This game is very good and reminiscent of Symphony of The Night. I was born on the same year as SoTN, but i've played that game along with almost all the Castlevanias before that from the first game, and i've played the ones aferwarwards up until OoE, including AoS, and CoTM. i'm an original backer of this game, and i'm glad I did, this will be my only backing, and that's because I trust the people working on it, including composers etc.
First off, the level design and music is fantastic, the music was already expected to be good since Michiru Yamane was involved. This game seems to capture all the good parts of the castlevania games and merged them in to one. The animations (All objects and characters/enemies) are very similar in style of SoTN, there are lots of subtle actions and parts in the animation that show attention to detail, from slight movement in fingers, or weapons not following a simple repetitive animation path or loop. The voices of the enemies when you hit them or kill them remind me of SoTN too, they fade away and a death sound along with them, and the deaths also have an small animation and don't just fade away statically, another sign of quality. The backgrounds of the levels look stunning and incredibly detailed too.
Theres a good variety of enemies with different attacks, so it's not boring and repetitative throughout the game. You have a multidirectional attack system, along with a shard system, which I guess is similar to OoE, you can summon creatures, have a companion, and have ranged magic. There's also a wide range of weapons, from swords, maces, spears to guns, and these have different types of damage associated with them, such as piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing, which tells you the type of damage and hwo the weapon moves, also can do different damage to certain enemies. All weapons and shard magic can be upgraded in the game, which requiered items you find, and you can also cook food that can ebeused for increasing health.
