Monday, October 28, 2024

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Nintendo DS, 2005)

 

The direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow and as such, something I should have checked out two months ago. Now out on the Dominus Collection, which is all about dominating, I guess. Look at Julius Belmont all the way in the back. Poor Julius.


Quick side note: If the box art looks familiar, it should, as it's basically a carbon copy of another game.

Of course, the main artist of Castlevania (from Symphony onward) Ayami Kojima stepped aside between Aria and this game, and we have a new anime aesthetic as a result. I prefer the original aesthetic the series was rocking up until this point. Made it look much more spooky and unique. Now it looks more like everything else. It isn't the end of the world though.

Regardless, we rejoin Soma Cruz for more "whoa, I'M Dracula?" action. When was the last time a protagonist in this series got to star in two games in a row? Makes me think they had big plans for Soma. He's a hip high-schooler in a trench coat, the game takes place in the future, the kids will love it. At least they had the restraint to not make this one post-apocalyptic.

Soma, conveniently, has forgotten all of his abilities, starting from scratch in this game. A lot of folks swear by this being the best of the six GBA/DS Metroidvanias, but I'd give that duke to Aria of Sorrow for a couple of huge reasons that we'll see soon enough.

The new villain is Celia, this strange-haired person. Whoever thought this hair was a good idea is probably the same person who gave the player 3 lives and no continues in Haunted Castle.

The gang is all here from the previous game. The now much less evil looking Genya informs Soma that the dastardly Celia needs him out of the way so a new Dark Lord can emerge. Oh yeah, and Soma's friend Mina gets kidnapped during all of this.

This leads to Soma journeying to some snowy mountains to find Celia's base of operations and stop whatever they're planning / rescue Mina.

The snowy mountain setting of this game is awesome, first off. This has one of my favorite overall settings of any game from this era.

Soma's ability to absorb souls (in 3 different types) is back, and still just as interesting to mix and match. Or more likely, find a couple of souls that really do it for you and stick with those. Every enemy has a chance of dropping its soul, and most of them are rare drops. If one likes 100%ing games and grinding a LOT, this and Aria are your games. Cause they've got an incredible amount of grinding to get everything. And then you've got some souls that have multiple levels, where getting more of them increases their power. Some go up to level 9. So that exponentially increases the grinding.

Course we get the usual menu and everything. The game is functionally more or less the same thing as Aria of Sorrow. I like the bestiary entry in the corner for the latest thing you've fought.

The backgrounds in this game are so detailed and nice. It takes full advantage of the DS' power compared to the GBA.

The key soul for the entire game and my favorite of all of 'em, the axe throw. I rely on this one heavily, and if I missed it here my playthrough would have been totally different.

Julius Belmont shows up to let you know he's still ready to kill you if you turn evil. Get another hobby, dude!

Still waiting for that 1999 game starring younger Julius. At this point that hypothetical game probably can't live up to the hype generated in the minds of the fans, though.

Save point rooms contain this awesome statue, and fully heal Soma. Which is a huge plus. It's sorta like swooping into a "safe zone" and often you barely make it.

First boss is this red knight. I jump n' slash!

Herein lies one of the two big problems with the game: Defeat a boss and you have to draw a Magic Seal onscreen at the end of the fight. Mess up the drawing and the boss instantly regains a large amount of health (unknown how much, but I think it's around 25%). It doesn't give you much time either. This one thing brings this game down below Aria because it's so annoying. And unnecessary too, like we didn't need this, but heaven forbid a DS game didn't include gimmicky Waggle Motion(tm) controls.

Waggle Motion (tm) - the wave of tomorrow!

In any case, the Dominus version changes the drawing mechanic to a button-pressing mechanic. However this is only slightly less annoying than the drawing. You still have to memorize the order of button presses, kind of like entering a code. This was the only time I really used the rewind function in this version of the game, to rewind and make sure I entered the "code" correctly to finish off the boss.

Yoko Belnades is back, and she has an important role in this game: Synthesizing weapons.

Very neat graphic effect here. Land on top of the van and the snow falls off of it (at least partially). It's implied that this is either Yoko or Hammer's van (probably Hammer).

Yoko's synthesizing lets you combine a weapon with a monster soul (both are lost) to produce a stronger weapon. This is actually more like the upgrade system of Secret of Mana in that each weapon type has like 8 tiers it can go through, and they're locked behind having access to higher and higher souls.

This is the only way to get weapons higher than like the 3rd tier (sometimes you'll find one on that tier), so you'll be very outgunned and outdated by the lategame if you're not paying attention to this. Best idea is to just pick a weapon type and focus on upgrading that, since there's a lot of soul overlap (for example, several weapons use the Great Armor soul around tier 5 or so).

