A pretty brilliant game. It is the first attempt to boil down Symphony of the Night's new direction for the series into handheld, but the limitations that come with that mean they still kept one foot in the old Castlevania design direction. It's very much a compromised work, a bastard child of both veins of Castlevania, but to me it's the best of both worlds.

Of course, Iga would take later GBA games and make them look and feel exactly like SotN did on PS1, but the simplistic design of CotM makes it stand out as its own thing entirely (not to mention it helps visual clarity). Movement of different and takes some getting used to, like the old games you hop vertically more than leap horizontally. There are fewer secrets to discover and the game uses a basic "card" system for upgrades and builds. It's all very much in the experimentation mode.

But there are some really cool bosses that we will see reused later (giant ball of corpses, anyone?) and the card system is ripe for exploiting. And what is a Castlevania game if not to cheese to the maximum extent of your ability? This game is prime cheese, in every interpretation of that statement.