Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow and Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin Reviews

Hey guys! Spartan 120 here. I love castlevania games too much I think and I own both and so I wondered which is better on the DS.

I'll start with Dawn Of Sorrow, this was released before portrait of ruin and it is the sequel to Aria Of Sorrow, you play as Soma, the reincarnation of Dracula (but your good) and an evil cult are trying to release your inner demon to restore balance in the world. This is different from most Castlevania games because you don't play as a Belmont and you won't have the Vampire Killer whip.

The game has the classic 2-D gameplay and you must collect Magic seals (Which are used by drawing on the touch screen) and when you beat a boss you must draw it to seal it away. These seals start as simple shapes buy get harder and harder to draw. Many of the monsters in this game are also from Aria Of Sorrow like Balore if any of you guys know who he is XD

The game has a good way of telling the story, most cutscenes are triggered when certain bosses are beaten or if you enter rooms. The castle itself is very big and you will find yourself getting lost or not knowing where to go if your not careful and you may have to consult a walkthrough like I had to a few times.

After you beat the game you unlock Julius mode, a harder version of the game where you play as three characters, but you cannot use items and this makes it a lot harder the final boss is also different because the mode sticks with the bad ending where Soma turns evil.

Moving on to Portrait of ruin, this game is like dawn of sorrow in gameplay terms. In this game you play as Jonathon Belmont who is on a mission to investigate Castlevania, Dracula's castle which appears once every 100 years (or something like that). Jonathon is also partnered with Charlotte, a wizard who is helping Jonathon. You can keep switching between the two and you can give them both different powers.

This game has a big castle too. You'll find portals scattered around and each takes you to another world. These vary from a scary carnival to a desert palace. The one thing I didn't like was when you get near the end of the game you have to basically do a repeat of all the previous levels, but these are a lot harder and have harder bosses.

When you beat the game you unlock two more modes, which let you go through the game with the old Belmont from the SNES castlevania games and where you can play as the two vampire sisters, this mode uses the touch screen for attacks and is very well thought out.

Overall I think that both the games are very good and fun to play. However Portrait of ruin is better because I think it has more gameplay. However Dawn Of Sorrow is still good and I did have problems with Portrait Of Ruin's Quests because they are very difficult and not very well though out

Portrait Of Ruin- B

Dawn Of Sorrow- B

(I put them as the same because it's really what you prefer out of the two)

pictures from GameFaqs.com and nintendods.com and staticgamesradar.com