Uploaded June 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Nintendo DS 2005 Konami)

Run Time: 1h24m04s
Run Skill Level: Ridiculous

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is quite possibly the most difficult of the IGAvanias for all of the wrong reasons.
It seems like Nintendo was breathing down Konami's neck about taking advantage of their touch screen. Thus, you are required to use the touch screen with incredibly precise motions in order to defeat every boss in the game. These range from a simple V to an incredibly absurd shape that has about a dozen or so points that you have to connect. It adds arbitrary fake difficulty and Konami got the memo because it never appeared again.
There is a work around to this however. You can install a fan made patch to remove the use of the touch screen entirely.
You can find it here: romhacking.net/hacks/3408
If you do this, I recommend creating a savefile using the vanilla game first, as using this patch prevents you from being able to add your name.
While you're at it, there's also a patch that fixes the luck stat to make it actually work.
romhacking.net/hacks/3407
The other serious issue with the game is the excessive grinding that is required to finish the game. Grinding was already bad enough in Aria of Sorrow but this game brings it up to 11. So just like the prequel, souls are required to upgrade your character with different combat options and beat the game. But in this game they're also required to upgrade your weapons. You can't get the games best weapons unless you spend a considerable amount of time grinding for souls. Not only that, but a lot of the souls required are boss souls

The weapon I chose to go with is the best weapon you can get for the least amount of effort invested. The Dainslef is not just a great weapon for boosting intelligence, but it's also wonderfully accessible.
By comparison, the weapons that are regarded as the best would have required some ridiculous detours to obtain. Some weapons require multiple boss fights that aren't required to finish the game. And seriously, the Dainslef is probably even better for what it's needed for anyways. None of those weapons boost intelligence, and intelligence is what we want.


Gamebreaker Weapons:
Axe - useful until you upgrade it to Bhuj
Bhuj - You can get this as early as before the second boss
Dainslef - My pick for best weapon in the game.
Claimh Solais - Requires a LOT of grinding and detours. No intelligence boost. But hits hard and for holy damage. An attribute that many foes, including the final one, are weak to. It's just not really worth going out of the way for in my opinion.

Gamebreaker Souls:
Axe Armor, Mandragora, Persephone, Puppet Master, Devil, Erinys, Abaddon, Black Panther.

There is considerably less variety here as opposed to the game that came before it.

Boss Strats:
Flying Armor: Get an Axe Armor soul before fighting
Balore: Bhuj and Axe Armor, if you still have trouble, gring another Manticore soul and use it.
Dimitri: If you managed to get a Yorick soul, use it. It will be helpful to you for quite a while. Otherwise hit him with your skeleton soul and proceed to destroy him with the Bhuj
Malphas: Manticore and Bhuj
Dario: Yorick, or Manticore and Bhuj. No need for strategy, just go all in and heal up when necessary.
Puppet Master: Farm a Devil and use the Bhuj
Gergoth (optional): Stock up on potions and use Devil and Bhuj. Definitely take advantage of that overhead swing. When he breaks the floor, do a dive kick straight down.
Rahab (optional): Mandragora and Bhuj (no devil unless you're feeling bold)
Zephyr: Devil and Bhuj. Try to jump a lot.
Bat Company: Ukoback. Mandragora. Or Devil and Bhuj. If you happen to get bombs along the way and can get the timing down, they're very effective.
Dario Round 2 (Optional; Not recommended): Devil and Bhuj
Paranoia: Ukoback spam or Devil and Bhuj if you're feeling confident. When he does the mirrored laser attack, turn into a bat and hover near the mirror with the hand coming out of it.
Aguni: Jump over his fire and hit him with Axe Armor.
Death: Erinys, use Persephone to suck in stray sickles
Abaddon: Ukoback and Persephone. If you managed to get a Dead Pirate soul, this battle becomes a cakewalk. Dead Pirate really isn't necessary though.
Menace: Erinys the knees, Mandragora the head. The head always closes after the first hit, so Erinys isn't recommended. If you're lucky, you got a Skeleton Ape soul along the way to make it easier.

This was played using DeSmuMe X432R with the 4xBRZ magnification filter and gaussian post processing turned on.