Symphony of the Night uses two-dimensional side-scrolling gameplay. The objective is to explore Dracula's castle and defeat the entity controlling Richter Belmont, the self-proclaimed master of the castle and hero of the events that take place in Castlevania: Return of the Blood. The entity can only be seen with specific items acquired during the course of the game. Once it is defeated, the second part of the game is revealed, culminating in the final battle with the newly awakened Dracula.

The game is non-linear, but most of the castle is inaccessible until various items and abilities are collected (including morphing into a bat, wolf or fog). As players discover more castles, the map is updated to show progress.

While player characters in previous Castlevania games typically used whips, players can find and use a wide variety of weapons. The game includes an item bar and other role-playing game elements.

Alucard's life value determines the maximum amount of damage he can take before dying, while his magic value determines how often he can cast magical attacks. alucard has four other attributes: strength, the power of his physical attacks; defence, his resistance to damage inflicted by monsters; intelligence, the speed of magic point recovery ; and Luck, how often items are dropped by enemies.

Defeating monsters will provide Alucard with experience points, and he will upgrade when he reaches a predetermined number, increasing his attributes in the process. Alucard can cast eight different spells, which require the player to input directional combinations and will cost varying amounts of magic points. During the course of the game Alucard can gain the ability to summon magical pets which function as complementary entities to help him in battle and exploration.

Additional game modes can be unlocked once the game is completed. By entering Richter Belmont's name as a username, the player can take on the role of Richter, with a whip as his primary weapon and various side-weapons. [citation needed] The ports included in the PlayStation Portable game Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles and the PlayStation 4 port Maria Renard from Castlevania Requiem are playable in the Sega Saturn version.