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I Know You Got Souls
 Speaking of collected souls, Soma's special ability to absorb enemy souls is in full effect too; as you crush the creepy crawlies that infest the cult's castle, they'll periodically produce their souls. When you capture and collect these souls, they can be used to enhance Soma's existing abilities, grant him new abilities and movement options, use magic attacks, summon creatures to assist him, or even become those creatures himself. With over 100 monster souls to acquire, there's a huge number of combinations to use while you're busting Medusa heads – and also a great deal of strategy in their usage as a result.
Konami used the DS' hardware features to add a little pizzazz to the tried-and-true Castlevania game design. For starters, the dual screen is used to keep lots of important information on hand at all times; the gameplay happens on the touch screen, and the castle map and status/enemy stats display can be toggled on the top screen with a push of the Select button. The touch screen is used in gameplay as well, with one of the soul abilities you gain is the ability to destroy a certain block type with the stylus or your finger.
The touch screen is also used for a new "magic seal" function, which comes into play when fighting bosses. In order to completely destroy a boss creature, you must seal it with a magic seal that you'll have to draw on the screen. Fail to draw it properly, and the boss will regain some of his health and keep the battle going. It's a pain in the ass to be fighting a really tough monster, and end up having to extend the fight because you're not so nice with the stylus...but it's a decent use of the touch screen, regardless. Dawn of Sorrow isn't really doing anything outlandish with the DS' feature set, but this is a really good thing here; you don't always have to come out of left field with DS design implementation to make a powerhouse game.
Seeing (and Hearing) is Believing The sound and graphics certainly take full advantage of the Nintendo DS' horsepower, however; simply viewing the beautifully-animated opening video at the title screen should tip you off to that. The difference in graphical quality between Dawn of Sorrow and any of the GBA titles is like night and day. Every sprite is much larger, more detailed/colorful, and has dramatically improved animation. Special rotation and transparency effects are used in many things, and 3D effects abound in both simple things like the opening and closing of area doors, and in some of the more lavish area backgrounds.
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