As an achievement hunter, I am already dreading the inevitable "Collect and max all souls" achievement for this game when/if a DS collection comes out. I personally never played any of the DS games, so I really enjoyed this review and your respect towards spoilers, as I fall in that exact category of people you described who are waiting for a collection.
Aha thanks dude, glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, for the moooost part, I try to avoid any critical spoiler stuff in my reviews, unless it's absolutely necessary for me to talk about. But even then, I give fair warning so people can skip past it (such as in my Golden Sun review). But yeah, honestly I don't imagine the achievements in the DS Collection being TOO outlandish. I'm an achievement hunting too. I'm betting on the Dawn side it'll require each soul, but I doubt they'll have us max them out.
I think it'll definitely be much easier than on the DS hardware. The advance collection made collecting these things much easier with the rewind function.
I honestly wish Dawn was a remake of Aria to take better advantage of those new effects and rebalance some souls in Aria without changing the hilarious one armed swings for speed killing. Those were fun. Also, Aria had far superior weapons in terms of fun and visual design, some of them severely downgraded in Dawn sadly. And no joke weapons either like the Positron Rifle, the Excalibur...'s stone, the Kaiser Knuckle and so on. What a shame. As for the weapon soul smithing, as an idea it's fantastic but it's badly implemented in Dawn for a variety of reasons, especially compared to if it was implemented in Aria with its superior map design instead or in another Castlevania game instead, it would have been perfect for Curse of Darkness compared the dumb material hunting. Also it came out in a very unconfortable period of Nintendo where EVERY single title had to have a name or a game title that somehow included the "DS" moniker. Dawn of Sorrow = DS, Dual Soul system = DS system etc. It really lead to some hilarious concepts during that era. As for the stats, NOPE! Everyone had a bad time with the game's RNG since the Luck stat and for that matter, almost every stat, every weapon and every soul was severely nerfed from Aria for some bizarre and ungodly reason. Soma is far weaker compared to Aria even with the Claiohm Solais. The anime artstyle is also very unfortunate since the game already had a strong neo-gothic style already and the blan anime style messed it up despite the amazing intro cutscene. Thankfully it was much better implemented in the next game with Portrait of Ruin and some of its secrets.
Yeah, for sure. A lot of the final forms of weapons were neat, but the grind to get each and every final form was really arduous , so by the time you maxed out one weapon, the thought of doing it another just wasn't really that appealing. I didn't cover it in the video, but Dawn is also quite a bit slower than Aria, movement wise too. This is super noticeably for the bat form of Soma, and of course, Julius Mode as a whole. The characters just often feel like they are stuck in mud as opposed to the nice, quick speed in Aria.
@@SimplyAJ Yeah, some of the final forms having a bit of a lackluster effect(final katana can hit a tiny bit faster and with more reach than other katanas or something) and requiring boss souls really didn't balance it well to make it appealing. I thought Soma retained his speed, save for having extra animations when turning around and a noticeably slower dodge but Julius got stupidly nerfed to the point where it made dislike the mode due to how poorly they implemented the three, or rather the two of the three. Yoko is balanced greatly to having her special effects and the heightened magic power with the screen clearing spells but Julius and Alucard are botched in utility. Julius should be like in his Aria form, super fast, have his uppercut and given the increase in graphical fidelity leading him to get RIchter's super slide as well. at the cost of his subweapons requiring a lot of MP to make up for his absurd power. Meanwhile, Alucard should lose the high jump since he has Bat Company but he should be perfectly balanced between physical and magic along with having higher defence and resistance to most ailments(petrify etc) compared to the other two. They could even have Alucard get Soma's Glide Armour and access it by having Alucard hold L in the air instead. Having him get both High Jump and Bat company was excessive and useless. If they didn't want the character to sequence break, the mode should have started with Alucard, then having him find Yoko and Yoko talking to JUlius at that room with the darkness and then the player will be able to freely explore the castle. Simple design and effective. It's partly why it makes me think it was rushed sadly, due to the necessity of the touch implementations taking time...or maybe because the team was split with the PSP game collection at the same time, where they had to port one game, recalibrate and remaster a second and then remake the first as well.
Another good video. It's great how you explain just enough as to not overwhelm us with information. And also loved the "wink wink" at the end for people playing Dawn virtually, was pretty funny heheh.
@@SimplyAJ it's better this way, more often than not a long winded explanation just for one topic makes watching or hearing it boring. Keep up the good work!
I'm so conflicted on this game. Aria was an absolutely unreal game, and I was so excited for Dawn. There were a ton of cool, unique things in the game, and the art(minus the god awful portraits) were so good. There was just some really odd jank, like the stupid seals you have to draw(and I'm left handed so boy that sucked). It was great, but didn't quite have the "cult" sticking power in my mind of the first.
