Definitly a game worth hunting down for your GBA.
Gameplay - I gave this game an 8 in gameplay because the controlls are amazing, their very responsive and intuitive. The idea of discarding subweapons and using souls of monsters to power you magical attacks is actually very interesting and in turn makes for a nice minigame (soul collecting) that's actually pretty hard. The reasons i didn't give it a perfect 10 is because the game is too easy, they took a step in teh right dirrection by giving you the option of replaying the game on a harder difficulty, but all that really changed was how fast you leveled up. By the end of the game I was still too powerful. Not as disgustingly overpowered as i was in Symphony of the Night, but it was still an unfair fight.
Sound and Graphics - In my opinion, this is the GBA showing off it's graphical and audio power to it's fullest. The sprites are all very well rendered and smoothly animated. While there's no classic songs, the ones they have on this sound track are very good and worth going into sound mode just to listen to. Not only are the songs good, but the audio quality really stands out. Dozens of voice samples and death screams for each character really help too, mind you, their all in Japanese, but it still fleshes out the game from an audio perspective.
Value - It's a great game, with a few replay options. asside from difficulty there,s also a hidden character who makes for a totally different gameplay experience and is very much worth checking out. Soul collecting is not without rewards either, you cna get special hidden items for collecting 100% of the games souls as well as clearing the boss rush stage in a certain time. Even without these bonus' the game is just plain fun and very much worth the effort on it's own.
Over all - The game is good, a little better than "Symphony of the Night" because you have an option when it comes to difficulty, and there is no Crissengrim that's normally available in the game. The soul collecting makes for an interesting minigame, the boss rush mode is fairly good and your secret character is very interesting and moderatly powerful. Even though it's a pretty easy game, i still like it a lot and heavily recommend it to any Castlevania fan or anyone just looking for a good action RPG/Adventure game for GBA.