Castlevania + Reboots Suck
So I finally got around to playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. It's been years since I've had access to a DS, so despite the fact that this game is almost four years old, I'm impressed with the leap in graphical and audio fidelity from Aria of Sorrow (though I'm not impressed with the silly anime-style portrait switchover). Every monster has a unique death sequence, just like in Symphony of the Night. The music is gorgeous... but it was primarily composed by Michiru Yamane, so that's no surprise. And I loved Aria's whole gameplay setup, so its return in Dawn with extra benefits (like abilities becoming more powerful when you absorb more of the relevant souls, or being able to fuse souls and weaponry, or the Doppleganger soul that lets you switch between two sets of weapon/armor/soul equips) makes me a very happy gamer.

My only problem with the game so far (other than how hard it is to draw Magic Seals, which is obviously more a problem with the fact that I'm doing this with a mouse and not a stylus) is the Creature (yeah, the Frankenstein dude). That guy has a RETARDED soul drop rate. A guide I looked at claimed 1%, but Peeping Eye had the same, and I got his soul in the Lost Village within 20 minutes. I killed literally thousands of Creatures, to the point where after hours of backtracking into the same room over the course of two days I had bumped Soma's stats up from level 15 to 28 and still hadn't gotten the soul yet. 1%'s gotta be a lie; it's probably more like .01%. :(

I guess I'll just have to come back later with a boosted Luck stat and this game's equivalent of the Soul Eater Ring.

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Speaking of Castlevania, Lords of Shadow looks super interesting, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm getting sick and tired of the tendency of everyone in the movie, TV, and video game industries to have gotten reboot-addicted in the past 5 years. I admit that it's necessary in some cases (Batman, Superman, Battlestar Galactica), but honestly. You're all going overboard.