Yeah, I think it's just one of those situations where, it's really hard to catch lightning twice. They did so well with Aria. And hell, it makes you wonder, if Dawn of Sorrow still used the same soul system, but wasn't so directly tied to Aria, if it'd have stood better on its own, since there would automatically be less comparisons. But honestly, who knows haha
I ripped off the band aid and picked up all 3 DS games earlier this year, no regrets! I'm going to make time in the future to play all the GBA and DS games, just got so much stuff on the back log atm! It's too bad about the artwork, but glad to see the gameplay is still on point!
Oh nice! Yeah honestly even with a backlog, I feel like these games can be the perfect like "lay in bed and play a game" game. Or "watch a movie/tv show" and play at the same time. Then you can still play your backlog during your "real" gaming hours or whatever haha.
Personally, I think Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin's artstyle fits them very well. Their storyline all feel very....anime-esque? I can't imagine the gothic artstyle with a storyline like this. Speaking of which, I find it quite funny that Alucard STILL has this gothic touch to his portrait despite being in the anime artstyle, even moreso than Arikado.
I can agree with that. I think a big part of it is the whiplash you get with the artstyles from Aria to Dawn. Plus, some just don't look good me. Like, I'm really not a fan of Soma and Julius's portraits at all in Dawn. They just look way too cartoonish. Honestly, I think they found the perfect style once Order of Ecclesia came out. If Portait and Dawn could have used that art style, that'd have been awesome. (But I will say the anime art style in Portrait isn't nearly as bad as it is in Dawn)
@@SimplyAJ Honestly, I understand and even agree that Dawn has a total Saturday morning cartoon vibe, but I'm with you even more that it's a blander, less flavorful art direction, even with that in mind. I totally understand letting Kojima focus on her current project only due to budget/schedule reasons, but damn, at least hire someone who does something stylized with the whole "low-stakes shonen" thing lol
Dawn was my first and probably my favourite of the series, although SOTN is very close. I never really had issues with the seals and while the drop rate was annoying it wasn't as bad as most games with mandatory grinding. Especially since it only happens once midway through the story.
I think the GAMEPLAY is really solid. Like the Tactical Soul System was just a great gameplay mechanic over all, but man, when the luck was bad, it was REAL bad. That and the weapons were just super lackluster.
this game is based and better than the first game imp. like the story, combat, abilities and map better. just needs the no touch screen patch but still better without it i reckon.
I definitely think it took a lot of steps in the right direction, which would be built upon pretty successfully for the later games. The pixel art is a huuuuge step up. I do wish the weapon system was a bit better though.
Dawn of Sorrow, for me, has the best "extra" mode. Most are just "run to the end" by starting with all the mobility abilities. This one has some story, and the 3 characters works well.
Oh, there's more than three mandatory souls, haha.. I remember having to grind out foreveeeeeeer on the Skeleton Ape just to get the longer throwing ability. A blemish or two here and there, on what's otherwise an excellent game in my eyes. I just love how it looks and feels. A nice improvement as well is it shows you on the separate screen how many items an enemy can drop, so you can immediately tell (if you're going for 100%) whether you need to actually grind out on an enemy or not.
I love both Aria and Dawn. I 100% the souls and maps in both games. I distinctly remember the terrible grind for Final Guard in Dawn even with the soul eater ring
I never had the chance to play this game during it's original release but, after seeing your video, I think I'll hunt it down and give it a playthrough.
I just found your channel through JRose's recent community post! Really been enjoying the heck out of your videos! Dawn of Sorrow was the first Castlevania I really played from start to finish, and the game that really got me into the series. And I can understand why the artstyle is a bit jarring to someone who's a long time fan, but the anime aesthetic was exactly what younger me needed to be willing to give the series a try after being trepidatious for a while. I would say it's tied with Symphony of the Night as my favorite in the series. I actually didn't do a full playthrough of Aria until January of this year (despite playing Dawn in 2005~6) and while I loved Aria a whole lot, I would say I still prefer Dawn. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the castle map in Aria feels a bit... cramped(?) in comparison to the DS games and SotN. I would say my biggest issue is, like most, the seals. It isn't even that they're there, but that if you botch them you basically have to do the last phase of the boss again. I'm hoping when the Castlevania DS Collection shows up, they have an "Auto Sealing" option for Dawn xD
Honestly, that comment about the art is a fantastic point that I didn't even take into consideration! I was so used to the "gothic style" they were using, that it did throw me off, but didn't even think that it was probably a great gateway for new fans because it was definitely a bit more... "friendly" looking. So yeah, that's definitely an excellent point!
