The bones of a fun shooter are here (until Chapters 3 and 4).
Chapter 1 was meh, kill the same 3 enemies for the entire thing; the somewhat interconnected levels weren't half bad to explore, and the secrets were good.
Chapter 2 was a little worse but somewhat similar, killing the same 4 enemies + 1 that appears once in a while, however, this chapter tries a little harder than the first, so the levels feel less bland but a lot more confusing and there is a lot of cheap placements where they go "haha gotcha! secret wall with 10 enemies go brrrrr", which was a small problem with the first chapter, but even more in this one.
Chapter 3 was fucking dog shit, take everything wrong with the first two chapters and throw away everything that was right. Enemies are more constant while ammo isn't, so every encounter feels like a test of my patience, slowly killing enemies with a pistol and tanky ones with a shotgun which isn't even hard, just boring. Even more "haha" rooms with 20 enemies hidden inside secret walls or placed like a bitch, so much forced damage, and extremely boring levels to explore, later levels get better but far from even mediocre. Oh and it reuses music as well as the same 5 enemies
Chapter 4... I only played the first two levels, and I'm not sure if it's fair for me to count those since it's an extra chapter, a very unfair one. How about spawning next to enemies? enemies hidden in front of doors, next to entrances, 20 of them placed in front of you, 21 behind you, barely any space to move, sounds fun? Is this a game or an actual hell made by the devil itself

(My review seems like it got duplicated for some reason, no idea what happened...)
Castlevania 3 and this version of it feels like a modern game when you don't play on normal, you have the boring easy mode and the frustrating hard mode squeezed into the game for the sake of existing and with very little effort. I expected this to be a more balanced version of Castle 3, but they made this way too easy, your whip is faster and you take less damage, some enemies seem to have less HP too I guess, anything else is a small change or something I didn't notice.
I just quickly breezed through the game feeling like a TAS, which isn't exactly what these games are about, I didn't plan any of my attacks like you do in other games, I just saw an enemy, killed it, and moved on, sometimes I just damage boost myself because it didn't matter, the whip being faster and your defense being higher just made this game too easy, I died very few times and only one of them wasn't from pits, I was so used to killing everything with ease that I didn't put much effort into a few of my jumps. Would've been better if either the whip was faster or if you took less damage, but not both at once, or maybe it's just impossible to make this game good. I just quit out of boredom, at least the original made me put some effort into the game to progress, rather than:
walking forward
attacking
walking forward
spam attack at a boss with even more ease than the original
yawn
a million stairs
yawn
repeat

This is both 1 or 1.5 stars really. The first half can be beaten by a 4-year-old; the game only really starts in the second half. The first half is so... yawn... They start the first level with a cool gimmick, only to never use it again. Some guy once said this is the Mega Man 5 of Castlevania games yet he wasn't wrong at all, everything dies with ease with the whip, and the weapons are mostly useless. The diagonal whip isn't bad, the first half is yawn with or without it anyways, half the time you take damage is because they make the enemy blend in with the ambient or because you get lost sometimes.
The game is actually nice looking for once, what isn't nice are the bosses (again), I don't remember 100% of it because I have beaten the game the same day I started, what I remember is mindlessly mashing to kill the bosses, some of the last ones actually had pattern you had to learn, but they were either annoying or just plain out repetitive, but hey, gotta give it to this game for having the first good boss in the franchise after all the load of shit, it's the very last one and he's just okay, but a huge step up from the rest of them. The levels in the second half of the game are pretty average, their quality is very inconsistent, sometimes they have fun challenges then 2 seconds later, Simon gets jumpscared by a giant gear, or you wanna get past a pit, and they spawn an enemy the moment you get at the very ledge 0.001 seconds before you jump. Teaching elements can be questionable, sometimes they introduce an enemy with 2 other enemies, you get past a platforming gimmick and when ur forced to use it you die because you didn't know that this one platform would flip, or there is this weird thing spinning around then suddenly it kills you because you're meant to go up before it gets to you.
The major praise I have is the enemy variety, almost every level has a new enemy, even if some of them are from other games. Overall It has a boring first half, average second, bosses are still bad, hitboxes are funky sometimes, nice music I guess, and the diagonal whip and easier movement isn't something I cared a lot about, it fits the second half but doesn't make a difference at the first. Can these games get good already? before I get salty replies

Good Platformer but not a good High-Speed Platformer; it's so easy to fly and skip half of the hazards before late-game levels, can't say I was bored messing with and exploring though. You can also beat it in one evening, so quickly I don't even know if it's a 3 or 3.5 stars because I didn't have enough time to conclude that. I never expected the bosses to be the best part of any 3D platformer though, especially the second half, I enjoyed learning them on the hardest difficulty (again) while listening to the bangers of this game

