GAMEPLAY: You guide Soma through Dracula's Castle fighting all sorts of demons and undead creatures. As you progress, you will find that Soma's soul possession ability (thought to be lost after his adventures in Aria of Sorrow) is in fact still with him. This means that sometimes after killing a creature, you obtain its soul and a nifty ability. There are four different souls that can be obtained: Bullet-Type (Which typically involves Soma launching a projectile of sorts), Guardian-Type (Name gives it away, a spirit aides in the protection of Soma), Enchant-Type (This varies, but it overall seems to aide you when attempting to get to previously inaccessible areas, but some souls can also great damage to your opponents), and Ability-Type (these allow you to break crystals, double jump, etc.). Now all of these accept Ability type use up your mana, which slowly builds up or can be restored with a mana potion. Now what’s cool here is that souls can also be fused with your weapons with the aide of your friend Yoko. This is an awesome feature because as you progress, your weapons become a lot stronger, making pains like Golems a bit easier to deal with. With upgrades and accessories aplenty, this is gameplay at its best. 10/10
GRAPHICS: Considering that we are dealing with 2D graphics, everything in this game looks fantastic, every enemy has a great amount of detail, and all of the backgrounds are delicious pieces of eye-candy. Corny I know, but I need to get across how great the backgrounds are. As a nice little bonus, if you don’t press start you access Dawn of Sorrow, you will be treated to a short anime cut-scene featuring Celia, Dario, Dmitrii, and of course, our main man Soma. Let’s get back to in-game graphics. On the outskirts of the castle, you can leap from broken pillar to broken pillar, while inside near the dancing spirits, you can jump from chandelier to chandelier in an enormous ballroom. Whenever there is dialogue amongst characters, an anime representation of the speaking character’s head is shown, displaying their emotion, for example Soko will have a joyful look on her face as she taunts Soma about his girlfriend, as Soma has a slightly shocked and embarrassed look as he responds. I could go on and on, but I think I can end this section with this: Konami took 2D graphics to a level seldom before seen, everything looks great, and all the motions are very fluid. Well done. 9.5/10
MUSIC AND SOUND: My only problem with game sounds in Castlevania were Soma’s annoying little grunt noises that are made when you are either hit by an enemy, or accidentally walk into an enemy. This happens surprisingly often when there are a few varieties of plant creatures that hug the floor until you’re right on top of them. But that aside, all of the noises made by creatures and Bosses sound great. Music on the other hand, is even better then the sound. Each area has its own well produced music that never gets old. And with each area having a different feel with reguards to music, it is easier to remember where on the map you are, sounds off I know, but when I hear a certain tune, I know I’m in the upper right corner of Dracula’s castle. All in all, some of the best music I’ve heard so far on my DS. 9.5/10
CONTROLS: Once again I will kiss Konami’s butt in another category. A perfect setup again. At the beginning, you will control one bullet type soul (Up and Y Buttons), one guardian type soul (R Button). Jump (A Button), and attack (B Button). Then after collecting a certain ability type soul, you can use the X Button to switch between 2 setups. So on one you can have a sword as big as you are, hit the X Button and now you can use a soul infused Lance, as well as different bullet and guardian souls. A very nifty feature at times. Despite being able to switch at will, you still to assign these souls and weapons rather often. But that is the only thing bringing down this category. 9.5/10
MULTIPLAYER: Though I have yet to test this with somebody, I have skimmed through the multiplayer bits of the game, and it seems that you can design your own levels, and by design, I mean take a pre-made string of rooms and pack them full of zombies and witches, then have your buddy try and get through them as fast as possible. But this isn’t always a challenge especially if you have weapons that hack through most of the enemies in one hit. If you lay down some ground rules, i.e, use a weak weapon, this feature can make for some interesting multiplayer matches. 7/10
Tanooki’s Overall Rating: 9.7/10
A well deserved score, this is quite literally the best DS game that I have had the privilege to lay my hands on so far.