Toru Hagihara lead the project slated for the PlayStation while Igarashi was involved with the story-writing and programming.  During mid-production of the game Hagihara was promoted to the head of the division and asked Igarashi to finish the game as the assistant director.  From the beginning of the development the game was intended to represent a new direction for the franchise as linear games such as the previous installments of Castlevania offered very little replay value, something Konami was trying to address in order to keep their games out of bargain bins throughout Japan.  Igarashi felt that action games were too short, his goal was to create a game that could be enjoyed for a much longer period.

Inspired by The Legend of Zelda series the development team was looking to create an exploration experience with elements of back-tracking to extend the amount of gameplay similar to how Nintendo designed previous Legend of Zelda games.  Abandoning the stage-by-stage progression of the previous Castlevania games in favor of an open castle that players could freely explore the development team made most of the castle areas initially inaccessible to the player similar to how Nintendo designed dungeons in The Legend of Zelda.  Players would gradually obtain items and abilities that progressively opened the castle, rewarding exploration while retaining the hack-and-slash action of the previous games.

Igarashi felt that the earlier installments of the Castlevania series were too challenging for the average gamer and decided to address this by implementing a role-playing mechanic which allowed players to level-up by obtaining experience points.  This leveling-up system rewarded players with better attack and defense statistics as they defeated enemies and progressed through the game.  Combined with the variety of items, armors, weapons and spells, allowed the game to become less difficult for average players to be able to complete the game.

The development team was successful in their goal to create a new formula for the Castlevania franchise.  Even though the development team was inspired and used The Legend of Zelda as a reference to their game development fans and game critics found that the new game mechanics more closely resembled gameplay found in the Metroid series rather than from The Legend of Zelda series, coining the term Metroidvania.  With the release of Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the formula these games presented would form the foundations of what are considered Metroidvania games today.  Metroidvania is used to describe a subgenre of action-adventure video games which use game design and mechanics that are similar to games from the two series.

Upon release the game was critically acclaimed receiving widespread praise from media outlets and fans.  Due to the lack of marketing the game’s initial commercial performance was mediocre but thanks to the praise received by critics the game started to gain popularity through word-of-mouth resulting in increased sales and eventually became a hit for Konami.  Symphony of the Night became a critical and financial success over time, establishing that there was a desire by players for Metroidvania style games.

Konami decided to port the game to the Sega Saturn in Japan in 1998 and made slight alterations to the game such as making Maria Renard a playable character as well as a boss battle and making Richter available to play at the start of the game.  The game was re-released for the Xbox Live Arcade and made a debut on the Xbox 360 in 2007.  Later that same year it was also re-released as a PSone Classic on the PlayStation Network for the PlaySation 3 and PSP.   The game is considered to be a sleeper hit, a cult classic and one of the best video games of all time.