single soul in the game and loved every tedious minute of it.
I put this up there with titles like Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night as one of my favorite games of all time.
This is easily my favorite game for the DS. By far. Although I just bought Portrait of Ruin, so we'll see how that goes next.
Customer Review: more Castlevania
Summary: 5 Stars
My biggest problem with Dawn of Sorrow is that it wants to be Symphony of the Night *so bad* that it actually ends up missing the mark by quite a bit.
First of all, there's an assortment of problems with this game. I grew up with Symphony of the Night from the Playstation 1 and let me tell ya- THAT game is an absolute masterpiece in every way imaginable. Back when it came out, everyone knew there was something incredibly special about it. Symphony of the Night is the kind of game that only comes along once in a blue moon. The kind of game that does just about everything right, making it extremely hard (almost impossible) for the Castlevania series to ever reach that kind of greatness ever again.
Keeping Symphony of the Night in my thoughts the entire time I was playing through Dawn of Sorrow, this game had major expectations, most of which fell short, BUT not enough of a fall for me to claim Dawn of Sorrow is a complete failure. Nope, not at all.
I personally have a major problem with the countless amounts of text you have to witness in the beginning of the game. I mean LOTS and LOTS of text. One of the main reasons Symphony of the Night was such a charming game is because you didn't have to read through all kinds of unnecessary text- you simply jump right into the game and play it. Konami made sure SOTN was playable for everyone, Castlevania fans or otherwise.
It's not that the story in Dawn of Sorrow is bad and all that text reading is boring as a result, it's just that, Symphony of the Night was able to become a timeless classic without having to rely on the player reading text upon text, so Dawn of Sorrow misses the mark there and HAS to be seen as somewhat of a disappointment in comparison. If this game is supposed to be a combination of RPG and action elements similar to the Zelda series, well once again, Symphony of the Night was able to do it better.
Also, the enemies in this game are pretty much nothing but the *same exact enemies* we'd already seen and loved in Symphony of the Night. I fail to see why we have to deal with exact replicas of the same enemies once again.
How can it be possible to carry the same kind of excitement in a sequel when all we're doing is fighting the same enemies all over again? We shouldn't have to- Konami should have found some developers who were willing to lend their creative ideas for more variety in the enemy department. Folks, I kid you not- most of the enemies in Dawn of Sorrow can be found in Symphony of the Night doing their same routine once again. Those skeletons that throw flame barrels? Well they're all OVER the place here. I can pretty much run down a list of enemies in both games and conclude there's just way too many of them in this game that simply don't belong. When you first encountered these same enemies in Symphony of the Night, it was truly an incredible experience because you've never seen anything like them before. Dawn of Sorrow has that "been there done that" vibe mostly because of the enemies, but also because of the gameplay.
Which leads us to the next problem- the animation of the enemy movements (and the way they die) aren't nearly as good as the ones in Symphony of the Night. Everything moved in such a fluid and near-perfect way in Symphony of the Night, but unfortunately this game comes up way way short thanks to some unnecessary choppiness in the animations. Watching enemies die isn't nearly as thrilling either.
The gameplay is NOT as much fun this time around since we're dealing with the same enemies and movements once again. I don't know what went wrong. If anything, now it feels like we're playing a cheaper or watered down version of Symphony of the Night. Unacceptable.
The weapons are alright, but they aren't animated as nicely as the sword swings from Symphony of the Night. I feel a bit of choppiness in each swing that makes the game feel tacky most of the time. Also each weapon really stood apart in Symphony of the Night (except for a few swords here and there) but in this game, most of the weapons blend together and there's hardly any truly memorable ones.
The areas themselves aren't that great to explore either- one place has these square rooms and number puzzles that end up being a nightmare of confusion and annoyances, something Symphony of the Night avoided entirely.
The boss fights are a LOT worse than the ones in Symphony of the Night. These ones are almost terrible in comparison. Just swing at them as quickly as you can with your sword until they die. No strategy or anything involved, and especially no creativity as far as dodging boss attacks are concerned. Completely uncreative. The bosses don't really feel like much of a fight either because most of them have only a couple attacks and that's it. Play Symphony of the Night for a solid year and you'll STILL be surprised when a boss throws a new attack at you that you haven't seen before.
With all these complains, the game DOES do one thing right- the game is loaded with action. Lots and lots of action, at almost every single turn. Perhaps even slightly more than Symphony of the Night.
Unfortunately, this game comes up way short compared to Symphony of the Night. Dawn of Sorrow doesn't have the crisp graphics, fluid animations, incredible weapon variety, or incredible soundtrack that SOTN had (though the music IS quite catchy in this game I admit).
In addition to these problems, Dawn of Sorrow seriously feels like playing as Zero from the Mega Man X series thanks to the way the main character spins around and slashes at enemies with his sword. It's TOO reminiscent of Zero from the X series. Plus the anime style graphics were a bad idea. It's been done a thousand times, and it doesn't belong in Castlevania. Just not a classic game in my mind, but if we ignore many of the problems and focus on all the action (and of course ignore the fact Symphony of the Night completely smears it) this is a pretty good game despite its many flaws.
Customer Review: Best Game on DS: Portrait of Ruin will be better
Summary: 5 Stars
This game is excellent. I have beaten it three times and each time I beat it I find out cooler things. You can Upgrade weapons using monsters souls that you get when you kill things. My favorite weapon is the Golden Axe. It takes a while to get though. To go farther in the game you have to wear that one talesmen that girl gives you or else you just turn into a monster and lose. Once you get that far you get to battle the grim reaper(extremely hard to beat). This game is very fun and I love the hand painted backrounds. Portrait of Ruin(the sequel to Dawn of Sorrow)has tons of new monsters and many different bosses. It looks awesome. I'm buying it the day it comes out because I loved the first one so much. Buy this game! You'll love it! I bought a Nintendo DS just to play this game and it was so worth it!Customer Review: Good game.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best DS game out now.
it's pretty similar to Aria Of Sorrow,
but with some added features:
souls now have levels, the more souls you get, the more power you get.
Magic Seals, a very annoying gimmick to finish bosses
for example, let's say you fight a tough boss
out of the blue, you need to draw a special pattern
to kill it, and if the boss is panic-inducing to you,
you need to force yourself out the action, and draw
the seal, otherwise, you will mess up entirley
and have to start over.
anyway.
the gameplay is very solid, and non-linear.
i hope you enjoy this review :)