The Soul System in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow allows for some great customizati??on and gameplay. It's also required to collect souls for the best weapons. Every series of weapons has an upgrade chain to create stronger weapons using souls. This guide will help you make the strongest and most versatile of each weapon.

How to Collect Souls for Fusion

Getting different souls is a bit of a vague process, so we'll give a quick breakdown of best practices. First and foremost, you'll want the Soul Eater Ring. The problem is that? it's not available until the later half of the game. Worse still, it's prohibitively expensive at 300,000g. But once you acqui??re it, it doubles the rate at which enemies drop their souls when you defeat them.

The best way to get a particular sou??l is find a place where you can easily farm the monster that drops it. Anywhere that you can quickly turn to leave the room, and turn back to reset the monsters is best. You can go in, kill the monster, see if it's soul drops, then exit and re-enter. It's a bit tedious, though the late-game Black Panther soul allows you to dash quickly.

Luck, it turns out, does not help much at all. Increasing your lucks stat has a fragment of a percent at boosting Soul drops. It's honestly better to make sure you have equipment that helps you down enemies faster. That said, if you also want to farm for enemy item drops, Luck isn't a bad thing to have. Just don?'t focus on it. Hard Mode quadruples the effect Luck has on Soul Drops, but that's still not a terribly helpful amount.

Finally, if you're playing on Castlevania: The Dominus Collection, there is one more cheat. Whether or not an enemy drops a soul is determined the moment you kill that enemy. Seeing as how The Dominus Collection has a quick rewind feature, that?? means you can constantly go back in time a few seconds and try again. This is especially useful on enemies like Final Armor, who take forever to kill AND have a rare drop chance. It's a very useful tool and I highly recommend it.

Sword Fusion Guide

The Sword guide is interesting because there are multiple times when weapons branch off. Most weapons are a straight line, but swords have more of a tree. Whenever a weapon is Synthesis Exclusive, it will be marked? with an asterisk(*). Many weapons can be found in gam??e or purchased in the shop, so this should help you avoid spending souls you'd rather hold onto.

Great Swords Guide

Bigger than normal swords, these swords usually hit much harder. In exchange, they're also a lot slower. Their wide arc makes up ??for that, in my opinion, which is why I tend to gravitate towards them.

Rapiers Guide

These are faster than swords, but otherwise aren't terri??bly special. They have a decent bit of reach to them. They're?? biggest advantage is that they do Piercing instead of Slashing damage.

Polearms Guide

M??y personal favorite weapon type, they have range and pi?ercing. They're not much slower than rapiers, either.

Axes Guide

While I prefer spears, there's no denying the power of Axes. But it takes a while to get the best one, and it comes at the cost of a very? valua??ble soul. If you're willing to part with Death's soul, the resulting scythe is probably the best weapon in the game.

Maces Guide

There's not much to the mace line of weapons. Mjollnjr is kind of a weak weapon, too. That said, having a Morgenstern on hand is always handy for any enemy that is weak to bashing dama??ge.

Katanas Guide

There'??s nothing wr??ong with a good katana, but they're not terribly special either.

Fist Weapons Guide

Fist weapons are the alternative for bashing damage, but require you to be up close. That said, they can be pretty quick. The Kaiser Knuckle does mul??tiple hits, making it a solid w??eapon for those brave enough to get up close.

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All good things must come to an end, and that's certainly true for Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. While it's easily one of the best Castlevania games, getting to its conclusion can be?? bittersweet. Here's how you can get the best possible ending.

Getting the best ending can be kind of an ??obtuse process. But it's not just about getting the sweetest cutscene. It's also about those delicious unlocks! Whether you want to be sure you're on the right track or you're finding?? out what went wrong, we're here. And don't worry about spoilers; we'll keep it as clean as possible.

How (not) to get the worst ending

Unless you're thorough, it's very easy to miss a key requirement for getting past the first ending. There's a boss named Dario, who you'll end up fighting twice throughout the game. The s??econd time will be in a part of the map called The Pinnacle. When you get to him, you may notice something extremely suspicious about h??is fight. In the background is a giant mirror with a demon reflected in it.

If all you do is beat Dario, you're granted the worst ending in the?? game. This provides no rewards and is basically the same as a "Game Over." If you've noticed giant mirrors in other parts of the castle, you may have guessed that you need to interact with them somehow. This is the key to correctly defeating Dario.

You'll need a boss soul from a monster cal??led Paranoia. To find him, go west from The Pinnacle's lower reaches to enter a new part of the Demon Guest House. S?imply move west through this new area, and you'll come across this boss. Defeat him, take his soul, and you can use it in any large mirror in the castle. That includes using it in Dario's boss room and fighting the demon inside. This will allow the story to progress correctly.

How to get the bad ending

While still a bummer of an ending for our heroes, this one can at least unlock Julius Mode. This is a new gameplay mode where you take control of Julius, Yoko, and Alucard as you play through the entire game with unique powers. It's a fun bonus mode and well?? worth unlocking. But you should probably just move on to the next ending and get it later.

