Brilliant game, it's the most inventive Castlevania since the likes of Simon's Quest (credit for trying), Rondo of Blood, Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow. Every element here feels like an evolution of what you've found on previous games while standing on its own with a solid foundation.

First off, the anime style is gone and now we get artwork and character design by Masaki Hirooka. Not Ayami Kojima, yeah, but the artwork is really well done and fits Castlevania. This is aided by great presentation in the story. Don't get me wrong, it's extremely predictable, but the presentation overall doesn't make me uncomfortable anymore while still having silly elements to it, like cryptid hunting. Also Shanoa is up there as one of the best Castlevania protagonists.

Glyphs are a great followup to the soul system from the Sorrow games, now we have 3 different glyph sets to start with and instead of giving every enemy a collectible glyph, they focused on making a smaller amount of them that can be given more importance. Mixing different types creates Glyph Unions, which are special attacks, and using the right ones can make the difference in boss fights. Attacking is also recontextualized once more, as the MP bar is used by your regular attacks so you can't just spam them, but you can combo between 2 weapons (equipping on each hand is back!) and hearts are used by Glyph Unions. This system is compared to the Souls games by some, and I definitely see where they come from, but this game came first and also it is better.

The map system feels oddly natural after Portrait of Ruin. Instead of starting in Castlevania, we get to explore a bunch of loose areas that we access from an overworld map, with new ones unlocking after completing another. A few of them are unfortunately little more than a corridor, but they all have a different theme and are worth exploring depending on what item/glyph/monster you're looking for. We still get a Castle section, but it feels more like a proper fully featured Castle than in Portrait of Ruin.

Side quests evolved into them being given by different NPCs across a village which may as well be called your HQ, where completing them unlocks more items available in the shop if not a direct reward. A few of them are unfortunately tedious fetch quests, but luckily aren't required and I still found value in doing them when I was looking to take a break from exploring the final area. I didn't complete all of them though because it's not something I usually do, but I got close.

In terms of difficulty there is a big jump at the end, but there is a detail which is made way more important in this game. Never before has attacking with different types be this effective and you should really investigate what equipment works best against bosses, as well as get good at dodging their attacks as your focus to survive should usually be on your movement.

The final fight with Dracula was deceptively hard but it has great payoff, not necessarily because the ending is great, but because it felt like beating him in the original Castlevania (well maybe that one was kinda bs). Super tough, takes long, but failing is not due to having bad stats (unless maybe you're hurrying through this game) as there is space for you to do well, it's all about practice.

Overall I loved this game, for what it's doing as a first attempt and also polishing up what has been built since SOTN I can't imagine it getting things more right at the time. If the side quests were less annoying to complete and the areas that are just corridors got expanded on, this could very well be a perfect game. It's very sad that Konami didn't allow the franchise to keep going in this direction, but from the little I've seen of Ritual of the Night Miriam is basically Shanoa 2 so I'm glad it is having some influence out there.