The best way I can describe Bloodstained: COTM, if I were to try selling it to you in as few words as possible, is that it's Castlevania 3, made in a modern lense and without the CBT inducing difficulty the Western release was strangled by.
Bloodstained's as NES Castlevania as you can get; single way jumps, subweapons, knockback, the whole shebang. To narrow things down though, it's explicitly pulling from CV3's partner system, allowing you to choose whether to bring the extra cast members along or to just kill them in exchange for an ability to vary up your playthrough and achieve a different ending. Likewise, the modern hardware afforded to the game now allows the player choosing to bring them along the ability to switch between all of them on the fly! It's an excellent way to freshen up the formula of a traditional Castlevania, and again, adds a fair bit of spice to the idea of multiple playthroughs. Small QOL improvements are abound, with things like different coloured lanterns for hearts VS subweapons, meaning you don't have to worry about picking up a lesser subweapon from the one you have right now, and you can swap to another character entirely to walk right over it.
The game's also a fairly easier affair than most actual Classicvanias, with a casual mode allowing infinite lives, and the partner mechanic not only essentially giving you four health bars of varying sizes if you can maintain, but also not considering a life to be lost until you lose all 4 characters on that single life. It'd likely be a good bet for anyone starting out with the series, in the event Castlevania 1 or 3 were a bit too much for a newbie to take in at once, though I'll also acknowledge that a Castlevania veteran would probably think the game's total cheesecake.
But don't take the constant mention and comparison to the original series Bloodstained is so obviously aping to be anything even close to a negative! That's the best thing I can say about Bloodstained. It's the Castlevania that Konami won't give us. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, and is great. Give it a shot if you've got a Classicvania-shaped hole in your heart, cause Inti Creates were more than able to fill one in mine! It's great to see they're still, in fact, able to make great retro throwbacks when that dipshit Keiji Inafune isn't breathing down their necks.
Bloodstained's as NES Castlevania as you can get; single way jumps, subweapons, knockback, the whole shebang. To narrow things down though, it's explicitly pulling from CV3's partner system, allowing you to choose whether to bring the extra cast members along or to just kill them in exchange for an ability to vary up your playthrough and achieve a different ending. Likewise, the modern hardware afforded to the game now allows the player choosing to bring them along the ability to switch between all of them on the fly! It's an excellent way to freshen up the formula of a traditional Castlevania, and again, adds a fair bit of spice to the idea of multiple playthroughs. Small QOL improvements are abound, with things like different coloured lanterns for hearts VS subweapons, meaning you don't have to worry about picking up a lesser subweapon from the one you have right now, and you can swap to another character entirely to walk right over it.
The game's also a fairly easier affair than most actual Classicvanias, with a casual mode allowing infinite lives, and the partner mechanic not only essentially giving you four health bars of varying sizes if you can maintain, but also not considering a life to be lost until you lose all 4 characters on that single life. It'd likely be a good bet for anyone starting out with the series, in the event Castlevania 1 or 3 were a bit too much for a newbie to take in at once, though I'll also acknowledge that a Castlevania veteran would probably think the game's total cheesecake.
But don't take the constant mention and comparison to the original series Bloodstained is so obviously aping to be anything even close to a negative! That's the best thing I can say about Bloodstained. It's the Castlevania that Konami won't give us. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, and is great. Give it a shot if you've got a Classicvania-shaped hole in your heart, cause Inti Creates were more than able to fill one in mine! It's great to see they're still, in fact, able to make great retro throwbacks when that dipshit Keiji Inafune isn't breathing down their necks.