In order to beat Julius Mode, you will need to defeat almost every boss and recruit Yoko and Alucard. These 3 have different abilities that will let you explore all the castle in the order you want. You will find Soma at the end of The Abyss, where in normal mode is Menace, the final boss.
You will need to kill 11 bosses in order to go through the dark portal to access the Mines of Judgment, where you will fight Death and then enter The Abyss.

Those bosses are:

• #1 Flying Armor in the Lost Village
  
• #2 Balore in Wizardry Lab
  
• #3 Dario in the Garden of Madness
  
• #4 Puppet Master in Demon Guest House
  
• #5 Dmitri at the Dark Chapel
  
• #6 Malphas also at the Dark Chapel
  
• #7 Rahab in Subterranean Hell
  
• #8 Bat Company in the Silenced Ruins
  
• #9 Gergoth at the top of the Condemned Tower
  
• #10 Zephyr in the Cursed Clock Tower
  
• #11 and finally Aguni in the Pinnacle.
  
  Although the bosses are numbered, you can defeat the bosses in any order. Puppet master is #4 because if you go that way you will unlock Alucard, but it might be hard to fight him if you are underleveled. More of this in the walkthrough section.
  
  

This may sound obvious, but in order to play Julius mode you have to unlock it first.
To unlock Julius mode you have to get the good ending or the "second bad ending" on normal mode (aka Soma mode). This bad ending is the one you get if you meet Celia in the Garden of Madness without the Mina's Talisman equipped. As a reminder, in order to get there you must have to defeat Agoni, Darío's inner demon beforehand. You unlock that bossfight using the Paranoia soul on the Dario bossfight on the Pinnacle. You can search a normal mode guide if you don't know how to obtain these souls.

So, you will unlock the bad ending by just entering the room; this will trigger a cutscene and after that the game will save and you will unlock Julius mode.

After that, you must use a empty save file to start a new game in Julius mode.

Once you start a new game in Julius mode, you will notice that there are some differences from regular gameplay. For example, there is no seal mechanic, lamps only drops hearts, etc.
The most notorious changes are that there are 3 playable characters (Julius, Yoko and Alucard), and the fact that pressing start will simply pause the game. This is mainly because in Julius mode you can't change loadout (souls, weapons, armor, etc.). To compensate this, Julius (and friends) will have different set of skills to go through the castle from the beginning:

Julius will attack with his Whip, a little upwards dash, can break ice and can use different special weapons like they were red souls for Soma. These are: Axe, Holy Water, Boomerang and a special Holy Cross attack. The first three will use a small amount of MP and the Holy Cross will channel and use a lot of MP. You can loop through these with the right bumper on controller.

Yoko will use a club that deals low damage but heals you with each hit. She can't dash upwards, but has a really long back dash. She has three spells that can be used the same way as Soma's red souls. These are: Ice spell, Fire spell and Lightning spell. The first two will use a small amount of MP and lightning a lot. In general, her ice spell might be the best special attack for bosses. You will find Yoko here, where she usually is in normal mode:


Finally, Alucard will use a sword, has a really long upwards dash and CAN'T SLIDE. He has 2 abilities that are also used like Soma's red souls: Fireballs and Bat mode. Fireballs uses a small amount of MP and bat mode just consumes MP slowly. You can find Allucard here:

Once unlocked, you can loop through them with the Y button on an Xbox controller.

I recommend reading the previous segments before proceeding with the Walkthrough.



Starting a new game of Julius mode will find you at the start of the castle at level 1.
We will be using the order of bosses showcased in the TL;DR section. Altough being level 1, Julius deals a good amount of damage. So, we'll head directly to the first boss, Flying Armor. Go left from the start and after crossing the second bridge drop at the intersection, go right to save the game and fight Flying Armor on the left. You won't need to seal this or any other boss in this mode.
In general, the bosses un Julius Mode deal a lot of damage, so try your best to avoid getting hit (or just rewind holding LT)

After killing Flying Armor, go where Yoko usually is in normal mode and she will join your party.



After recruiting her, enter to the Wizardly Lab in order to fight Balore. You will deal him a good amount of damage also.


