Gotta say, it is a bit clunky in some areas, such as some traversal abilities being mapped to the same shard as an attack making it so you have to unequip and reequip stuff at times, and doesn't have the most polish, and the main character looks really stupid, but it is a pretty good fan callback to the Igarashi style Castlevania games.

...wait, Igarashi himself was working on this? The Symphony of the Night, Portrait of Ruin, Aria of Sorrow Igarashi? The same guy?

Huh.

A game very near perfection. I feel the need to say that I haven't played much of the DS original, only getting halfway through the second area, but I feel like it's UI, harder gameplay and better endings will make it a better experience for me. But this version is still great. The gameplay is fun even if I prefer the mainline press turns or Persona's 1 more. But the exploration is amazing as well as the story, which deals with concepts such as radicalization and the price of utopia greatly, with all 3 standard endings being great. All of my flaws of this game come from the redux additions, with Alex being an interesting concept but executed through an annoying dungeon and updated endings that take a lot of edge from the original. Overall, a masterpiece, even if I will prefer the original once I finish it.