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this is castlevania: dawn of sorrow for me

i don't hate playing it because i love metroidvania castlevanias (old school vanias are cool too but i prefer these)

it can be a fun game

but it is NOT a well designed game

the majority of the weapon types are bad, bad enough to the point that when i first played the game in my teens, i exclusively used throwing weapons, not knowing that the katanas existed/were better

the weapon upgrade system is kinda jank, because souls are probably 2x harder to get in this one than aria, and there's a few weapons that have different "paths", so if you want both, you have to go get THAT weapon upgraded to that point again. then there's death's scythe, if you want both death's soul and death's scythe, you gotta play through twice, which i guess if you're going for 100%, you're doing anyways

there are a lotta jank bosses, but some really cool additions too, like zephyr (i'm a dio fangirl) and gergoth

OH AND I DIDN'T EVEN GET TO THE SEAL SYSTEM YET OMFG NO ONE LIKES THE SEAL SYSTEM, it was a pain on the DS to remember where to draw and it's still a pain in the rereleases when you have to remember what buttons to push in sequence, especially with the last seal

there's... a lotta bad souls, way more bad souls than in aria. which is even worse because like i said, they're much harder to get...

item drops are like 90% food items, so you gotta either buy a base/upgraded to a certain point weapon from hammer or upgrade it yourself with yoko and both of those are annoying too. this is not a game where you go "OOH THEY DROPPED AN ITEM WHAT IS IT" when it's just spaghetti

they nerfed bat form from aria, which irritates me...

and of course, to get more sales/more market distribution in japan, they dropped ayami kojima's absolutely GORGEOUS artwork for a plain anime style, and it's ugly, and i hate it, and i don't want it

castle progression is real weird too... with the secret area being an absolute annoyance to both get to and get past (that room where ghosts spawn like every second? yeah, that's not cool, konami)

i also really dislike the "mirror entry" ability, it's fine for the progression boss, but by the point you get it, all but two items you can get behind mirrors are worthless (compared to those two, anyways)



yeah that's my rant, dawn of sorrow sucks but it's a metroidvania castlevania and those are like heroin to me so i play them

your complaints sound exactly like why i dislike ds3, like i didn't mention: your main healing item in dark souls, the estus flask, you have to split in DS3 between a health and mana one. Early game spellcasters do crap for damage, so enjoy getting murdered by everything because you can't even kill a couple basic enemies without running out of mana AND potions.

I love metroidvania games, i'm the same way with them and roguelikes, which is why i never play any lmfao if i do i would go hard like i did with ds1 remastered and lose focus on everything lawl