So after blowing through the GBA collection I started with Dawn of Sorrow here. I vaguely recalled that I didn't like Dawn as much as Aria, and after playing through both of them back-to-back I can see why I felt that way. It largely comes down to one key design mistake in Dawn: having to consume souls to upgrade weapons. So much of the fun of exploring every nook and cranny of the map in Aria was how often it would reward you with a cool new weapon or accessory, and it never felt like anything you picked up was underpowered to the point of being useless (except gear that enhanced Luck, which is a functionally worthless stat in both games). By contrast, in Dawn practically every weapon found through exploration is acquired at its lowest tier, which means it will probably be way weaker than whatever weapon you managed to upgrade with the highly specific souls it required. I ended up using the lance type weapons for 80% of the game because it was the only weapon type I was getting the souls for without going out of my way to farm them. It also repeats Aria's mistake of gating the true ending behind having 3 specific souls, only it's worse this time because the enemies carrying those souls are more rarely encountered and have lower drop rates.
On the plus side, Julius Mode in Dawn of Sorrow rules.