Collection essentials #605: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)

The 2000s was the time when we got the most “Metroidvania” entries in the Castlevania series by far. The three of them on the Game Boy Advance over the span of just a few years saw enough commercial and critical success to keep the trend going into the Nintendo DS era. 

For their first DS Castlevania, Konami decided to give us a direct sequel to the last one on GBA, Aria of Sorrow. A more explicitly anime-style look is used this time around. The story is…well, even telling you the basic story would involve spoilers for Aria of Sorrow, which you definitely should play, so I won’t even tell you what it is, other than the fact that it takes place a year after the previous game. The sequel also retains the main distinguishing gameplay feature of AoS, that being the “Tactical Soul” system, and that’s good news. Basically, the game’s enemies have a chance to drop their “soul” upon defeat, which permanently grants the player access to some kind of equippable ability. Eventually players will have a nice variety of abilities to choose from. And like other “Metroidvania” entries in the series, there are RPG elements such as leveling up and standard equipment like weapons and armor.

The DS provides a handy convenience for a game like this. Whenever you play a Metroidvania, you may very often feel tempted to pause the game to look at a map to see where you are. But when you have two screens, the action can take place on one of them and the game can be continuously displayed in the other, and such is the case for Dawn of Sorrow. It’s a really nice convenience that saves me from pausing all the time.

Of course, one of the DS’s screens is a touch screen, and the developers decided to implement a mechanic with it which may not be to everyone’s liking…and that is the “Magic Seal”. When fighting a boss, when their HP reaches 0, they will not be automatically defeated. Instead, the player will be prompted to take out their stylus and draw some kind of symbol. In the early portion of the game they are quite simple, but later in the game they can become quite complex. If the player does not succeed, the boss will regain some HP and they will have to bring them back down to 0 in order to try again. This can be rather annoying for some of the difficult late-game bosses with complex seals that can be difficult to draw accurately. Thankfully players can freely practice in a menu screen, but this is certainly a mechanic that feels a little unnecessary and could really frustrate certain players.

The core game is rather short, which may be cited as a flaw. But there are some bonus modes included, such as a boss rush and a multiplayer mode in which you can design levels to thwart your friends with. 

I remember when Dawn of Sorrow came out, and that it carried quite a bit of hype. The DS had been out for less than a year, and this was one of the major third-party titles early in its lifespan. It garnered very positive reviews, with an impressive Metacritic score of 89. I had previously played Aria of Sorrow and got it soon after it came out (the one in the photo being the one I bought back then), and I had a friend online who did the same. I wasn’t disappointed, as the game delivered a similar level of quality as AoS, and I really liked the soundtrack too. I actually wasn’t able to beat it with the best ending for quite a long time, because I ran into a certain boss that I just couldn’t seem to defeat. And so I put the game down for years. I can’t remember how often in the ensuing years that I picked it up and tried the fight again, but I do know that it was in 2013 that I finally tried the fight and actually won, and then I went on to get the good ending from there.

It’s hard for me to fully evaluate Aria and Dawn of Sorrow and say which one is better, because it’s been so long since I played through them. Upon first playing them, I came away thinking that Aria is slightly better, but I’m not sure if I’d have the same opinion nowadays. They are certainly games that I’ll consider replaying at some point in my life, and I’m sure I will enjoy them very much if and when I do.

There were two other Castlevania games on the DS, Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia. Those games are also very good and I considered putting them on this list…and perhaps I may at some point in the future. But I didn’t get them when they first came out, instead getting and playing them years later. I did enjoy them plenty, though I don’t have a lot of strong memories of them and no real nostalgia, so for now I am leaving them off.

It’s a shame Konami stopped making these types of games, because they really were on a very good roll pumping them out for quite a few years. Nowadays, indie game developers are largely the ones who make this style of game, and there are a large number of them to choose from. But the older games which inspired so many of those developers are always going to feel special. Being one of them that I had the privilege to enjoy when it was released, Dawn of Sorrow clearly deserves its spot as an essential in my collection.