After you surpass the worst ending above, you'll be challenged to meet Celia in the locked room of the Garden of Madness. There's a key item that affects whether you get the bad ending here or if you open up the rest of the game. If you want to unlock Julius Mode quickly or want to ??see what happens, enter the central chamber without Mina's Talisman equipped. A cutscene will play, and then the credits will roll. Technically, Julius Mode is a sort of "what if?" continuation of these events.

How to get the best ending

The real ending requires you to best Dario by defeating his mirror-verse demon and by confronting Celia with Mina's Talisman equipped to your accessory slot. Once you do these two things, you'll ?open up a secret path in The Tower that goes down. Follow that path and finish the last portions of the game. You'll reach the final boss, defeat them, and finally get your best ending.

Defeating the game's best ending unlocks Julius mode, as well as a slew of new options. The most interesting is a New Game Plus mode. Above your save file is a "Clear" icon. Selecting it allows you to start the game over at level 1, but you keep all non-essential souls, equipment, and gold. You're also granted the ability to play the game in Hard Mode, giving you an extra challenge. If you beat the game's Hard Mode, your reward is a unique Hell Flame soul. This gives you Dracula's old "fireballs from the cape" maneuver he's used since the original Castlevania.

You'll also unlock a Sound Test and a Boss Rush Mode. Aside from being a fun challenge, Boss Rush also has some unique unlockables to send back to your main game. They are time-based requirements, and unfortunate??ly, you can't unlock everything if you do i??t right the first time. You'll have to play through the mode at least five times, provided you can get the best score right away on each occasion.

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One of the biggest strengths of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is its Soul system. It lets you capture enemies' special properties and abilities and use whatever loadout they choose. A ??gre??at way to add variety and customization to the combat, making Dawn of Sorrow an all-time favorite of mine.

However, t?here are secret combinations of souls that can unlock special effects. These combinations help give you more to consider when setting up your loadout. It can be a lot of silly fun to mess around with different souls to see what synergizes well. We've created this guide to help identify all the combos and their unique extra effects so you don't have to do the legwork.

What works with Skeleton Ape?

One particularly useful Enchant type Soul gives is the Skeleton Ape. This soul is hard to acq??uire due to its rarity and the enemy's strong attack. But it's well worth it if you're a fan of throwing abilities. To help make sure you're using the right souls, we've com?piled a list that we know works with it.

• Puppet Master - Throws your puppet farther, great for harmlessly maneuvering around the screen.
• Une - Throws your plant projectile further.
• Fish Head - Throws your Fish Head further.
• Slogra - Throws your spear further.
• Ripper - Throws your dagger harder.
• Mandragora - Throws the screaming plant projectile further.
• Decarabia - Throws the spinning Decarabia summon faster.
• Axe Armor - Throw your axe in a wider arc.
• Slogra + Gaibon - Both spears go farther.
• Fish Head + Needles - Both Fish Heads go farther.
• Une + Alura Une - Alura will have a longer range tossing her Une's down.

Garden of Terror

As a bonus, there is one combo that requires three souls and is considered one of the most powerful offensive options ??in the game. The only downside is that it lea??ves you standing still and vulnerable. However, the damage output should help mitigate that entirely.

The combination of Une, Alura Une, and the Skeleton Farmer forms a screen-wide offense. Skeleton Farmer is an Enchant-type soul that grants all ??plant-based powers more damage. There are not a lot of those, but it makes Une a potent weapon. And when using the Soul Combo of Une and Alura Une, it's incredibly destructive. There's only one Skeleton Farmer in the game, and he's got a low chance of dropping the soul. But it's absolutely worth working for.

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To say there are a lot of powers to collect in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow would be putting it lightly. Every single ??enemy you fight has a power that ca?n drop. However, if you want that sweet 100% collection, there are a few secret souls you'll need to collect.

These souls belong to creatures referred to as "UMA," or Unidentified Mysterious Animal. In more common terms, you've probably heard them referred to as Cryptids. These are creatures that are said to exist but have no concrete proof that they do. In Dawn of Sorrow, three cryptids are known to roam the villain's hideout. You'll need to use information from the UMA News a??rticles to find and attract a Yeti, Flying Humanoid, and Mothman?.

Where to find Yeti's Soul

You'll find the Yeti lurki?ng about in the very first "room" of the game. It's actually an outdoor area, and he'll be skulking in the forested background. You can't reach back there and get him; you'll have to lure him out with some del??icious food.

To lure him out, you'll need to get the soul from a Waiter Skeleton. They're mostly found in the Demon Guest House. Waiter souls are hard to obtain because the cowardly bone bags will throw a plate of food at you and run away. You'll need something to either stop them, like ?a petrifying ability, or a heavy club to crush their weakness. Once you have a good system, it's time to kill them over and over again until one of them drops their soul.

With your new power, go back to that opening area in The Lost Village. Use the Waiter Skeleton soul to throw some delicious curry down onto the ground. The Yeti will s??mell it immediately and leap out of the background to grab a bite. The only problem is that the food is too spicy! The Yeti will take damage trying to eat it, and then immediately retreat to the background again. Attacking him before he gets the curry will also spook him off. You'll have to use a similar tactic on him as you did with the Waiter Skeleton. He is weak to fire, so if you have a flame sword or ability, that should help take him down.

