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Everything to make Dawn of Sorrow a better game is here. New character art based on Ayami Kojima's incredible artwork, removal of the touchscreen gimmicks for bosses and ice barriers, dual-slot support for content from Aria of Sorrow, and a whole host of bug fixes/gameplay improvements/visual improvements. I had a fantastic experience with Dawn of Sorrow recently, and it's all thanks to the streamlined features this hack throws into the mix. There's no reason not to use Definitive Edition+, whether you're playing on real hardware or not.

This hack is no doubt the best QoL improvement we could get for a Dawn of Sorrow hack, almost everything is carefully rebalanced and I love almost every single bit of changes you guys have made. Keep up your good work heroes, you earned my respect.

As for the recently updated v2.0 patch, the correction of Julius' super jump and startup invincibility during Grand Cross is simply gold. I feel these two should be the case in the original game at the first place! The Inclusion of Omnia Vanitas for Julius in v2.0 is also a very delicious addition. Although not as fancy as the actual Omnia Vanitas in AoS and HD, it's outstandingly great as it is, I love this move so much! The inclusion of alternate mugshots imitating Ayami Kojima style is not 100% favorable choice to everyone, but it's still good to see something different and the mugshot choice is fully optional. The Magical Ticket included for Soma in v2.3 is another thing that really gripped my interest. With its inclusion, now the three NDS Castlevanias are at the same general pace!

My only gripe would be the lacking of an "undub" version (restore the Japanese voice clips initially cut in vanilla western versions, in the style of, for example, Mega Man X4 undub) to be accompanied with this hack in order to be the "true" definitive version. But if the difficulty of voice porting really is as the FAQ says maybe it could have a long and long way to go... I hope someone else can deal with the porting one day.

EDIT: Oh... I noticed the hitbox size of Vampire Killer is smaller, is it intentional? Every time I need to clean the grass enemies (Une) as Julius while having low MP, I have to duck, turn around, then use backward hit detection of whip swing to hit it, that's pretty strange. Hope it got fixed in later revisions.

Definitely the best way to experience DoS. However there are still two aspects of the original game that can still be improved. First is hard mode being locked behind a new game+, if it was available from the start or became available after clearing the game once on any new game it would be great.

The second one would be customizable controls in Julius mode, there's no access to the start menu so I don't know if it's possible, but would be a very welcome addition.

The new portraits available aren't all the best quality and there aren't variants of expression, Julius's portrait looks specially jarring. But it's still a nice to look at something different.

This review is made for the 1.2.2 version of Dawn of Sorrow - Definite Edition +.

Let's start by saying that Dawn of Sorrow has been my favorite game since my childhood and I thought that Definite Edition was the ultimate DoS experience but this just goes even further into the close to perfect territory in my opinion.

Most changes are subtle, even as a DoS hardcore fan I wouldn't have noticed some of them without looking at the changelog but those subtle change like name changes for items/weapons/enemies just make the overall experience better and more immersive with correction to the translation and better overall English.

The 3 biggest changes are of course the fixed luck stat, the new portraits and the removed touch screen controls. Those 3 changes alone make a world of difference to the balance, aesthetic continuity with previous and future games and gameplay on emulator and PC for each change respectively.

Some small details as of this update make it so that this Rom Hack can not yet be called perfect but I can still without any doubts call it the best DoS Rom Hack ever made.

This hack gives this excellent game to what we should have got upon its release as it kills grinding for soul collectors, fixes the black panther soul you can acquire 100% far better - and this is what really helps - there is an optional patch to keep the original DoS portraits! That anime style is just ugly as the regular style has emotion and grit.

If you have not used the original game, well don't and use this instead. Gives this game that's already good and makes it great!