I recently had brief experiences with both these games, so I think it’d be fruitful to compare them. I’m certainly no expert on Castlevania but even I could see the differences here. I played DoS for a couple of hours when my sister-in-law borrowed it from a friend. I previously played through all of Aria of Sorrow (GBA) via emulation, and this was a direct sequel. The other, MoF, was a demo on the 3DS eShop that I got the gist of with one playthrough (about 10 minutes).

For being not so far apart, the two games are radically different. DoS is an extension of what the series has always been, more exploration-based but with a new “soul-capturing” system where you can collect abilities from every enemy. This was introduced in Aria and I like it as a motivation for defeating as many enemies as you can and changing up the combat however you want (even if I only ever used a few abilities once I found ones I liked). But the combat was tight, with responsive controls (accounting for lag of your actions) and highly defined pixel art. These factors are, from what I can tell, typical of classic Castlevania games (except for the soul ability thing).

On the other hand, MoF is more centred around combat, doing combos on enemies with high health and moving linearly through 2.5D environments (ie. 3D modelled backgrounds, 2D playing area). I’ve heard it’s an attempt to bring the mechanics of 3D Castlevania games to 2D gameplay, and that makes for a very different feel and mechanics. The areas may look very nice, but they are very small and flat compared to DoS’s sprawling castle. You may have a lot of moves in MoF, but they’re all pretty samey and not better than mashing the same button, plus they seem very slow and laggy, the comboing being at cross purposes with the need to avoid attacks. It may be I’m not used to that style of game and I’m not, but it is certainly very different to most Castlevanias, insofar as they are represented by DoS.

MoF is reviewing very badly, and I tend to agree. In addition to the gameplay criticisms I’ve noted, there are serious framerate issues and the game is constantly switching between three characters, undermining progression in the traditional exploratory sense in favour of plot-driven linear set pieces. It doesn’t seem that mashing the 3D style into the 2D world works very well, especially if people are expecting traditional Castlevania. To be honest, the demo was maybe not enough for me to see all these issues, but I found it frustrating. And too many Quicktime events, seriously why are we still doing that?

I guess it’s part of the modern vs retro thing. DoS evokes classic games that were well tuned, and simple in presentation (ie pixels) but deep in mechanics. MoF seems indicative of modern games that are big on flair but shallow in gameplay and half-baked in execution.

I don’t know a whole lot about Castlevania lore so I don’t think I should go into it, but I’ve said the important part I think so this one’s short and sweet. You can thank me later.