And the credits are rolling.
That was a ton of fun. Here's how I would break it down:
Positives:
+ The story is simple but yet engaging enough that it made me want to continue playing and the characters' arcs cross-over pretty well.
+ The atmosphere is pretty awesome. The music and detailed backgrounds are great, in fact, they feel like they're alive unlike any of the GBA/DS Castlevania games with static images.
+ At times the graphics can look really fucking amazing, even I will crank up the 3D because sections of it look amazeballs. The last boss for Simon looked great. Best graphics I've seen the 3DS pull off.
+ There is still plenty to explore in the game; I found myself looking at every corner of the map when I could, just like in SotN.
+ Really fun bosses that continue to vary it up. Remember that armor mid-boss and that weird ogre boss from the demo? Yeah, those are by far the lamest bosses I've come across.
Negatives:
- The combat is way too simplistic, and the enemies take a lot of damage. Rather than make a deep fighting system to engage you, the developers artificially added length to battles through annoying health meters for enemies.
- The running, jumping, ledge-grabbing, etc. feels way too sluggish. It's as if the game runs at .5x speed compared to all previous Castlevania games. It's not awful, but it just feels really off. Sometimes using "R" to swing and grab on to stuff is unresponsive. I died a lot in a few segments where "R" was not responsive enough for me.
- Enough with the damn QTEs, they are awful. The 3DS's buttons are NOT made for QTE spamming either. It's such a game development cop-out. And this game has it pretty rough where a QTE appears when you least expect it and bam, you're dead.
Overall, as a fan of the series (going back to the NES trilogy), I would highly recommend this game. It's a mixture of the NES trilogy, Lords of Shadows, and a pinch of the Metroidvania games. However, the game is really short, and once you beat it and get 100%, there's nothing to do (and that doesn't take long at all). I'm very glad I played it, but I'm also glad I GameFly'd this game. $40 would have been tough to swallow for me right now.