Write a long game review for the first time in 3.5 years!
Great succinct review!
As you know I’ve been revisiting this one too…but I’m still gutted that I quit challenge mode halfway through without realising you have to start from the beginning each time. I think the only issue I have with the game is locking higher challenge difficulties away, like GTi Club did.
Wait until you get to level 4.
With the grip discussion in the 3DS thread, are there any recommended grips for DS Lites?
I searched around a bit and the only one I saw was the Speedlink one on ebay which is pretty pricey, ~$90 shipped with tax!
In the UK one exactly like that is ~£12 shipped
Lol, two listings I can see:
$12 + $68 S&H or
$61 + $20 S&H
(+10% tax on both)
Oh well, not even sure if it’s a good grip. I don’t really need the extra charging function either.
Attention Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow seal drawing after beating a boss:
I hate you. I hate you so much! I drew the fucking seal!
Ugh, smh. It’s so difficult to not see this as a tacked on “touch screen” addition. Perhaps I’ll just start over with the romhack that auto-draws it after a boss. In fact, I think I might do that.
Has anybody done a mod to give the DSlite a better d-pad?
I find it way too mushy with too much travel.
I tried the vanilla, and quit so fast my stylus got friction burn on the way back in.
Played the whole auto draw hack from start to finish with no issues. I even added the de-shonen portrait pack too, for a more Ayami Kojima feel.
4 Likes
I didn’t know there was a portrait hack! I would so prefer that. Otherwise the game is great but I didn’t like the art style change.
1 Like
Works with the auto draw patch too.
4 Likes
Awesome. Been hoping to get into the handheld games after I finish SotN one of these days. This looks like a great hack to tie everything together.
2 Likes
I played through Aria and Dawn, and they were ok follow ups.
Some of the animations and effects are a step down from PS1 though. Aria’s castle layout and movement progression is great.
Metroid Zero and Hollow Knight definitely scratched my post Symphony itch more.
2 Likes
Yeah SOTN for all its faults is clearly an ultra premium effort that had a big budget and several years of development. It’s stuffed with… stuff.
The GBA games were all over the place (clunky but solid Circle, garish poorly designed mess Harmony, really well done but still a bit dinky Aria) and then the three DS games were homogenous. But all had a ‘restricted budget’ feel. Aria is the best designed of them all.
3 Likes
I was impressed when I did finally get round to Aria a couple of years ago, but it did also feel rather boring coming from Order of Ecclesia (which combined classic and post-SotN into one slick challenging package) and the experimental Portrait of Ruin.
I only got that homogenous feel from Dawn of Sorrow which had much worse level design than Aria of Sorrow and didn’t really have any new ideas of its own to add in.
Order of Ecclesia I thought had incredible presentation but the other DS games did indeed have that lower budget feel to them!
I came across my old North American DSi recently, hasn’t used it in over a decade. Was surprised by how much better the screen quality is compared to my Japanese model, which was poorly calibrated with a red-ish white point, and featured really quite terrible ghosting by late 2000s standards.
By comparison the NA model has better calibrated screens (no weird blue/yellow/red white point) and much less ghosting. Instead there’s a small amount of interlacing artefacts in motion. Bit like the PSP-3000 but not as obvious.
The NA DSi has a worse D-Pad though. it’s always been bad with hard to press diagonals (same issue as the Lite despite the improved clickiness).
Anybody use a grip for their DSlite?
I can see two common ones:
- one with an additional battery
- one with stereo speakers
Looking for a recommendation.
I asked back in March, several posts up, but they were all super expensive. It looks like the speedlink one was cheap for you though (the listed I linked to above has expired).
I wish I could find one for the Lite or DSi XL.
Yeah, grips are both really expensive and hard to find now. Especially for the smaller and older systems. Wish I picked up another of the hunter gear monster hunter branded ones for the 3ds XL since it’s the best grip you can get for it and was relatively cheap a year ago.
Dawn and Portrait were when I burned out, because they were on exactly the same engine, with the exact same feel and graphical style and generic locations and grindy loot shit… it was like an expansion pack. I got Ecclesia but on the surface it was the same again so never got very far.
The GBA games for all their faults changed dramatically between titles. Harmony sucks, but the two good ones are at least vastly different from each other.
Might be age and use though? My Australian DSi had perfectly matched screens at launch, but now one has a yellow tint.