After defeating Balore, you may now go fight Dario. Remember that Julius can break ice, so you can take the shortcut that conects the north-east of the Wizardly Lab with the south of Garden of Madness. You can take this shortcut by breaking the ice with Julius while standing on the moving platform[imgur.com].

So, once in the Garden of madness, go up and find your way to Darío boss fight. You can go either right or left. I recommend fighting with Julius and use holy water for this bossfight.



After defeating Darío, go up, then left until you find Alucard. He will join your party. You will find him in this room:


After recruiting Alucard, we'll make our way to the Puppet Master. You can click on the images so you can see the map better if you don't know how to get there. We will take a shortcut using the Bat form, power of Alucard, as shown:



Puppet Master might be really hard if you are underleveled. You need to be fast killing the puppets before you switch places. Good luck!

Once you killed Puppet master, now you should go back to the Garden of Madness and head to the Dark Chapel on the right. There, fight Dmitri and Malphas. In dimitri fight I used Julius and Holy Water, I find it easy to dodge. After Dmitri, go right then up and fight Malphas. I killed Malphas with Yoko's Ice spell.
If you dont know how to get to these bosses, click on the image and see the map as reference.


Once defeated Dmitri and Malphas, you can go up then right to the bells room, and go through the puppet master wall flying with Alucard in bat mode.


Then go down to open the door and return to the "dance hall" of the dark chapel, because now we are heading down to the Subterranean Hell to kill Rahab. Rahab is also easy, use Yoko with her ice spell and you will do a lot of damage.


Now you will cross slowly through the water, going down, left, down then right until you enter the Silenced Ruins, to fight Bat Company. Use the map for reference:

Bat Company might be hard to dodge, until you understand the attacks. In the "bat mode" try to time your position so you can take advantage. In the "face mode" you can use Yoko to have more range dismiss the bubbles.
After defeating Bat Company, you may teleport to the Dark Chapel and head right to the Condemned Tower. Climb the tower to fight Gergoth. This boss can be hard. Use the rewind option if needed. After defeating it, reach the top again to grab the tower key and enter the Cursed Clock Tower. Remember that Alucard can perform a really high upwards dash that may save you time.



Once you enter the Cursed Clock Tower, go left, then up to find and defeat Zephyr.



After defeating Zephyr, you can access to the Pinnacle. This zone is hard, so I recommend avoid getting hit too much. Reach the top and you will fight Agoni. Between the stairs leadind to Agoni and the last save room, there will be a room with 4 bugbears. You can use Yoko's Ice spell to kill them all at once and farm levels if needed (contribution by @Shiju, thanks!). Also I recommend using this spell with Agoni because hits twice and makes the fight easier.


AND NOW the door leading to the Mine of Judgement will open :). Farm the bugbears if needed, because the next bossfight may be the hardest.



At the bottom of the mines, you will fight Death. This might be the hardest bossfight in Julius Mode. Deals a ton of damage and is difficult to dodge. I recommend learning his attacks and using the rewind function if needed.



At the end of the Abyss, you can cross the door to fight Soma.


Good Luck and enjoy the fight. Defeating him will unlock the achievement "A Promise Fulfilled".

Thank you for reading my first guide ever! If it was useful, consider liking this guide and comment any suggestion you may have. Also, sorry for my broken English.

I would also like to thank Sabberzombie for this FAQ they made some time ago that I used as reference: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/922145-castlevania-dawn-of-sorrow/faqs/71997
If there's something that I didn't cover in this guide, consider reading theirs.

EDIT:
Thanks to the commenters who pointed out that the guide was straight up wrong! They were right! XD (@Siroldas @Jihen)
This is a second version of the guide. The Sabberzombie's FAQ states that some bosses are not mandatory, and I blindly trusted them. I started a new game following my own guide and I found out that my guide was wrong. So I investigated a bit (there's not much info about it) and aparently you must kill almost every boss to enter the mines, so I replayed it with this in mind and confirmed it.

So there you have it, the updated How to beat Julius Mode.


-Terfor