>_> it’s not identical to Dracula’s castle, and if you’re cult that worships Dracula with magic abilities why wouldn’t you build a Castle Town reminiscent of your lord
As someone who beat every Igavania but Circle of the Moon, Aria of Sorrow was the best of them, Order of Ecclesia is my favorite, Symphony of the Night is the most revolutionary, Harmony of Dissonance had the Best Belmont (Juste does not get enough love), the best music came from both SotN and DoS. The most enjoyable to play was actually Dawn of Sorrow. I'm playing through it as I type this.
Aha, Portrait doesn't make your list eh? Interesting! I wish I could categorically rate them, but I feel like my placements would move constantly. Sometimes I think Aria is the best, other times, I think it's Portrait, etc. Just depends on the week haha
Sums up my thoughts pretty well, it's a great game, but not as tightly designed as Aria and way more grindy, getting some souls like the Peeping Eye is a nightmare
Tightly designed is a great point. Like, in Aria, sure, you have to get three specific souls to get to the true final boss in that game too, but those souls are linked to Dracula. They're essentially his moveset, and the drop rate on the three enemies isn't bad. Meanwhile, in Dawn, you need... Ukoback... and a Clown.. for some reason? haha
This is undeniably one of the best Castlevania games, but I have a lot of nitpicks... - Drawing the symbols in the heat of battle is really tedious and annoying. - Grinding the souls to get the best ending feels like a bad way to pad things out. - I didn't see much use in upgrading the weapons with Yoko when my standard weapons did fine. - The anime portraits don't hurt the gameplay but it's a definite downgrade from the previous games. - The story feels weaker. Every cutscene is one of the characters saying "Soma! Stay out of this!" and barely protesting when you come along anyway.
I would love a collection of DoS, PoR, OoE and SoTN. It would be cool to put all 4 castles together and such into one giant map or multiple areas outside the castle fully connected and make sense leading to the castle with all enemies and bosses from each game in it. Too much to ask for I know but, some people can wish lol. Oh and I have always wished that DoS and PoR actually had blood effects when you attack an enemy instead of the orangish pixels that come out of them.
THE ANIME STYLE THANK YOUUUUU As a long-time fan I was ALWAYS welcome to change, but the art style change was just so *jarring* to me. My friend Wolven and I talked about it and just... didn't like it. It's not ugly so much as it just doesn't fit. The game was fun. It wasn't memorable to me, though. Great video!
I never owned a GBA so I’m only familiar with Castlevania DS. I did enjoy it but had many the same gripes as you did (left handed as well) I actually put hundreds of hours into Castlevania Harmony of Despair on 360, that’s how I learned so much about the characters from the DS trilogy. Excellent video, AJ, now I must go get a hot cup of Java.
Glad ya enjoyed it! Yeah, I highly recommend grabbing the Advance Trilogy if you're interested in checking out the GBA games. They're definitely worth looking into.
My favorite Castlevania game. I think this is the first Castlevania game I played. 0:35 That thing is nightmare fuel. I was okay with the anime aesthetic. It made the characters more expressive even though Ecclesia made the characters more expressive as well. There is a mod that can change the art style in this game and they even made the new characters in this art style. I prefer to play the game without this mod so I can see their expressions change. 2:02 The Monkees XD. 2:04 ﾟДﾟ! 7:19 I saw what you did there. 10:33 I didn't know you could do that. I used a mod to make the seals easier to use (only drawing one line). There is a mod that removes stylus controls entirely but I want to scribble something in the file select screen. 13:19 I think I did that. There is a mod that fixes the luck stat. I use both that and the easy seal mod. I think Dario and Dmitri didn't have their powers until after the solar eclipse so maybe they were unaware of who they are. I could be wrong about that but I think I heard that from somewhere. I think Dracula's castle was rebuilt by a cult and it was designed to resemble his castle. The castle itself seems to draw power from a location called The Abyss, which appears to be somehow connected to Chaos, the source of Dracula's powers, as the Dark Lord candidates need to travel there to finalize their transformation into the Dark Lord. If you have an R4 card you don't need to track down DS games and you can also mod the game to improve it. I don't think I added Portrait of Ruin on my R4 card yet. I should fix that. I did have to move the date back on my 3DS because for some dumb reason my card stops working after a certain date. I think it's called a time bomb. I think they did this so you have to buy more cards but there are ways around that. 26:47 So you do know about it.
Great vid man, a lot of buts in the vid but not the good kind ;) For me portrait was the best of the ds trilogy and if I had to choose Aria is 1000% superior to dawn but dawn has its charm here and there
For sure. I definitely was trying my best to convey that, while it has its "issues" that it's still a GREAT game haha. It's a little challenging to critique a game but also show people you enjoy it too. Just gonna say this here: I absolutely can't wait to cover Portrait. I've been looking forward to revisiting that for a WHILE.
