Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

I love this game, and the environments are really diverse compared to Aria, but holy hell is that art style hideous. Like a "How to Draw Manga" book you'd find in a Barnes & Noble and written by a white guy.

Huge quality drop from aria in terms of art style and map design. Also souls aren't that much fun and few weapons are actually good. New systems like soul weapon craft thing is very bland. Buuuut it still has aria of sorrows many strengths. Great game. Worst ds castlevania tho

lame artstyle also it's super easy so you'll probably miss out cool bosses by tanking them, otherwise it's pretty close to being aos 2

also cool post game content

hell nah they made this shit a shonen

Final boss a bit of a letdown, especially with how good Death is in this game. I imagine I might bump my rating up if I play Julius mode though, I love the trope of switching to a new character and killing your first player character.

IMO the biggest downgrade from Aria is that there are no cool weapons. I explored like 98% of the map and didn't find a single interesting one. Seems like a side effect of the weapon upgrading system, which I don't hate, but can be kinda grindy. I gave up upgrading my axe because I spent like 20 minutes grinding for the Final Guard soul with no results.

I'm probably the only one who thinks this game is better than Aria. Heck I even liked the touch features.