Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)

 

At least better than the box in the box version

So, got an urge to replay Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow after playing the Castlevania Anniversary Collection with the game Aria of Sorrow that this is a sequel too. And since I already had a file why not play a New Game + version? Stupid me of course choose Hard Mode. Game starts out somewhere in Japan as Soma Cruz having a... date (?) with Mina Hakuba when suddenly a woman named Celia Fortner shows up and summons a couple of monsters to kill Soma so a new Dark Lord can be chosen. Arikado shows up and hands Soma a knife to fend them off. Celia disappears and Arikado mentions that she is the high priestess of a cult bent on resurrecting the dark lord to prove that... God is good? Well, obviously the cult is crazy.

So Soma with the help of Hammer tracks down the cult to their castle and apparently Arikado have appeared as well together with Julius Belmont and Yoko Belnades. Celia has found two more Dark Lord candidates, Dimitri and Dario and its Soma that gotta stop them. Dimitri is the first one encountered and he has the ability to copy others ability. And he seems to die and Soma absorbs his soul?

Well, that looks painful

Continuing across the castle you find Dario that have the power of fire and hides at the top of the castle. If you beat him here you get the bad ending since the trick is getting the Paranoia soul and use it to enters the mirror in the throne room to fight the demon hiding there to take away Dimitri's powers. With that you gotta confront Celia that seems to have taken Mina and sacrifice her to force Soma into the role of the Dark Lord. If you have equipped Mina's talisman Arikado for some reason appear before its to late and shows that it's a doppelgänger that taken the form of Mina, but this unleashes the dark soul that enters the Doppelgänger and Dimitri is reformed. They head to the abyss and Dimitri sacrifices Celia to gain dominion of a demon that backfires and turns him into an abomination. Which Soma kills, everyone gets out, the end.

I haven't played this game since I got my 3DS (which I can see since there isn't any note in the records of this game) which means that it gotta be at minimum 11-12 years since. Why is that? Mostly because like everyone else I dislike the forced touch screen controls. It's fine with breaking the ice and such, but the damn magic seal. It's so hard to know what you did wrong and there's also a damn time limit. Thank God the final boss didn't have it. Don't know how many times I had to use up potions that I shouldn't have to draw that stupid seal correct. 

I hate you!

It took me somewhere around 8 hours to play through (but then I got all souls before starting the game). Getting the second bad ending (failing to equip Mina's talisman before seeing "her" sacrifice) unlocks Julius mode like in the prior game where you run around as a classic Belmont whip wielding hero, but this time you can get Yoko and Alucard as well and the final boss is Soma that acts like Dracula. Noticed I had a save right before the boss and did some grinding and then defeated Soma. Just about 9 hours. I restarted and played a bit in the beginning of the game and it's kinda fun so that might be future playthroughs if I play through it again, especially since I don't have to use the touch controls. Also, the art is a bit of hit and miss. I've gotten used to it, but it was a bit jarring to go from the previous games art style to a more... I can't say "anime-esque" sine that is true of the GBA games as well, but a more... cartoonish look maybe? Music also... not that many good tracks actually, the wizard lab is nice, but otherwise it's the old tracks like Vampire killer and Bloody Tears that sticks out, as well as the final boss battle theme against Soma with Illusionary Dance as its theme.