A Spookytime Castlevanias Post Mortem

A real theme I've been noting since I started reflecting on games more regularly is just the question of ambition and scope. How do you decide what to change, what are your sacred cows of the series and what can you play with? What is too much at once? This is overdue and as such my memory has degraded a little bit, but I wanted to consolidate some thoughts about the DS Castlevanias I played earlier this year through this lens. I found Dawn of Sorrow pretty forgettable. It runs back a winning concept in Soma and the souls system but ultimately doesn't do much to add to that. The seals thing is so derided that there's a fan patch to remove it. The plot definitely cannot hold up to Aria of Sorrow, and that's saying something: these plots are pretty thin to start. Soma was a new and interesting character in Aria, the revelation that he was the new heir to Dracula's power was a twist. Aria also dropped some real lore on how all of this works, with Dracula's relationship to Chaos and why…

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