20 years later, I've finished COTM for the first time thanks to the Castlevania Advance Collection. It was fine, though I took issue with some (IMO) questionable design choices. Some examples:
-Running is inexplicably tied to a relic, and is incredibly important for large swaths of the game's platforming, but there's no way to run without double-tapping your movement buttons, and the walk speed is painfully slow
-A lack of shortcuts/warp points around the castle means a ton of backtracking through long uneventful hallways
-Lots of combat options from the interesting and intricate DSS system, but not many of them have very practical applications
All in all, these things didn't really end up deterring me from enjoying myself with the game, and the compilation version brings some nice improvements to visual clarity. The music is fine, lots of rearranged classic tracks and a couple originals that really nail that Castlevania sound. I very strongly recommend playing this before the other two GBAvanias just to properly experience how the series really learned to flourish on the handheld.
-Running is inexplicably tied to a relic, and is incredibly important for large swaths of the game's platforming, but there's no way to run without double-tapping your movement buttons, and the walk speed is painfully slow
-A lack of shortcuts/warp points around the castle means a ton of backtracking through long uneventful hallways
-Lots of combat options from the interesting and intricate DSS system, but not many of them have very practical applications
All in all, these things didn't really end up deterring me from enjoying myself with the game, and the compilation version brings some nice improvements to visual clarity. The music is fine, lots of rearranged classic tracks and a couple originals that really nail that Castlevania sound. I very strongly recommend playing this before the other two GBAvanias just to properly experience how the series really learned to flourish on the handheld.