Almost everything plays like a dream and builds on the qualities from (GBA) Aria of Sorrow.
I know a lot of people say the "sealing" of the bosses is finicky and a little bit flow disrupting but I found it to add to the excitement of a lot of the boss battles. The inherent finesse that is required to do some of the later seals sort of forces you to beef up (either level or make new weapons and armor) Soma so he can survive a beating from the boss. Even though there was a huge list of souls to collect I still wanted the levels to be bigger and I wanted to see more different types of enemies and a lot more different types of weapons. So as long as adds a lot more content to their games I'd be satisfied.
The music for this game is just as wonderful as symphony of the night and Konami has really out done themselves with alot of the detailed sprite animations blended with some 3D effects.
I gave this game a solid 9 but I was rather disappointed with the familiars because they couldn't level up. Technically, they level up when the number of corresponding (such as bat) enemy soul is captured but I sort of wished they had the leveling up system of SOTN (for the Sword familiar). Also, it was cool that Konami introduced the stylus guide for familiars (when you stick the stylus on the enemy the familiar tries to attack it) but when you're holding the stylus you don't have the hands to press attack and the familiars aren't "beefed" up enough to kill enemies quickly.