I'm so torn on whether I'd recommend this game because there is so much to like. The art design and music is beautiful, the controls are great, and the environments are incredible. Unfortunately I can't recommend it because it just isn't a satisfying game. The combat system is fun but the enemies feel cheap. I'm used to hard as balls Castlevania games but I've never raged as hard as at this game.

To start, while the combos are fun to pull off it feels pointless when enemies can just disregard them if they need to. There's a handful of great boss fights but most of them feel like cheap "to do" lists. I appreciate that the bosses get harder as you weaken them, but in practice it sometimes becomes absurd. The fact that many of the bosses spawn enemies during the fight is a total cop-out in character design. Bosses are where you should be showing off and challenging the player, but the game continually throws out arbitrary tasks like wailing on a crystal, beat these minor enemies. It really detracts from the finished product.

The good news is that this game seems like it could be great with a little more fine-tuning, but for right now it's a game that has a lot of potential, but for me is unsatisfying on nearly every level.

I'm so torn on whether I'd recommend this game because there is so much to like. The art design and music is beautiful, the controls are great, and the environments are incredible. Unfortunately I can't recommend it because it just isn't a satisfying game. The combat system is fun but the enemies feel cheap. I'm used to hard as balls Castlevania games but I've never raged as hard as at this game. To start, while the combos are fun to pull off it feels pointless when enemies can just disregard them if they need to. There's a handful of great boss fights but most of them feel like cheap "to do" lists. I appreciate that the bosses get harder as you weaken them, but in practice it sometimes becomes absurd. The fact that many of the bosses spawn enemies during the fight is a total cop-out in character design. Bosses are where you should be showing off and challenging the player, but the game continually throws out arbitrary tasks like wailing on a crystal, beat these minor enemies. It really detracts from the finished product. The good news is that this game seems like it could be great with a little more fine-tuning, but for right now it's a game that has a lot of potential, but for me is unsatisfying on nearly every level.