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Don't order this version!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 43
Date: March 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game has the dreaded "Konami's BEST" red bar of doom on it. Don't support a reprint that ruins the original box art. Buy somewhere else.

castlevania aria of 1.5?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 34
Date: November 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Very mediocre at best. As always, konami fanboys will flock to it. So if you like playing the same game all the time. this might be for you. If you've played one of the following:sotn,cotm,hod,aos. You've played them all. Stay away from hyped garbage like this.

More of the same

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 48
Date: December 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

these games are all the same. It's like konami releases the same game over and over again and the same idiots buy the game over and over again.

Castlevania Joy on your DS!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Reviewed for Big Boss Games by: T.R.C.

Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow for the Nintendo DS made by Konami. It is a direct sequel taking place 1 year after the events of Castlevania Aria of Sorrow.

The cast:
Soma Cruz - The reincarnation of Dracula, aka "Hero".
Mina Hakuba - Soma's Love interest.
Yoko Belnades - Weapon synthesis specialist. Also, she is Julius Belmont's confidant.
Julius Belmont - Rival vampire hunter and friend.
Hammer - Sells items, weapons and accessories. Buy healing stuff and forget about the rest of his goods. You can find better stuff in the castle and then have Yoko synthesis your weapon of choice. Save your gold for the soul eater ring, weighs in at 300,000 gold.
Genya Arikado - Is the overseer of Soma. Aka Soma's babysitter.
Celia Fortner - Witch leader of a cult that is trying to bring back "The Dark Lord!"
Dario and Dimitrii - Celia's top choices to be "The Dark Lord!"

Equipment:
You can equip one weapon, a piece of armor and one accessory. You may also equip three souls at one time. A bullet soul, I used Mandragora, a grenade type weapon. A Guardian soul, I liked the Flying Armor, Float like a butterfly, then Bat Company, Fly like a bat! An enchant soul. The ghoul is great; it allows you to eat anything. Rusty tin cans and rotten flesh, tasty!

And so it begins...
Soma and Mina are out for a nice walk in town when Celia appears and threatens Soma. Soma's friend, Arikado, gives him a knife to defend himself from Celia's monster hoard. This sets the stage for a great game!

My only complaint is that it took me only 13 hours to get through the main story. When you beat the game you are given a chance to play the game with Julius Belmont and Yoko Belnades, who team up to take on Castlevania. The added 10 hours for this side quest extends the playtime to 23 hours. Which is a decent amount of time for an action platformer.

Story 6/10 - Good but not great. Some good plot twists.

Gameplay 8/10 - Fun and addictive. Soul collecting is not easy. But, don't give up! You need those souls! The Seal System was unique and different. You need to use the touch screen to trace seals and destroy any bosses. I've never sworn so much at my poor DS than when I messed up a seal and had to continue fighting a boss with only 10hp left. I tried to us my stylus, but I was too slow. So, I just started to use my finger after awhile.

Music 9/10 - In true Castlevania style, it was great!

Overall 7/10 - A solid game with tough puzzles and many plot twists. Have fun!

Viva Dracula!

This is the best Castlevania, hands down.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Dawn of Sorrow is wonderful. The level design is great, the artistic style is right on, and the tried-and-true formula still works. The bosses are intense and creative as well. There's tons to do, what with a million different weapons to get and souls to collect, and it's all great fun. The real problem is it's not much different from past Castlevania titles. It's polished and perfected in many ways, but it's largely the same thing as the Game Boy Advance games. Still great, though.

Second screen is an enormous help

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: October 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have thought that the Castlevania franchise peaked with Castlevania 4 on the SNES. Even now 14 years after its release I think the graphics, main character animation, and music were excellent. After that game the 2D releases never felt right, and I actually thought the much-hated 3D adventures on the N64 were more in the spirit of the franchise than the much-loved GBA games. The newer games felt like Metroid wannabes with an excessive number of useless features. I kept buying the 2D Castlevania games anyway because, well, I'm a sucker and always hoped for a game as fun as an old NES or SNES Castlevania but was always disappointed, until now.