I don't know if I like it, but either way, it isn't very far from average. I felt like the more I played, the less I enjoyed it. But let's be real, this was a smart move, return the old map so Chapter 5 can be worked on more often, and make it only 1 month so it doesn't feel too long, which was the perfect duration.
It is what you would expect from the OG map, except less, so many lacking details here and there, where is the snow and jungle biome? where are the Season 7 - X locations and The Block? Why start at season 5 and not 3? Where is that house from Fatal Fields? Why can't I interact with Kevin the Cube and the Zero Point, why did the Combat Shotgun leave the game... ON THE UPDATE WHERE IT GOT ADDED ORIGINALLY? (as well as other guns). It is not truly OG, but recreating every little detail would be near impossible, fortunately, the movement and reboot vans are still here, as well as new rifts and ziplines. but the guns also remain the same and feel a lot weaker than the actual OG guns, (except for the pistol which is now auto, and the Scoped Assult Rifle is still as shit as the OG one), any other gun is far from being as good as the OG, Assault Rifle bullets spread more than those times you go to the bathroom, the OG pump and Tat used to hit hard even being 2 or 3 times farther away than the modern ones where it has to kiss the enemy.
It was good for build mode but kinda sucked in Zero Build even with extra ziplines because the OG map was designed for the building mechanic, it is very open and empty which works in that mode, I liked the slow and more strategic playstyle this season had, instead of rushing everyone, having heals everywhere, and infinite movement items (as well as Epic and Legendary weapons actually being rare), you had to worry about preserving shit this season. Shame it got annoying to hide, rush a fight, kill them when they're weak, then someone else rushes, you get killed while you're weak, then they get rushed and killed afterwards, you know the rest. And good luck with vans, since the map is empty, vans are either in named locations where everyone is or in the open where someone might be hiding near, I spent the whole game once, trying to revive someone but I kept getting jumped every time, 73 - 12 players and I was still trying to revive. oh, and the event was average.
I played the OG seasons, and it was nice to be somewhat back, but the OG map isn't the peak of the game like the people who played Chapter 1 for a week say, the peak of the game was the first moments, not knowing how to play, getting your first win and the anxiety of having to win against 99 more players, heck, it felt more intimidating back in the day than rn. If you think chapter 1 was the peak of the game, you're probably blinded by your nostalgia, no offense, they could perfectly recreate OG with every single little detail possible and you will never enjoy it as much as back in the day because you already know everything and winning a 129th time doesn't as special as your first wins, if you want to recreate those never coming back memories, just play another game. It is pretty much like your first memories with Minecraft or Dark Souls or any other game you wish u could forget and go back just to play blind again.
Probably a 4/10 with Zero Build and an 8/10 with build.

Alright... WHAT THE FUCK have they done with my boy... This is what Dark Souls would feel like if it had an "easy mode" version. The original version was great, this one can be played with a melted brain, it feels more like Mega Man 5 than 4 because every enemy dies so easily or can be skipped or I can damage boost through. The original holds your hand at times, but this one holds it waaaaay more it is ridiculous, I got so bored I played like I hadn't slept in 2 days and still have beaten most stages (quit in Real Wily 1). Stages barely feel like they have progression because they feel easy from start to end, and 60% of the sections that they kept from the original are the annoying ones, and the good ones just aren't fun anymore cuz it's 1 good section out of 20 sections in a full level. Wish I could rate this lower but the game still keeps the same bosses and music which are great. If you played the original version, you aren't missing a thing.

Late review but as someone who liked the Zero games, this one simply sucks.
It's not even the garbage map system, it's how they managed to add the "X" to "Z" and take it seriously. In the Zero games, the Buster and Saber were pretty well balanced, the Saber was better but that was the focus, in this game it feels like they deal nearly the same damage (outside of bosses), you could either go for Saber and take damage to every single enemy, or the Buster which I don't remember a single enemy surviving a charge shot from it, but you don't need to charge, nah, 99% of the enemies die in 1 to 3 hits, and most of the areas feel like corridors, so you can just walk forward and spam the buster 90% of the time like it's X7 and you will rarely get hit, some spots here and there where the saber is good, but very few. Model H is overrated unless you're a speedrunner, good luck trying to not get hit because you flew too fast, high, or far, ZX is the best one for melee combat because it attacks much quicker than any other Model, H's attacks feel too slow, that combo doesn't matter if every enemy can hit you while you do it or die in the first swing while you do it, and the distance sucks too, I would rather use model L because that one got better attack range, or even better; Model P because it has ranged attacks, and just like the buster, you can watch everything die. The areas in this game do get progressively more challenging and better over time but it just goes from terrible to below average, Area O was the only one I had fun with. What saves this game from being terrible to just bad, are the bosses, most of them are very great (the final boss is not one of them, so don't be excited), though Model ZX is the best Model to use against them because of faster Saber swings, unless you want to use the weakness. But somehow it feels like the people who made the bosses and Minibosses are completely different, the Minibosses gotta be the one of worst I ever seen in a Video Game, you can stay in one spot and slowly but easily kill them, none of them are above terrible, they're all garbage and tedious. The music in this game is quite good and so are the visuals and charm; also that one secret boss (which I don't want to spoil its name) does what secret bosses should do, they wreck your ass until you beat them, except you only get a reward for it after beating the game... Simply stupid... Especially that they think I'll keep playing this game with it