I have been transported back to a fantastic era by Castlevania: Dominus Collection, when I was a happy guy with my Nintendo DS enjoying some of the best RPG, adventure, action, and metroidvania mixes. The three titles featured in this collection are not the legendary Symphony of the Night, and many people at the time considered them to be lackluster Castlevania games, but I have always adored them. And I have no hesitation in saying that they have offered me just as many, if not more, moments of great fun as the legendary Symphony.
This collection includes Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. It’s a huge shame that Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, the precursor to Dawn and a direct prequel, was not included. It would have been much better to include that instead of the gift that Dominus Collection offers, the arcade game Haunted Castle and its revisited version.
It’s a tremendous shame because Dawn of Sorrow makes constant references to Aria, and it’s frustrating to feel like we’re starting something in the middle of something! Despite the typical issues with all collections, and wanting to believe that it’s because they only wanted to pay tribute to the DS games, I started to enjoy the titles that I did have in my possession.
The three metroidvania games are fantastic
I started with Order of Ecclesia. Back in the day, it was criticized for recycling graphics and enemy designs from previous Castlevania games for the umpteenth time. But as often happens in this industry, the little things stop mattering over time. The game is still very good, fluid, and with clear ideas. These titles share the idea of being able to absorb enemy powers and weapons and then equip them as we please. Order of Ecclesia builds a good combo system based on this idea, and it is visually the richest of the three.
The game is still very good, fluid, and with clear ideas
The original game was played on the Nintendo DS with one screen for the action and another for accessing different information. The way they solved this issue here is what I would have asked for in the Switch port of Etrian Odyssey. On the right, we see the map that we are unlocking, our stats, and the enemy stats.
The idea is great, but like the absence of Aria of Sorrow, it’s not a perfect decision. In handheld mode, the map is very small, and it’s hard to read our strength, health, etc., properly. After a while, you’ll end up preferring if the scene had been redesigned, widened the image, or occupied the whole screen. I touched the map with my finger hoping that, in this way, it would go full screen. Silly me. I thought that, since it wasn’t easy to read, they had designed it as a direct access, but no.
The new features in this collection are fine, but not perfect
In other words, the solution is not bad at all, but it still needs some work. It’s well thought out but lacks refinement. The same goes for the quick save system. In an emulator or on PC, you press F5 and that’s it, quick save done. It’s a very useful option when you want to finish a game without too many attempts, as is the case. But the system devised in this Dominus Collection requires you to press a button to access a menu, scroll to the save option, then press the accept button again, choose a slot, and confirm. So, it’s not exactly quick.
It’s a shame that more agile and optimal solutions are not implemented in these versions
Nevertheless, just like with the map issue, quick save is useful for saving and loading right at the entrance of a boss or when you want to try something risky. However, it’s a pity that with unofficial solutions that are quicker and more optimal available, they are not implemented in these versions. While we’re at it, it would have been nice if they had redrawn the faces of the protagonists in conversations, as they appear in very low resolution. These little problems are present in all the games in the collection, but you get used to them easily.
One aspect I liked is feeling the gameplay evolution between Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia. At first glance, they seem like identical games, but the first one lacks the ability to cancel a launched attack and start another one before its animation ends. I had a lot of trouble playing Dawn because of this, to the point that I thought it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have a more in-depth remake to modernize this issue.
Dawn of Sorrow may feel old, but it’s still great
Despite all that, how fun it is! The story is super silly and is told in the most crude way possible, and that’s why it’s adorable. It maintains that tendency of the early DS games to force the player to use the stylus for nonsense. In this case, it’s used to create seals to defeat monsters. Fortunately, it can be replaced by a key combination, and that’s it. I laughed at myself for this. Back in the day, I thought this gimmick was terrible. However, this time it brought me a tremendous sense of nostalgia.
If any of the three is the ugly duckling, it’s Portrait of Ruin
I missed DS games so much, the fast-paced gameplay rhythms of portable titles, the simplification of complex systems to make them more direct and fun without having to rack your brain, and the amount of things and secrets to collect and discover. I swear, if you start Dawn of Sorrow or Order of Ecclesia, you will reach their end without hesitation. You start leveling up, defeating an enemy, finding your way out of their metroidvania-lite labyrinths, and you enjoy it. The third game in discord also received criticism in its day, Portrait of Ruin.
If any of the three is the ugly duckling, it’s this one. Shorter, simpler, with less labyrinth and less of everything, but I love it because its two protagonists have great chemistry, and the game replaces the typical metroidvania elements with very interesting situations. The fun part is alternating between the two heroes to overcome puzzles and original moments, and that fun is still intact. What I mentioned about canceling the attack in Dawn of Sorrow is not as pronounced here, so it feels almost as fresh as Order of Ecclesia.
Portrait of Ruin is still very enjoyable
On the other hand, the little gem in the pack (which should have been Aria of Sorrow!) is Haunted Castle Revisited, the revised version of the arcade game. I’ll be honest, I didn’t like it very much. The pixel work is okay, but nothing special. The problem is that it’s more of a curiosity because its game design is from the arcade of that time, so dying just for the sake of dying is the norm. This is its weakness, but also its greatest beauty. It’s cool to see for a little while, but I didn’t spend much time on it considering the other three games in the pack.
Although I think the quick save feature, the minimap, and the aesthetic treatment could be done better, I had a lot of fun playing these three metroidvania games this weekend. Now this genre has taken a different direction, but the titles in this Dominus Collection maintain a great purity, and I might even say an innocence that is fascinating. So whether you’ve played them before or are discovering them for the first time, give them a try. Ah, the days of the Nintendo DS! How wonderful. When Dark Souls hadn’t yet contaminated everything.
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