Short of Aria of Sorrow Alter this might be my favorite CV up to this point. There's not much grinding to do for money this time, the castle is less of a focus with the locations of the portraits being where most of the action is. there's killer music and bosses are actually engaging to go into.

Technically a lot of the stuff from Dawn of Sorrow is here as well, like 2 sets of items evolving into having 2 separate characters and monsters dropping abilities, except all the annoying touch screen gimmicks are gone and it's just overall more polished.

The castle is both a hub and its own fully fledged map with different areas and bosses, while the portraits are their own maps with distinct themes. This is like if Harmony of Dissonance's two castles mechanic mixed with Lament of Innocence's hub castle, except it's well designed and not confusing here as the pacing maintains itself with focus throughout.

Playing around with both characters is great. Jonathan is focused on more physical attacks and weaponry while Charlotte is focused on magic and spells. Spells can be charged for an extra damage/boost and are very varied in function. You can choose to have both characters out at once or use only one, while there also being a button that calls for the other character to use their special ability. When you mix all different attacks and abilities the game really opens up and it's pretty fun to see how much damage you can dish out with different builds, this is probably the only Castlevania game where I took the weaknesses of enemies into account very often. I miss the soul system from Aria and Dawn a bit, but they certainly cut down on the tedium by balancing these 2 characters instead.

Only big complaint I got is that the generic anime aesthetic and tone is still not gone which unfortunately also has an adverse effect on the story.