Like Castlevania do you? If you’ve got any appreciation for quality gaming, you should – since it has been appearing on the Game Boy Advance and, admittedly, during its days on the PSone, Konami’s vampire-slaying series has ranked up there among the best action adventure games around. And thankfully, Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow (or Castlevania: DS if you’re a fan of abbreviations; yes, we saw what you did there Konami) follows that tradition very well… for the most part, anyway. It’s true, the game underneath is certainly grade-A Castlevania action but in bringing the series from the GBA to the DS – and trying to make a range of improvements in the process – Konami has gone and accidentally shoved a stake through its own heart. Oops.

That the game asks you to literally sign yourself in before you’re allowed to play (rather than entering your name in a more conventional sense) is an early indication that when it comes to using the DS’s unique functionality, Dawn Of Sorrow spends much of its time grasping at straws. That isn’t to say that the ideas that Konami has implemented don’t work, of course; it’s just that they feel slightly crowbared into the Castlevania formula for the sake of it now being on the DS, instead of working naturally with the rest of the game. It’s almost as though Konami felt obliged to try and fix what wasn’t actually broken, but the resulting changes only serve to distract rather than enhance… although it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. Really, it’s not.

You see, thankfully Konami has seen sense and left the majority of the gameplay well alone, meaning that fans of Castlevania’s 2D legacy will feel right at home. What’s more, Dawn Of Sorrow is actually the first game in the series to carry on directly from its predecessor – picking up where Aria Of Sorrow left off, the action follows Soma Cruz once again on his quest to protect the world from the forces of darkness… and himself too, being the reincarnation of Dracula that he is. Unfortunately, there’s an evil cult on the loose looking to resurrect the Prince of Darkness (no, not Ozzy Osbourne) and so it’s your job as Soma to stop them by, surprise surprise, infiltrating their castle-like base, exploring every inch of it, killing a variety of demonic bosses and ultimately destroying their plans once and for all. As you progress through the castle, killing enemies you encounter earns Soma experience; the more experience you get, the stronger you become. On top of that, defeating enemies (particularly bosses) can earn you souls that endow Soma with new powers, powers that can be used to help you progress further into the castle. It follows the formula laid down by previous great Castlevania titles: Circle Of The Moon, Harmony Of Dissonance and, specifically, Symphony Of The Night to a tee and is all the better for it… but then, that’s why all the additions only seem so bolted on.

… continued