"Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is proof that 2D games will never die."

Intro:Castlevania has been around since the NES days, and it hasn't really changed much. Either you're fighting Dracula, stopping him from getting ressurrected (again), or fighting his resurrection. Back in 2003 on the GBA, Konami released the last Castlevania for the system, Aria of Sorrow. Aria of Sorrow was a little different from most of the Castlevanias, and more like the Playstation cult hit Symphony of the Night, where you could use Swords and other weapons instead of just the whip, and the game took on more of a Metroid-type exploring of the level (backtracking, etc). Also included was a new feature, the main character could take enemies powers after defeating them and use them on other enemies. This resulted in a lot of new fans of the series who didn't like the traditional Whipping Sidescroller. Dawn of Sorrow is a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow with the same characters and similar gameplay.

Plot
The story takes place one year after Aria of Sorrow (2036). Soma is back to his usual self and has lost most of his powers from the last game. A mysterious cult is arising that wants to resurrect Dracula, and naturally, you have to stop them. You don't really need to have played Aria of Sorrow to understand the plot, but you won't recognize any of the characters and there are a couple of references to the last game.

Graphics
Handheld gaming has been 3D for a while now, but it's a good thing Castlevania hasn't changed. Rather than trying another 3-D Castlevania with so-so graphics, this time Konami went with full-on 2-D, which, to my knowledge, is the best 2-D Castlevania has ever seen. Everything is well-animated, the backgrounds are beautiful and detailed. The only "flaw" in Castlevanias graphics are that they adapted an anime-ish look, when Castlevania is really supposed to be more..badass. Even that's not a problem, but most of the characters look slightly different from their GBA counterparts and look more like they came from an anime.

Control
The DS is much like a SNES, which is the perfect layout for these controls. All of the controls are responsive. The B button is for jumping, the Y button is for attacking. Using the A button, you can perform a special attack with your weapon (usually a quick, powerful attack that has little/no delay) but it costs energy. X, on the other hand, is used for changing between different sets of equiptment.

Going back into the soul system, you can equip 3 souls, and one of them is always activated by pushing Up+Y. This works fine during battle, but the main problem is, let's say you jump, and you want to do an air-attack. If you accidentally push Up on the D Pad while doing an air attack (which isn't that hard if you aren't constantly thinking about not doing it), then you might actually use your soul power instead of just doing a normal attack, and your soul power will interrupt your attack.

The controls are pretty much fully-customizable, but I wish you could make it so you used UP on the D-Pad for jumping instead of B, and maybe B to use your soul power, but it's just something you have to get used to.

Gameplay
If you've ever played Metroid, then you probably know at least one element of Dawn of Sorrow's gameplay. Dawn of Sorrow, like Aria of Sorrow, has a lot of points where you won't be able to pass, or something is too high to jump, and you'll later get a power that will let you pass that point or collect an item there, so backtracking plays a major part of this game. Other than that, it's pretty much sidescrolling combat. You can pick from a variety of weapons and souls (powers) to defeat your enemies. You'll travel from room to room, mostly until a cutscene or a boss fight occurs. There are a wide variety of enemies in Dawn of Sorrow, unlike most games where enemies are just palette-swaps of eachother.

Unlike most DS games, Dawn of Sorrow barely uses the touch screen. Rather than having the whole game around it, you can rarely even use it, since all of the action is controlled via D-Pad and buttons. The touch screen can be used in the menu, it's also used to break a special type of Ice-Block. Also, when you beat a boss, you have to draw a "magic seal" to permanently seal it away, or else it will keep on living.

Dawn of Sorrow's main hooks is the soul system. There are 4 types of souls: The first is an attack soul. This is what I described in the control section--they're used by pushing Up+Y, and can be anything from making a zombie pop out of the ground to stopping time. They use up your energy each time you use them.
Then there's Guardian Souls. These are activated by pushing R, and the soul will essentially give you its power. An example of this is the flying armor soul, which makes you fall to the ground slower, letting you reach certain ledges. They use up energy the longer you hold down R.
Then there's Enchant souls. Enchant souls use up no energy, and are really more of a powerup, an enchant soul might say "Increases strength by 12." That kind of thing.
And Ability Souls. Like Enchant Souls, they don't use up energy. Examples of ability souls are things like double jump, or the ability to do a mid-air kick. Kind of like a power up to Samus' suit in Metroid.

Music
The music, while still good, in my opinion, isn't as good as Aria of Sorrow. The tunes just aren't as catchy, although a few of them are, they could have done a little bit better, but they were still great, and with the DS's speakers, sound really clear and nice. The sound effects are perfect, and they've included all the sound effects they needed--you can clearly hear your played sinking into zombie guts.

Overall:
Castlevania DS, is, to say the least, an AAA+ game. You should pick it up ASAP, because it won't be out for long, and soon people will be selling them on Ebay for 70 bucks a copy.

If you're not a fan of Castlevania, try playing Aria of Sorrow and see if you like that, then get this. Me myself, I didn't like Castlevania at all until I played Aria of Sorrow, and I'm hooked to this. So I don't suggest passing up such a great title because of the past games.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/05/05