Yeti's soul is a un??ique Guardian power that summons a... "white orb of dark power that grows as it rolls." It's a snowball. It makes a snowball that you can move along the ground, and it gets bigger as you go. It's not the most useful, but it is pretty fun!

Where to find the Flying Humanoid's soul

The second soul belongs to a creature referred to as the Flying Humanoid. It's difficult to get a goo??d look at exactly what it is. However, it shouldn't be too hard to miss it drifting in the sky behind the clock tower. At the top of the Cursed Clock Tower, between the Save Room and Boss Room, you'll see a small figure flying in the distance. It appears to be vulnerable to sonic attacks, and so you'll need the help of the Mandragora Soul to defeat it.

The Mandragora soul is best found scattered around the Garden of Madness. They look like Une and Corpseweed until they pop out of the ground. They'll quickly let out an ear-rupturing scream and explode. Sadly, you only get kill credit if you defeat them BEFORE they self-destruct. The best place to farm them is on the map below because th?ey share a room with another soul you need?? later. Farming both Mandragora and the lightning bird Rycuda is a great time saver. But more on that in the next section.

Once you have the Mandragora, take it back to the top of the Cursed Clock Tower and summon the screaming root. It'll cause the?? Flying Humanoid to explode in the distance, sending its soul spiraling towards you. You can technically farm this soul, but it doesn't get more powerful past the first one.

The Flying Humanoid's soul is a Guardian? type that gives you an Intellect and Luck bonus when activated. Soma will sprout some cool-looking wings t??o let you know when it's active, but it drains your mana rather quickly. It's a helpful tool when farming souls and rare items off of enemies.

Where to find Mothman's Soul

My personal favorite cryptid, Mothman, is a bit more elusive than the other two souls. It's a little less obvious where he's hiding,?? a??s you don't see him until he's summoned. To do so, you'll need that Rycuda soul I mentioned earlier. It grants you the ability to throw lightning bolts around, which is both a great weapon and a useful tool.

Mothman is a late-game s?oul found in The Pinnacle of the Castle. There's a long hall under the biggest room in the area. You'll know you're in the right pla??ce if there are two Final Guards in it. You can find a generator and a large spotlight sitting dormant between them. You'll have to use Rycuda's lightning power to restore the machine to working conditions. If it doesn't work immediately, make sure to hit the machine with the lightning's tip. Doing so summons the Mothman, allowing you to acquire his soul. He should drop it on the first kill.

Mothman's soul grants you a buff to your EXP. Combine it with the Shaman Ring for an extremely quick level gain??!

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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a game with many secrets, and it's easy to go chasing down false leads. With the release of Castlevania: The Dominus Collection, that might happen all over aga??i??n. One of the biggest apparent mysteries is The Piano Room.

It's entirely likely that first time players might go hunting down for clues, and peop?le who haven't played since the DS games originally came out might have false memories. Here's where the Piano Room is.

The Piano Room's location

When you first enter the Demon Guest House,?? you'll want to go up and to the left. Doing so will take you to a room that shows a large slide puzzle. The pieces in this room can be shifted to make various paths. By default, it should take you to an exit in the upper left hand corner, so?? you shouldn't need to shift anything around.

Simply follow the path and emerge on the other end. Then go up two more screens, and take the left. That should take you to the giant Piano room. Some of the keys don't work, but most of them do. You can hop between them to relive all your Big mem??ories, if you?? want. But that's about all its good for.

Are there any secrets in the Piano Room?

Tap away all you want, but this isn't Resident Evil. No amount of playing Moonlight Sonata on this thing will open any secret passageways. Reddit users have even discussed this within the last few years, ?and they all agree there's nothing here.

All these years later, and people still wonder what secrets this piano might hold. But, unfortunately, the only thing this carries is a tune. It shouldn't be a surprise; Iga loves to put weird toys in his games. The man who loves to let you sit in c??hairs could easily dream up a silly piano floor, just-because.

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There are a lot of great Castlevania games, but if you’re a Metroidvania-style person, then you’ll be delighted to hear that the DS trilogy is being wrapped up in the Castlevania Dominus Collection. Better yet, it’s out today.

The DS had three great Castlevania games: Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia. Nowadays??, they are quite expensive to obtain, especially the last one. So, it’s great to see them g??etting a re-release. If you’re wondering about the second screen, it’s getting crammed to the side, which is a little weird, but what can you do?

On top of that, the arcade-exclusive Haunted Castle is ??being included alongside an upgraded “Revisited�version. That's pretty cool, I guess.

I went deep into the Metroidvania-style Castlevania games about 10 years ago. During that time, I bought up all the DS versions - still wrapped -- for a decent price. Almost immediately, they shot up in value in the aftermarket. So, I guess you can blame me for that. I don't love the Metroidvania games as much as I enjoy the classic action-platformer formulate of the series, mainly because I find their integration of micro-progression to be rather shallow. They're still good, especially held up by the aesthetics, and the DS ones are the best (sorry Symphony of the Night), but I prefer dodging Medusa heads l??ike my life depe?nds on it.

The Castlevania Dominus Collection releases on Switch today.

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