Worst Castlevania game I've played so far. I really wanted to like this game and had fun with much of it but overall the game was a more frustrating than fun. The whip degrading every time you take damage is easily my least favorite aspect of the game and served to infuriate me constantly. If this mechanic alone was removed I'd have had a massively more fun experience, but it complied on top of the other issues to hinder my enjoyment. My least favorite Dracula fight easily, they're normally hard but this one was just hard in an unfun way. I haven't been using save states through the rest of the series much at all but this game broke me of that habit and at the end of it I was making save states every screen just to finish the game without absolutely hating it.