i'll admit, the prospect of a castlevania game with more control options was always one that allured me. now that i have some experience with the series however, i can't say i'm particularly fond of the changes made in super castlevania 4. the identity of the first game was founded on it's difficulty, and by extension it's lack of control. it's not fair to say the game doesn't control well though. every action performed in the first game had to be calculated in advance, and the game is clearly structured around this. however, when the series moved to the snes and more power was given to the player, i'd argue it lost a lot of its identity. simon can now whip in many different directions, control the arc of his jump, and generally speaking just feels snappier to move around with. on paper these all sound like positives, but unfortunately konami didn't accommodate for this in the rest of the game. sub weapons in particular feel the effects of this change. what used to be a system designed to cover the blind spots of the whip, now has very little reason to exist. any positional challenge can be overcome by the whip and jump control. i hesitate to blame this on the nature of this being a remake/retelling of the first game because there are clearly small moments that utilize this newfound control (the crouch walk sees interesting moments later on) but they clearly didn't want to reinvent the wheel with the series quite yet. to make matters worse, instant death traps such as bottomless pits and spikes are placed all throughout, possibly as a way to counteract the ease of control. this makes deaths feel more frustrating than before, as the few times the player is punished, they're punished to an absurd degree. the soundtrack is surprisingly weak too. not that the compositions are bad, not by any stretch. it just lacks the punch i normally expect from the super nintendo sound chip. i won't make the claim that this is a bad game, but something was certainly lost in translation from the 8-bit classic that preceded it.