Hard to view this as anything but a Granfalloon-sized downgrade from Symphony of the Night. The somewhat rigid controls and fixed camera makes for real bad platforming, and Konami presumably recognised this because there's barely any actually necessary platforming sections - in a Castlevania! A small mercy I guess, but it also has the effect of compounding the seriously boring level design - with little vertical movement around the map you end up just running through a bunch of flat, samey corridors. And you're going to be running through them all multiple times, too, because this game has backtracking up the wazoo. Even the runup to the final boss is all backtracking!
It's a real shame, because I think the combat isn't bad at all once you've unlocked some more moves like the sidestep dodging. Could have used a manual lock-on but it still feels pretty snappy. You pretty much never have to fight a non-boss enemy unless they're blocking a door, though, so yeah. Dull, dull game. Waste of great box art. I do think it's very funny that they make Michael McConnohie say "it's a whip...made with Alchemy...", though.