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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Fun fact: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow on the DS was my first Metroidvania type Castlevania game. Yes, I played the Holy GBA Trilogy a couple of years after this, and it’s 19 years since I first played Dawn of Sorrow. I’d not even had this diary going for that long at the time.

Somehow, I still remembered a lot of the game. Most of the bosses, how to reach certain areas, and certainly the plot were all there in my head ready to go again, which is odd because the same wasn’t true for the GBA games which I replayed recently on the Switch. This is on the Switch too, by the way, as Konami surprise announced Castlevania Dominus Collection which brings together Dawn of Sorrow and the other two DS games (plus Haunted Castle for $reason) and I preordered it so fast I got whiplash.

To the game, then. It follows on from the Game Boy Advance Aria of Sorrow, following Soma Cruz again as he ends up in Dracula’s castle again, this time up against a cult who are trying to resurrect the Dark Lord in the body of one a couple of prospective vessels.

As with all these games, there’s exploring, map filling, huge bosses and the usual things you’d expect from a Metroidvania. It’s also still really good!

Being a DS game (and following the weird DS trend where game subtitles had to have “DS” as initials) there are some hardware specific things which don’t translate directly to the single-screen Switch. The main one is that the game screen and the status screen (with the maps and stats) now fit on a single screen, although you have control of the size and arrangement.

The other thing is the touch screen controls. They’re still there if you play handheld, but otherwise you use the right stick to move a cursor. It’s hardly needed, just a few areas where you tap blocks. In the original game you had to draw sigils to “seal” beaten bosses, but you can now do these as QTEs instead.

The RPG and soul mechanics of the game are still excellent now and it’s just as playable and fun as it was all those years ago.

Cookie Clicker: playing the stock market

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I have had a Cookie Clicker save for many years. It has moved with me between laptops, and, since I unlocked the ability for it to continue to earn cookies even when closed, I feel less attached to it, dipping in and out every few months. I have found the ways in which the game has expanded to be well thought out, if overly complicated. Nowhere is this more true than the stock market.

You unlock the stock market by upgrading your banks, and suddenly there’s a whole new currency to be learning, which varies with your cookies-per-second measure. While it means that the game is relatively stable compared to the main cookie attainment, the added layer of abstraction means it’s tricky to understand how it’s going to affect your cookie balance.

Anyway. Buy low, sell high. But what is low, and what is high? Each of the stocks – which are tied to the cookie-producing buildings you own – seems to have a different natural level, although they do each seem to vary all over the place. It looks as if the minimum is $1, and the maximum is up around $250. Things don’t vary too fast, but they do span a wide range. As a result you need to be monitoring the movements fairly regularly, and I just find it far too stressful trying to work out what is going up or down.

And yet there’s the prospect of a 4.5 quindecillion cookie profit …

Densetsu no Stafi 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Yes, it’s more of more of the same. Same baddies (mostly), same skills (that again need re-learning), same silly characters to interact with. But! Densetsu no Stafi 3 adds something new – a second, female, starfish. If my Japanese is correct, she’s Stafi’s sister Stapi.

At various times in the game you swap between the two starfish, sometimes at will, other times it is forced due to Events That Happen. Although similar, they have a couple of different skills. Notably, Stapi can wall-jump and crawl, so that’s one better than Metroid.

It adds quite a bit to the game, especially in a sections where you have to use each character’s skills to help the other character who in turn helps you. That said, this is really feels more of an extension of the series than a completely new game. If it ain’t broke, though. Oh! Except there is another thing which is new – WARIO. Yeah, for some reason Wario is in some of the levels and you have to guide him around. Weird.

There is a Densetsu no Stafi 4, which I own on the DS, but it’s a shame there’s no DS games on the Switch so I can carry on the series there.

Densetsu no Stafi 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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See, I told you I was going to play them all. Soon after finishing Stafi 1, it was on to Stafi 2, which takes place directly following the events of the first game.

Somehow, Stafi has lost all his skills so they have to be re-obtained, so really it’s a re-tread of the first game only with different levels. And more levels – seemingly a lot more levels. And different bosses. And some new gimmicks. OK, so not really a re-tread. It does all seem very familiar and asset reuse-y though, which would explain how it originally came out less than a year after Stafi 1.

Still fun, despite the lack of anything properly new though.

Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: there’s been an explosion!

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Having completed Nico’s prologue, I moved into more familiar territory. It is many years since I’ve played Broken Sword, but I remembered most of the story and puzzles in the first section – the way the clown looked with the accordion, the annoying policeman Moue, the workman who had seemingly missed the huge explosion a few metres away from his hole. I made my way to the sewer, where I remember searching for ages in the Playstation version before seeing the tiny red dot of the red nose.

In this version, interactive points are highlighted, which makes all the difference.

Woven throughout the first hour or so of the game are more elements of Nico’s story, with her revisiting the quayside and Imelda Carchon, but the main focus remains on George. Maybe it’s years of experience and cynicism, but the story now seems very unrealistic – travelling between countries at the drop of a hat, particularly as an American; finding very specific villages in the middle of nowhere; a very limited number of people to actually talk to. And Nico, who (from George’s point of view) is always just sitting in her apartment, waiting for him to drop by.

Travelling to Ireland uncovered many stereotypes, and a goat which I remembered to be a pain to pass, but which I seemed to fluke my way past within a minute. I found a gem which had been dropped through the pub’s cellar grate. I paired this up with a tripod that Nico had stolen from the museum, and then found (again seemingly accidentally) where to place these, after an awkwardly-scripted meeting between world leaders in a sewer, which then revealed the next location.

So, I’m off to Syria.