I'm starting to think James Rolfe might just be really, really bad at video games because I went into the magic nitro section expecting some real irredeemable dogshit and did it on my third try. I fucked up and didn't remove the seal so I just reloaded a save and did that first - totally inoffensive. I say this as someone who loves the dude and his (old) content (for the most part) but there were definitely a few instances where his takes would pollute public gaming opinions and this is one of them. Don't get me started on egoraptor though.

It's castlevania...in 3d. I won't tell you this was some kind of genre pioneer like cv2 actually is but I will tell you that they could've done far, far FAR worse for a first 3d entry in the series. If anything they did a really admirable job for a first attempt given it manages to adapt classicvania to 3d pretty faithfully.

There's quite a few memorable music tracks, the atmosphere is great, and it controls surprisingly well. While it doesn't have the same kind of sauce other castlevanias had, it's not sauceless and definitely has its cool moments and setpieces. It's just a huge shame it's been lumped in with the numerous other "bad jumps to 3d" probably just because 2010s nintendo youtubers couldn't bear the thought of a 3d action game/platformer not as good as ocarina of time or mario 64/banjo kazooie