Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Review by Diplocephalus

---

nd it was going so well, too.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow starts with a hushed verve. It's a beginning more impressive than Igarashi's others projects. This starts, that is, after a prologue, wherein we witness a bunch of ridiculous coincidences that reunite the characters of Aria, who now act like jackasses more often than not.

But then it's from downtown Japan to the Lost Village, whose name is slightly lovely in itself. This is no storming-the-castle opener; it's restrained and quaint. Snow is falling to the ground, and a moon, partially covered by clouds, is humming in the sky. There's an effect where the tones shift from light to dark, simulating finer tufts of snow floating around. Architecture doesn't slack off – it gives reasons for existing. You can see the insides of each building's framework when you enter, or jump on abandoned cars and watch them sink down because of Soma's weight. You can walk around and feel that the place legitimately exists within its world; that it makes sense, has its own ecosystem. It's beautiful stuff that's special in all spots.

And then it just . . . stops.

I don't know what happened.

Maybe the guys who worked on that bit ate some sashimi fugu one night in a restaurant and forgot that hello, that stuff might be poisonous, come on, now, and expired, leaving the other people standing with their hands at their sides. Maybe Konami slammed the hammer of time down after the Lost Village had been completed, the resulting imposition cramping creative efforts. Again, I don't know. None of us know.

On the day I saw the first screens of this game, my head almost exploded. Yes, this was going to be on the DS, and when I had slipped the little black chip into the back of my silver handheld, from my eyes would flow appreciative tears.
Everything looked so damn crisp and loved. Now, it's certainly gorgeous when it's trying. Different, but gorgeous. You're still going through a castle, for the most part, but environments have a vaguely modernized veneer to them. This isn't the issue where lack of eye candy is concerned. More that much of Dawn's art just isn't interesting; or, rather, consistently tepid.

That part where I said stuff goes down: yeah. Welcome to the Wizardry Lab, which is kind of a bastard of a place, considering I never found wizardry or lab. It's a blob of cement walls and electric generators. To be honest, nothing comes off as poorly as there. But the next stop, a garden, is also a façade, a series of tired, old bricks sprinkled with touches of ivy now and again. The caves are some green rock and a big, dead background. There isn't much enthusiasm behind the game's artistry. For the bar the Lost Village sets, nothing can match or surpass it, effectively making it the "Symphony of the Night" of the game's environments, and I kind of hate it a little bit for being so wonderful and making everything else look cheap. Just a little.

Well – not everything, no. The chapel is pretty. There's a large outdoor space, showing a mountain range with clouds slicing by, which leads into the Condemned Tower – repetitive, but alluring. And near the end are the Clock Tower and Pinnacle, the former improving the farther up you go, the latter a continuation of the winter motif with an expansive backdrop. Contrary to what the awful shlocky plastic anime art that had God considering a second flood may suggest, characters' sprites are fantastic, save for Julius, who has this pointless black outline. Because of hardware, Dawn directly transfers part of Symphony's bestiary over. Portrait of Ruin would go on to abuse the hell out of this "advancement," though, thank God, it's relatively restrained, here. You can tell the new sprites apart – a lot of them are enemies from Aria, beefed up, but the wholly original ones have a goopy, colorful build that's not amazing and not bad.

The soundtrack is . . . music. "Subterranean Hell" has a beat uncharacteristic of Michiru Yamane, and that's nice. "Dracula's Tears" is totally thinking about something different than where it's placed, but it's got spunk. "Pitch Black Intrusion" is also at odds with its setting – a forgettable action-oriented piece in a meditative, chilly habitat. Overall, there's less character than Aria's OST (which was already lacking in flavor), along with a happy-go-lucky attitude that I could do without.

Soma is still a soul-sucking reincarnated Dracula. If you're not familiar: there is always a chance that killing a monster will yield its soul, which can be equipped for an effect related to that monster (odd, when you think about it, since, you know, Dracula should have command over all of his servants' souls, instead of it being a . . . gambling type of relationship). Dawn's great feature is that particular souls start off weak and can be leveled up for greater effect. At least, that's what certain glassy-eyed establishments say. The fact of the matter is that the TACTICAL SOUL SYSTEM was fine to begin with, and having individual level-ups is just obsessive-compulsive bullshit that unnecessarily complicates the issue.

There's also this deal with weapons. Most found in the castle suck, visually and strength-wise. So you're pushed to return to the shop Yoko sets up and relinquish specific monster souls to improve them. Unfortunately, this is not additional depth – it's a flimsy barrier to make curious players grind dully for hours so they can see what should be found in the castle, via adventuring. Accordingly, exploration loses its significance, since, with the original weapons sucking and all, what's left are faceless trinkets that, by the time you get them, are worse than what you'll be wearing.

A trend is developing, here, yes, for the game's failings in design. The worst is quite a blow: how the environments have been built. Instead of being interesting to fight your way through, or, you know, traverse, they've been structured for accessible soul grinding or dull space leading up to a boss. What we end up with are lots of boring little rooms with lots of enemies placed on "shelves" or near entrances. Weirdly enough, it's the places that have the good looks that get away from this. Which might say something, though I'm not sure what.

Overwhelmingly, the castle is built to serve people who want to get every last item in the game so they can sleep soundly at night without twitching as badly. I don't need souls, but the game puts a finger to my lips, insists that I do, and a whole hell of a lot branches off of that philosophy. Aria of Sorrow had quick, fun level design with reasonably natural enemy placement, and left the souls as a secondary mechanic for a thing along the way. Dawn forms itself around the farming of its secondary mechanic. Of course, then there's the question – just what do you do when you've gotten all the souls? I guess you start a new game and…get them all over again!

It's a shame about all this, it really is, because what Dawn does well, it does excellently. Within all the junk are dabs of crisp awesomeness – some of the very best in the series. One segment has you climbing a tower, fighting a zombie t-rex who fires laser beams out of its mouth, and subsequently crashing through all the floors to continue fighting at the bottom. Maybe this is a trend, too: Dawn of Sorrow's bosses aren't normal enemies with more HP, as is usually the case. They're quirky beasts with clever patterns. I think my favorite is Abaddon, an anthropomorphic locust conductor who sends waves of insects at you to the setting of a field and a lone tree under a hellish sky. And there's the excellent Zephyr, whose behavior and haunt suggest that there's a Dio Brando fan in Igarashi's team.

Unprecedented quality even emerges in the alternate player mode, once an after-thought, now holding enough sparkle to make me say it could be better than the main deal. Julius, Yoko, and Arikado team up, shown by brief cutscenes, to go after a corrupted Somacula. Dracula's Curse, anyone? Sure, Soma's playability is divine, but Julius mode's characters have individual weight and quirks that lend greater tactility. With no items tempting players to go out of their way, or soul-applying mischief, the progression becomes streamlined, which is both a plus and a negative: it shows how empty the castle really is – but the interactions between the player and enemies becomes more focused, and a certain momentum surfaces. Alucard's sprite being used for Arikado is my biggest peeve, really. The businessman look, please.

Dawn of Sorrow is worth being played through once, yeah, though it'd be silly to pick it over Aria, which outperforms it in nearly every way. I've not been impressed by the DS's lineup, so, things considered, it is one of the best choices for the handheld. It's, uh . . . a hell of a lot better than Portrait of Ruin, also.