A very, very fine game. If you like the castlevania style, you will love it. Don't think, buy. But don't buy it on GOG. Drm or not, the Steam Version is better, because obviously your money is worth less ojn GOG. Patches will arrive much slower, you have no access to alpha or beta versions and there are no mods at all.
The game is solid, so why only three stars? Because it shouldn't just be a solid game, but at least at the same level as it's great predecessor. Unfortunately, it isn't. The graphics are quite nice, but often look like plastic. The animations are quite nice, but often also (especially facial animations) rather moderate. Enemy-designs and ideas are generally rather unimaginative, nothing you haven't seen before in a similar form elsewhere. One thing that really bothers me are the poses of the characters. Miriam looks and behaves like a teenager at cosplay, developed by an 15 year old pupil with weird fantasies. For the fact that the game was developed by the "inventor" of the Metroidvania genre and spent so much time and money... three stars. The "original" was way more brilliant on almost all levels at the time it came out. As a big fan of SoTN, I'm not in any way impressed. Even Order of Ecclesia was better than this.