Hammer returns from Aria to sell goods. "Whadaya boyyin?" he says.

Soma battles a hot witch with the world's most phallic broom!

The best part about this sword, is no one else can have it. And also I can't have it!

Look at the hot witch up there taunting Soma.

This is a good time to mention the other big problem with the game, which is surprisingly only a problem with the Dominus version. The map is displayed onscreen at all times instead of being something you can pull up / full-screen like in the earlier games. In the DD version it takes up an entire screen, while in this version...it's microscopic. On a giant TV it's salvageable (though still a bit tedious to squint at), but on portable mode Switch the map is nearly useless. Problem is you NEED to frequently refer to the map in these games to not be constantly lost or frustrated on a first time through. People who don't have great vision, or haven't played this before, won't have a great time.

Ended up keeping a map open on the computer and using that to get around, with the in-game map only really providing a location marker. Sucked a lot of fun out of the game, and what should be the peak of the GBA/DS hexology ended up being a bit of a pain. Good news is that Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia don't have this problem because both allow you to full screen the map.

Teleport rooms in this one have a cool Egyptian vibe. And more importantly than that:

They let you actually main screen the map. They're the only time in the game that you can get a good look at it. This is what we should have been able to pull up normally.

It's Fronken-Steen! ...and he's a regular foe, not a boss?

Celia shows up with her two cohorts in tow. These three are basically the X-Hunters from Mega Man X2. Celia is Serges, the mastermind.

Dario is Violen, the strong brute. He's one of Celia's two candidates for the new Dark Lord, along with...

...Dmitrii, the Agile of the group. They do that thing villains do where they point out that they could take out Soma right now, but choose not to because they have minions to do it for them, and beam away. Cool.

Next boss is this giant. Jump on his fist and then slash at the head, no big deal.

OH GOD HE'S GOT A GIANT DEATH LASER

The ability from that boss lets you break ice blocks by using the stylus. Waggle Motion (tm) strikes again! Luckily there are only like two rooms in the game where this is a thing.

Like the previous game, there are a lot of these giant knight enemies sprinkled throughout the castle. They're nasty until you realize the trick: Slide under them, because they can't turn around.

That's right, they can't turn. THEY CAN'T TURN.

Dmitrii's thing is he can copy enemy attacks and fling them back.

Not only does the game show you this, he also talks about it before the fight just in case you somehow missed it. The one time the game actually demands any ingenuity from the player and they hammer it into your head.

Dmitrii is quite agile (hyuck) and dashes around launching these giant boulders that are tough to avoid.

The key is to use a special attack against him so he copies it, and then he'll only use that instead of the big boulder attack. Can use a super-weak special move like the bone throw. I just used the standard axe and stayed close so they all sailed over Soma's head.

After the fight, Dmitrii dies. Well, that was unexpected. Soma didn't mean to kill him. What chicanery is afoot here?

Two X-Hunters left. ::Mega Man X2 stage select music is heard::

Next boss is Malphas, a somewhat generic flying dude. Lot of bosses in this game, I like it. They tend to be the most interesting parts of this castle, because they sometimes get creative with the boss designs compared to previous games.

Malphas gets completely shredded by axe throws, and gives up the Double Jump ability. One of those "so important you don't know how you got by without it" abilities.

Next X-Hunter is Dario, who has Vegeta hair and Vegeta 'tude.

He's one of the tougher foes in the game, and summons these fire walls to roar up around the screen. No way to gimp this, unlike the previous X-Hunter.

After a drawn-out fight, Soma lets Dario know that his quest to become The New Dark Lord is fruitless. Dario scampers off (rather than keeling over like Dmitrii) so he'll be back.

Puppet Master here is a good example of the creative boss designs. It summons these puppets (that are effectively voodoo effigies of your character) and throws them into iron maidens. This causes massive damage to your character no matter what. The key is to knock the voodoo puppets out of his hands before he can squish them.

Pretty outstanding background here, showing the dimly-lit lake that surrounds the castle.

Behind the door is an interesting fight with this water serpent. Normally Soma can't go above the surface of the water, so you're forced to fight the boss in its element. Winning gives Soma the permanent ability to free-move underwater (think Samus' Space Jump).

Sahagin lurk in the water nearby, peering at Soma. They're not even trying anymore!

These clothes heavily boost Luck, which means greater drop rates on the all-important souls. The only problem is, the Luck stat is broken in this game and does nothing. Nope, the only way to actually increase soul drops is to get the soul ring in the endgame that doubles their droprate.

Now this is much better. Just a raw defense boost, that's what you want. I stuck with this armor all the way through to the end of the game.

Our heroes find a mysterious sealed portal at the east end of the castle. Where does it go? We don't know yet, but it radiates evil. Next time: The back half of this extremely solid (in most regards) game.


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