I'm not even the entire way through the game, but "Dawn of Sorrow" has so far been very entertaining. I think I've finally figured out why I've hated the new crop of 2D games; the constant toggling between the map and the game screen just interfered with gameplay too much. The old games tended to be very linear, and without having to worry about your place on a map you could concentrate on gameplay. The newer games removed that linear layout to increase game complexity, but the map/game toggling apparently destroyed the best characteristic of Castlevania and made gameplay a chore. With this game, toggling from the action is nowhere near as common. First of all, the main map is always on the top of the screen. Second, the extra buttons on the DS require fewer trips to the submenus for option swapping. In short, "Dawn of Sorrow" successfully merges the fast action of the old games with the advanced RPG elements of the new games.

The game is not without its drawbacks:
1) Navigating the menu system is far too difficult. You will often find yourself randomly hitting buttons to navigate to different sections of the menu system and accidently deactivating features in the process.
2) It takes too long to get back to the game after your character's death. Instead of asking the user whether or not they want to try again you are dumped on the logo screens that come before the main menu. (I think the game's predecessor did this too)
3) The music hasn't been that impressive. It's better than what we've heard on the GBA, and better than most other games I've played, but it's apparent that the quality of the classy and catchy tunes of the earlier games are gone from the Castlevania series.
4) The opening animation and inscreen cut scenes are done in that cheap and ugly anime style. Fortunately in-game animation of your character and enemies tends to be smooth. (And why is Soma the same creepy gray tone of Micheal Jackson?)
5) You'll find numerous upgrade items, and many require a special upgrade in order to obtain. Once you get it, you'll often discover it doesn't grant you anything you don't already have. You can also modify the clothing Soma wears, but doing so never affects his appearance in the game.
6) Most of the touchscreen features haven't been that compelling, but the game doesn't really need them. Anyway, the use of the second screen for a map more than makes up for this.
7) More info displayed on the map screen would have been nice.

In short, this is a fun 2D game with only minor drawbacks.

Not much touching, but a whole lot of magic.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: November 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"Touch the magic" maybe wasn't the best choice of taglines for Dawn of Sorrow. The game makes only occasional uses of the touchpad (unless you use it for menu navigation.) This is not a complaint, simply a statement, and it can't overshadow the game's undeniable charms. DoS is good. Very good.

STORY: Um... okay. I'm not a hardcore Castlevania fan, but for most of the games I've played "story" means "Dracula's back; let's kill him again!" and serves as an excuse for a guy with a whip to kill random monsters in an improbable castle. The only deviations from this formula in DoS: You're Dracula and you don't get a whip. There's a few scraps of dialogue here and there, but virtually no character development and not much of a plot.

GAMEPLAY: Fun! As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." DoS keeps most of its predecessor's winning combination of fighting, exploring and ability gain. As you fight demons, you get their souls, which you can use to manifest abilities. Most of the time, these are new means of attack, though once in a while you get a soul that grants you an ability you need to get somewhere in the castle, like swimming or turning into a bat. There are a few new twists on this power: most types of souls increase in power the more you have, and something called "weapon synthesis", which allows you to bind souls to weapons to increase their power. This leads to some resource conflicts during the game: do I sacrifice this rare, hard-won soul, or do I keep my weakling weapon? Purchasing more powerful weapons is possible (to a point,) but not as efficient as weapon synthesis and takes away money you could use for less available items. Besides, the idea of wielding a weapon that has several demonic spirits bound in it is pretty cool.
The game seems quite a bit tougher than Aria; I found myself running through potions much faster than last time. Some souls and items have different effects, so things you relied on in Aria probably won't cut it now.
The addition of the top screen is incredibly convenient. You can either have it display Soma's current status and the stats of whatever enemy you're attacking or the automap, and the Select button switches the two.. Going to the menu to look at a map just feels clunky after that.
Sadly, the gameplay retains some of its ancestor's flaws as well. It's possible to kill the same monster a hundred times over without getting its soul or rare item drop, and you may have to spend some time just running around and leveling up, something I hate doing.

