#2 DoS - Massive game. Big castle. My favorite gameplay of the three. Lots of cool secondary characters added to the plot. Dracula, Alucard and the latest Belmont as well as a Belnades. The most recent game in the timeline.
Except those "new characters" were already all present in Aria of Sorrow. The only NEW characters in Dawn of Sorrow were shallow, badly written, and terribly terribly cliche and generic. it was like the 3 stooges, and the plot was ridiculous. Aria presented us with this idea that Dracula Re-incarnated upon his final defeat at the hands of Julius into a normal Human boy. One who once he realizes his true nature wants nothing to do with becoming Dracula, and manages to defeat the flow of chaos within the castle, not only defeating the castle itself, but the very essence that made Dracula Dracula.
Then DoS shits all over what was potentially a great way for the series itself to end, by introducing this huge replica castle, and reveals that after Dracula's death apparently his powers scattered into different newborns, creating some people with supernatural powers. therefore, Soma is no longer unique, his only saving grace as it were, being that he actually harbors the Soul of Dracula and Power of Dominance that comes with it. and so theres these "Dark Lord" candidates now. Because somehow Dracula = Satan or something, and is REQUIRED in order for some bullshit about God being absolute good only when theres an absolute Evil. (which again apparently Dracula is) I dunno bout you, but back before DOS, Dracula was well, just Dracula. it wasn't about absolute evil vs absolute good, it was about a Vampire with anger directing issues deciding to wipe out all of humanity for his Wife's death, all the while being thwarted every generation by the descendants of the man who was once his friend, who pledged his family to hunt him down forever when he was betrayed.
DoS instead tries to take those two arrogant "Dark lord candidates", because apparently, simply having a portion of power that came from Dracula makes you a likely candidate to replace him. It also brought back the power of chaos from like, out of NOWHERE, and it all ends as you'd expect, with it all blowing up in the villains' faces.
I feel that DoS' plot could have been good. When you look at the base idea of someone trying to usurp the void left by Dracula's absence, it sounds like a cool plot. But the way DoS did that, was terrible. I mean, having someone like Olrox, or fuck, even someone like Graham, take over Dracula's "Empire" as it were, would be pretty neat. In fact, having a Human absorb dark powers and/or/souls and shit to become this dark overlord, or even become a vampire, would be pretty cool. I mean, hey, Graham got them powers he was packin' somehow right? But not a cliche trio consisting of the hot headed brawler, the clever smart guy, ad the token witch with the evil cackle who makes some stereotypical villain banter, then cackles as she teleports out trying to have two guys who inherited minuscule insignificant portions of a vampire lord's power trying to see which one of them can replace him...
On that note, I STILL have no idea how the negating of Alucard's powers is supposed to work.