I've seen a lot of people compare this directly to Symphony of the Night, and that's fair, it is the next Big Boy console release in the franchise after that game, and when looking at them next to each other it's plain to see where Lament of Innocence lacks lamentably. It's apparent to me though that this is a followup to Circle of the Moon more than anything. Both are attempts at bringing the metroivania style of vania to new console paradigms, and both adopt a bit of a back to basics approach to the aesthetics of the franchise. But whereas Circle of the Moon's dedication to that basic look made the game turn into complete visual mush, the 6th gen 3D look of LoI is beautiful. This is just a phenomenal looking game with so much atmosphere. Each area of the castle has its own distinct look, but they're all drenched in fog and claustrophobic due to the fixed camera angles, and that combined with the immaculate soundtrack makes for a game that I just love walking around in. Yes, the actual layout of the castle is very uninteresting and many, many rooms are repeated over and over with minor variations, but occupying this castle puts me in such a particular state of mind that I just don't care that the rest of the game is pretty mid. The one non-aesthetic thing that really activated my monkey brain was the Orb system. Much like the DSS system from CotM you get to mix and match orbs that drop from bosses with the traditional array of Castlevania items, which leads to all sorts of ridiculous attacks that clear rooms of enemies in a snap. It's definitely not as deep as the DSS, but you get so many stupid animations that it evens out.