Awesome Game with Glaring Flaws
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is fairly immense in the depth department. Some of these depth aspects include collecting a huge array of souls and items, forging player made weapons, path choices for speed runs, unlockable modes, and not to mention all the replay value included. It’s also got a great soundtrack, and gimmicky features, like the use of the touch screen. It’s easy to see why so many people love this game.
Now, while all this is a prefect formula for making one of the best Castleroid-type games in existence, let me outline below why Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has fallen short of being all that it could have been.
Bugs are some of the worst things to have in a final release product, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has it’s fair share. There’s no need to be specific, and spoil everything within the scope of this review, but Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is laden with bugs and sequence breaking techniques that were most likely not intended by the Developers. To find-out more, just read some forums across the internet, play the game; break the game… it’s really quite a let down by Konami’s Q&A Department. Some of these even let you pass-up parts of the game, without the proper abilities.
With all the bugs and glitches, Speed Runners are going to have quite the task of sorting-out what’s allowed for a valid Speed Run of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (which it has yet to have a valid Speed Run done for, as far as I can see). I can’t believe it was allowed to ship in this imperfect state.
Moving-on, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is just entirely way too easy. I never once used any Healing/MP Items on my first play through. The only time I even used the “Use Item” Menu Screen was to view the UMA News. Sure there is Hard Mode, but why does Konami insist on making the player trudge through to unlock it? Isn’t this the same company that gave us Super Castlevania IV!?
Some of the Souls are completely unbalanced. Not as bad as in Aria of Sorrow, but there are still some. Not to give out specifics/spoilers, but one Soul, which is obtainable near the beginning of the game, is way too overpowered. It can be used to easily decimate nearly every enemy (Bosses included), up until even the end of the game. Konami really needs to go back to it’s Castlevania roots, as far as difficulty is concerned.
In regards to souls, collecting them is just tiring now. First we did it in Aria, now we do it yet again in Dawn. Going back and forth, between screens, rinsing and repeating… it’s just torture. Even with all the Luck I could possibly muster, it’s still an unwanted chore. Not to mention that the Flying Humanoid Soul is so hideously implemented, I couldn’t even take the time to bother with it, after a short while.
The Hippogryph Soul should have also been changed to allow the player to hold-down the L-Button, for continuous flight. It would have been awesome to see Soma transverse the Condemned Tower with ease, just for fun. This was a complete lost opportunity to give a hats-off to the Metroid Franchise.
The Level Design in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has a few flaws as well. The first is seen with the Castle’s Draw-bridge Mechanism, near the beginning of the game. The Floor-plate is entirely too close to the edge of the screen, with barely any room above for jumping over it. This is bad design. It could have been a hit-type switch or maybe another type of mechanism, where the player could have activated it by pressing UP on the controller.
The last flaw in Level Design, I noticed, is in the Subterranean Hell. The area that I’m referring to is the area with the spikes under the water, where the ceiling/wall protrudes down to them, in the middle. You know, the “Bone Ark Area.” I like the fact that the Bone Ark could walk through/on spikes, but I found it completely ridiculous that it could travel trough the ceiling/wall portion. This area should have been revamped, with perhaps more spikes protruding from the ceiling, replacing the ceiling/wall idea. However, and worst of all, this whole Puzzle can be avoided simply by using a sequence breaking technique anyway! So it’s all for not. This is just bad game design, period, and another "come-on!" to Konami's Q&A.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has great production values and could have been one of the best Castleroid-type games to ever be released, but it’s marred by Konami’s inability to balance and test their software before going gold.