The use of the Touch Screen feels pretty forced, like it was just something they put in because they felt they had to. You almost never need the thing, unless you like to navigate menus with it. One thing you do need it for is boss fights. At a certain point in a fight, you'll be prompted to draw a "magic seal." Draw it properly in the allotted time, and the boss dies. Fail, and the fight continues until you damage the boss enough to seal it again. It's really not that hard to do, but it feels sort of arbitrary. Other uses only come up once or twice and are promptly forgotten. Even directing monstrous allies you've summoned is generally unnecessary.

GRAPHICS: Great! While most of the main character sprites are sort of "scrunched" (that is, their facial features and whatnot are indiscernible,) the monsters and backgrounds are HUGE and well-detailed. There are several layers of background graphics that shift realistically as you move across the screen. The monsters are splendid to look at, well-rendered in their grotesqueness, and most have impressive death sequences. I do believe in the death sequence as an art form, and DoS delivers. Werewolves howl and are consumed in flames as they revert to men. Demons fall apart and go spiraling down an abyssal portal. The bosses, long a highlight of the Castlevania series, don't disappoint. Some exceed screen height/length and all are finely detailed.
There are some nice little touches that you wouldn't expect. For instance, one enemy soul creates a demonic vacuum cleaner that sucks HP from nearby enemies (Bizzare? Yes. Every so often you get a weird one like this.) Any "loose particles," such as feathers, petals or blood from injured enemies are also sucked into the tube. In the opening stage, a snowy mountain village, you can see Soma's breath. This sort of thing is what raises the graphics beyond simply "good."
This isn't to say the graphics are flawless. Most items look badly pixelated in the menus (though they look great on-screen. One lance in particular, a spiky thing with all sorts of nasty serrations, almost made me physically flinch..) Blood is pretty blocky also.

SOUND: Not bad! A few of the tunes really help get you in the mood for some dungeon prowling, though most are simply unintrusive. Most of the characters have vocal exclamations once in a while, though they're in Japanese so I don't understand most of them.

VERDICT:
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a very good game in a popular series. If you've got a DS, I can't think of any reason not to get it. I don't think it would justify a DS purchase in and of itself, but if you need just one more good reason to get one, DoS just might be it.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Best game on the DS?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This just may be the best game so far on the Nintendo DS. This is a sequel to the GBA game, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It was also the only DS game, other than Meteos, to recieve a perfect 5 out of 5, from G4TVs Xplay.
Castlevania DoS plays just like any other Castlevania game before it: great action, fun platforming, and lots of undead.
Where this game shines, however, is the unique DS features: There are touch screen puzzles to solve throughout the game, and the ability to dominate enemies powers and use them in battle (just like in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow).
The graphics are great for a 2-D game and it plays very smooth. The music is very fitting and you will find yourself humming some of the creepy tunes hours after you are done playing. There are plenty of unlockables, and this will provide at least 20 hours of great gameplay.
The ONLY bad thing about the game is that the replay value is not unlimited. You will get sick of it eventually, though not for a while. If you own a DS, you owe it to yourself to pick up Castlevania: Daws of Sorrow.
GAMEPLAY: 10/10
GRAPHICS: 9/10
SOUND: 10/10
REPLAYABILITY: 8/10
OVERALL: 9/10

A very good side-scroller

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: March 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is the game that convinced me to buy a Nintendo DS. The first time I played this was on my friend's system. It is a very solid adventure, with RPG elements (level, stats, equipment). The soul system is well thought-out and balanced. The enemy mobs are very animated and unique. You have the choice of viewing the map or your character status on the top screen, so the days of pausing 100 times are now over. This game was much more enjoyable than the Megaman X + series. If you don't have the patience for games like Tales of Phantasia or Golden Sun, this action/adventure is for you.-

Great Game to Play

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: July 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My son is an avid Castlevania game player. I bought this game for his birthday. I asked him how he liked the game and these are a few of his comments:
He likes how it offers the use of the touch screen to shatter blocks that are in the way and also to draw symbols that open doors and help defeat certain boss monsters. Some monsters have abilities that you can equip while others can be summoned to help you battle. The game provides a good variety of weapons and armor. There are hidden items and the challenge of getting all types of monster souls that makes the game more interesting. He was planning on buying this game for himself and was very pleased to get it as a gift.

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