Tuesday, October 19, 2010

REVIEW: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Genre: Action-RPG-Jump'n'Run
Release: 2005
Platform: NDS
Graphics: Cool 2D. Nothing overwhelming, although the anime-intro-sequences are extremely cool. It's pretty solid, not the pinnacle of 2D-NDS-graphics, but still it's fun to watch.
Story: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow begins where Aria of Sorrow ends. Once again you assume the role of Soma Cruz, exchange student and slayer of Dracula, who somehow inherited the dark power of that batguy.
Now in this game a cult has formed which tries to create a new Dark Lord by killing Soma and using his power. Something like that. The gameplay is as good as usual. Once again you have the ability to consume the souls of enemies, leading to a variety of attacks and spells, again you buy items and so on and so forth. There are only two more or less big changes, one being the ability to obtain new items via transforming them using the obtained souls, the other one being magic seals which you need to draw on the touchscreen in order to permanently defeat bosses. Both changes sound cool on paper, but are rarely used ingame. Of course, they are used, but in my opinion they could have introduced more weapons which can be upgraded. But maybe it's just a case of bad memory and there are indeed many changeable weapons. Same deal with these seals: they are only used on bosses, but are also increasing in their difficulty to draw, which means once you figured out how to draw one seal properly (usually after the second try, but again, I may be wrong) it will never be used again. Nevertheless, cool features.
Awesome Fact:  Like in the previous game you are allowed to replay the game, keeping your souls and items. Or you can play again the so called JULIUS MODE, this time with a little change: instead of just controlling Julius Belmont, you get to play Joko Belnaded, a which, and Alucard. All these three differ regarding abilities, strength, defense, and so on, but that's no problem since you can swap between them on the go, which is often required to clear certain bosses. Much fun was had.

RATING: 8/10

31 comments:

  1. Did you get to try out the new one yet?

    Not bad at all, judging by the demo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I played this game and wasn't really impressed....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gotta love Castelvania whether its the old SNES ones or the newer releases

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ehh not a big castelvania fan, still good though

    ReplyDelete
  5. Somehow inherited/consumes the soles of his enemies....kinda you know. obvious?

    ReplyDelete
  6. never played this one, bit it seems good, will download :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Big fan of this game & the prequel. 2D Castlevania can pretty much do no wrong, so let's hope they don't try any 3DS shenanigans...

    ReplyDelete
  8. still havent played this game :*(

    ReplyDelete
  9. Never played it, but heard it was okay.

    ReplyDelete
  10. not really mt type of game tbh, but might give it a shot

    ReplyDelete
  11. I haven't played this one yet, would like to, thanks for the info!

    ReplyDelete
  12. what interesting game will you review next?cant wait

    ReplyDelete
  13. i love the old ones on the original nintendo

    ReplyDelete
  14. Never quite got into this franchise.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hmm i need to beat the new castlevania I got for christmas last year :o

    ReplyDelete
  16. This game is awesome, I've played it, great review, master!

    ReplyDelete
  17. haven't played any of the series on the DS.. i did play the God of War clone on the ps3 lol

    ReplyDelete
  18. castelvania is just a great game

    ReplyDelete
  19. The game is OK, not to special though.

    ReplyDelete