The problems you mention about the soul drop rate are most definitely legitimate. But I always thought this was an amazing game despite it. I wish they could make another game just like this, but just having fixed the soul drop rate.
Dawn of Sorrow Definitive edition+ is the way to go to play this game. It absolutely removed all the things you hate from the game including the cartoonish portrait, luck issue, and the infamous touchscreen. Thank me later.
I'll definitely look into it! I mean, I can deal with portraits, they aren't really breaking the game for me, but yeah some of the other issues are just a bit of a shame haha.
Never found the seals to be an issue. I can see why people dont like it but the bosses arent difficult and the seals are simple just tracing. Since it shows you the seal before
id say this game is better than order of ecclesia, however i would say that aria is still better, the gameplay itself is perfect, however there is just way too much grinding in the game this time arround, first off you need to get 3 random souls to get to paranoia and even have the chance to beat the game and if you want to upgrade your weapons you need even more souls and if you want to use some of the best souls for yourself you need even MORE souls, like 90% of the game is literally grinding souls, and the other 10% is playing the actual game, i think there should be a game mode where the drop rates for souls are improved by like 400% or something, its so annyoing. lets say before the first boss you want to have a better red soul than skeleton, that means getting the axe armor soul. now you are at the shop you can buy yourself an axe and then upgrade it with your axe soul for an early battle axe from yoko, great! but now you are missing your axe soul again, so now you have to grind another one, since you need that to beat the game, since without paranoia you cant get the true ending. now before the 2nd boss you can upgrade your axe again by grinding the manticore soul, that makes 3 this far. you then need ukobak and killer clown, thats 5, also the treant soul is one of the best souls in the game, you probably want that, so thats 6, also devil is the actual best soul in the game, you have to get this, thats 7. you probably also want to upgrade your greatsword to later get a claim which is the best weapon in the game and the strongest weapon to use against the final boss. for this you need the valkyrie soul, thats 8, then you need lilith, thats 9, then you need to get the one from the green guy, i cant spell his name, thats 10, but you also want a 2nd one since this is one of the best yellow souls in the game since it makes it so you dont flinch at all, thats 11. you also need gergoth, however you always get this one so its 12 but not really, lets keep it at 11. after this you also need final guard and alastor, oh joy, thats 13, but hold up, these 2 are actually so insanely hard to get that you probably should consider getting the 300k gold for the soul ring, which means getting the gold ring first which doesnt take that long to be fair, getting 300k with the gold ring takes about 20 minutes, but this might actually still be faster than grinding final guard and alastor without it, depends on how lucky you get, might not be needed if your lucky. so all in all 13 different rare drop souls, plus 300k gold farming, its a brutal grind fest if you wanna have the easiest time possible. in aria you just pick up claim off the ground and your good, thats literally all you need to beat the game, you dont need any red blue or yellow souls, besides the 3 you need to unlock the true ending and curly i guess, but thats pretty quick to get.its just more fun to replay aria, the pacing is just better if you dont have to stop for long grinding sessions constantly. actually i forgot, you probably also should get the great axe armor soul, since if you upgrade your axe you will have a way faster final guard grind, so the final score is actually 14 souls that you probably wanna get, not 13. or you are just a god gamer and try to beat the final boss with the durandal that you can just pick up near the end of the game, good luck with that, the final boss is very rough in this game, and this is the absolute best weapon you can pick up and use without rare drops and it has like 60 attack? pretty pathetic. basically: a casual player absolutely has to grind for souls to beat the game, which i think reduces the fun one will have playing the game drastically.
16:44 but that's not punishing game design? You made the decision of whether or not you want to keep the souls to get the ring later in that run or spend them to upgrade your weapon now, you made the decision so you can't blame the game for your choice
Except, you absolutely can blame the game design, because players aren't given that knowledge ahead of time. If you went into the game with the knowledge that you can EITHER spend the souls and get the weapons you want OR you could get the ring, then sure, that choice is up to the player to make, but nowhere is that information told to the player. Hell, if anything, a simple solution to this would have been to make it so you simply needed to acquire the souls at some point. A checklist of souls, that once you had them, would count towards getting the ring, and if you spent them, it's not punishing you for doing so.
I don’t hate the magic seals, but the game would be better without them. However, I absolutely LOATHE the ice blocks. Those things are horrible pace-breakers.
Of all the things you can complain about Dawn of Sorrow, a great but flawed game, the seals are the worst thing. If it ever gets remastered/rereleased they better remove them.
I strongly dislike the character art i Dawn. Really strange they didn't bring back Kojima for this one... And the luck system was just not as well balanced as in Aria of Sorrow which is a great game. For me, Dawn just felt like an inferior version of Aria of Sorrow. To me Dawn is the least good out of the three Nintendo DS Castlevanias.
