Decent gameplay despite linearity, frustrating boss fights, occasionally cryptic progression and lots of getting bossed around by an AI. Was enjoying it enough until hitting the spider boss and after that my enjoyment fell off a cliff and never recovered. SA-X felt surprisingly underutilized which was my biggest disappointment. Also why do you plummet to the ground when you press up? Really awful design choice that makes the controls feel somewhat inconsistent when jumping.

In the end, it's an okay game but I can't say I was super interested in the story and the overly hard-hitting bosses in the second half really put a stop to my fun pretty damn quick. Not sure I'll revisit this one.

Worse than 1 and 2 in every conceivable way. It features:
- unfun gimmicky levels that frequently go on for too long
- uncanny looking enemies
- awful boss fights
- okay music ( I quite like the underwater theme even if it's no Aquatic Ambience)
- trade sequences that don't really add anything to the game
- simon says sequences that don't really add anything to the game
- level themes are much less interesting than the previous two games. Only two that I really liked were the hollowed out trees and the lakeside docks. At least there's more variety than DKC1 I guess.
- hitbox tomfoolery
- general lack of polish. Missing sound effects, partner kong running in place when you tap the left or right button, being unable to switch kongs frequently for no apparent reason.

Also I'm sorry but Canada is not an interesting location for a sidescrolling platformer when compared to jungles and pirate ships. What were they thinking...?

A fun but relatively unexciting translation of NES Castlevania into the DOOM engine. This time around the whip feels like a last resort rather than your bread and butter while subweapons rule the day. Plus, the game showers you in so many hearts that you can spam them without a care so the Vampire Killer is relegated mostly to candle whipping duty.

Graphically it looks pretty nice and there's no doubts that it's a Castlevania game. I did find the map layouts a little underwhelming. IMO they stuck to the design principles of the NES games to a fault, rarely taking advantage of the DOOM engine's capabilities for exploration and instead settling for mostly linear romps from A to B and then to C.

I would love to see a sequel that allows for a little more non-linear exploration of the titular castle and maybe a better difficulty curve (while most of the game is relatively easy, Death and Dracula retain their famous difficulty from the first game. Also the platforming bits in the clock tower sucked.)