Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow was released by Konami in 2005 for the DS. 

After finding out that he's a reincarnation of Dracula and then losing his powers after escaping the eclipse, Soma goes back to his everyday life until he's attacked by monsters summoned by Celia Fortner and absorbs their powers.  Celia is the leader of a cult who's attempting to revive Dracula by killing Soma so one of two dark lord candidates may inherit his powers.  

Like Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, Soma can equip many different weapon types, including guns.  Soma can equip three different soul types, bullet souls which are sub weapon types, guardian souls which are switchable on off types, and enchant souls are passive abilties, and then ability souls are also passive but your double jumps, etc.  Like Aria of Sorrow, most souls are useful, although there are some, very few, that are useless.  Once acquiring the doppleganger soul, Soma can switch between set A and B for completely different equipment/soul set ups, and regardless the weapon, pressing the o button uses MP to do a special skill, sort of like down, forward, attack on Symphony of the Night.

Dawn of Sorrow adds a few extra things with the souls.  First off, while you can still purchase equipment, but now you can upgrade weapons to the next more powerful iteration of that type by fusing souls to the weapons with the help of Yoko Belnades.  Also, instead of getting one soul and that's it, collecting nine souls will power your skills up.  The axe armor soul is the traditional axe subweapon at first and throughout the game it took more damage than my weapons did, but getting more souls the axe will take off more damage and increase in size.  Passive souls that increase stats will just increase more stats, and then there are some passive souls that can't level up.  There are also combo set ups you can do with souls now, and this extends to all three equipable types.  There are your basic ones, like the gardener skeleton making plant souls do more damage or the skeleton ape allowing you to throw anything further, but then there are others like bat company allowing you to turn into a bat, but equipping the flame demon soul will allow you to shoot fireballs while in bat form.  While I like the  Dawn of Sorrow souls system, I do think the usefulness in the quality of souls was spread around a bit better in Aria of Sorrow, where any end game souls on Dawn of Sorrow are more than likely going to be better than what you've found early game, while all souls are more powerful than the Aria of Sorrow souls on average.

As Soma makes his way through the castle, he'll acquire abilities that allow him to progress through areas he normally wouldn't be able to get through.  Puppetmaster is a new one where he can throw a doll through a small area he can't go through to switch places with, but it can also be used to pass through other stuff, even as a defensive tool or to get past large enemies you might not want to deal with by throwing it behind them and switching places with the doll.

The castle design is so so.  If you find the teleporters when you're at that area, you'll save on a lot of backtracking, but if you do have to backtrack, there's usually a single path that you can take as the short cuts you can use are only at a few specific locations.  almost 70-80% of the castle has boomerang skeletons,  and one small area before the end of the game has some new enemies, but is filled with early game enemies so that area is completely lacking in any difficulty.  The difficulty overall isn't too easy or too hard but it is the easiest of the DS titles on normal mode as Soma in thanks to the power of his souls.

After finishing the game, you unlock Julius mode, boss rush, and hard mode.  Hard mode can only be used from a clear game and can't be used with a brand new game, and there's no max level 1 modes like in the other DS titles.  You can sell all your weapons and armor and use soul release to get rid of all your souls if you do want to start a fresh new game on hard atleast.

When it comes to the exploration games in the Castlevania series, Julius mode in Dawn of Souls  is easily the best extra character mode.  Julius moves the speed of Soma, so a more reasonable speed rather than two or three times as fast as Julius did in Aria of Sorrow.  While you start as Julius only, you acquire Alucard and can acquire Yoko Belnades, where not only they take gameplay from Symphony of the Night and Castlevania 3, but it's also a nod towards both games.  With the three characters, you can switch between each one, each one having a completely different attack style and different skills.  Julius can use the whip, hanging whip, all his sub weapons, the holy cross item crush, a slide, downward kick, a short uppercut, and a backdash.  Alucard can do high jump, all the ways you can speed up his sword attacks like short hops and attacking twice in the air make their way into this game, he can use hell fire, and the bat transformation, although he was never able to slide so he can't in this game.  Yoko attacks with a rod, short wide range, and has three spells, a powerful short range flame, icicles that shoot out in all directions around and above her, and three lightning balls that home in on enemies, all skills taken from what Sypha can do in Castlevania 3, except for the ice freezing enemies and then crushing them with a melee attack.

In terms of how it plays, even without switching characters, Julius mode is overall a more enjoyable experience than the other games.  While I'm not really sure why I enjoy it so much, I'd guess that it's because there's more direction on what you must do, and that you're required to progress through the game and not just use your skills to traverse randomly across the map.  You have to acquire Alucard in order to get through certain areas.  With the level design forcing you to go through areas, you're required to go through many areas to progress to others.  Julius mode also has a completely different last boss than Soma, and While the last boss isn't so much of an amazing battle because of the battle itself, rather it's amazing the same way the bad ending on Aria of Sorrow is the best.  After completing Juilus mode there's no hard difficulty, although the difficulty is better balanced than the main game with the characters not being able to switch to more powerful weapons and armor, although still being able to level up.  Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow's main game is great, but Julius mode is just as good. better in my opinion.

9.25/10

Nice review once again, kupo! Dawn of Sorrow is easily one of my favorite Castlevania games ever! Too bad we wil never get a Castlevania game this good ever again! =(

I do hope they make more castlevania's like this... Hopefully the low sales of LoS2 doesn't kill the franchise

Another good review. Even though I recognize Dawn of Sorrow is an excellent game, it left me a little cold. I think the greatness of its predecessor soured the experience a little.

Nice.

Is this the Castlevania game that if you don't have a certain object equipped against a boss, the game ends abruptly with a bad ending?

Your reviews are more helpful than most sites I frequent. High score compared to others of you I have read, guess I must give a try to this game in the future.

Nah, but it killed Mercury Steam.

I don't know how to do spoiler tags, so spoiler.

There's a few games like that.  Symphony of the nigth you need the holy goggles(name wrong?,) Harmony of Dissonance you need the Maxim Ring equipped, Aria of Sorrow you need flame demon, giant bat, and succubus souls equipped, this game you need Paranoia to enter the mirror and kill a different boss as well as the Mina Talisman equipped at another point, and Portrait of Ruin you need the sanctuary spell.  *edit* Order of Ecclesia you need to find all the villagers, but it kind of points that out to you afterwards.

That's actually pretty cool. It can caught off-guards most players, though I'm guessing hardcore Castlevania fans already know the tricks.