I’ve never played a Castlevania title, but from what I hear this is pretty much as close to you can get to one without being a part of the franchise, in which case I should probably give them a shot!

I really enjoyed the gameplay loop of traversing the game’s various areas and amassing a wealth of different weapons, armor, spells, etc. to completely customize my build. There’s a lot of freedom to how you want to tackle combat in the game and it’s just challenging enough to where you’re incentivized to experiment every time you find something new.

It has all the aspects you’d want out of a Metroidvania with areas expanding as you progress and get new abilities allowing you to revisit and explore parts that were previously inaccessible, a sense of power scaling that gives you a sense of gradually getting stronger, and interesting map design that interconnects allowing the player to easily traverse and progress however they see fit until they reach a given objective.

Combat is simple but enjoyable, and allows you to get fairly strong once you find combinations of weapons and spells that suit your play style. Miriam (the protagonist) is given options to alter her appearance at a certain point and also changes based on the gear she has equipped at any given point which makes for an added level of customization as well.

Overall, this isn’t the greatest Metroidvania out there but it’s certainly a solid one and I’d recommend it to anyone into the genre.