It really is a great game. I think it's possibly better than a IGA-era Castlevania game because there are so many weapons to use, leading to so many play-styles, and I do like variety. Other than that - same basics you would expect from an "Igavania". 2D platformer, explore a huge castle, fight some bosses, collect enemy drops and skills, use new skills to explore further... and yes there is a "backstep" button. :)
The story of the game is alchemy / anti-church / experimenting on children / post-apocalypse (hmm, that makes it sound like Bat Out Of Hell 2100. It's not anything like Bat 2100!), but you can happily ignore that if you like. There are both English and Japanese voice options. I played in Japanese (honestly I don't think the English dub for Symphony Of The Night is worth celebrating, I know it became a camp cult hit for its awfulness but I have no attachment to it).
You can also change the colour of blood in the options. I like that you can do that, and I turned blood purple. There are lots of little Easter Eggs too. And cool weird things like... enemies that look like giant heads of people's pets (I think this was a kickstarter reward!)
The only thing I didn't think was great in the design of the game was that with the art they used in the game (which is beautiful); sometimes it was hard to see what's foreground and background, but I got used to it after a few hours of playing.
I started the game pretty much as soon as I could, so I started playing on version 1.01 and a few hours later they released version 1.02, but I read that it messed up the save file so I decided to finish the game as soon as possible and not update until I was done. Well, I don't know if that was the best idea, because version 1.01 was patched because a few of the last boss fights in the game didn't show up on the in-game bestiary list.
So I updated the game with patch 1.02 and started a New Game+ and completed the entire game again. There were a few things changed with the patch. I think poison was nerfed, I beat a lot of the bosses first time round using poison and keeping my distance, but that seemed less potent in version 1.02. Also I thought the secret boss fight with the vampire librarian was much harder in version 1.02.
I got the platinum trophy on PSN for completing every trophy on Sunday night after 5 days and 5 hours of intense gaming (the time taken is logged on psnprofiles). I think it was a really great game. It's updated to version 1.03 now so everything I said specific to patches is probably irrelevant now too, haha.
I didn't fight IGA because his secret boss fight (not very secret) wasn't patched in to the PS4 version yet. I'll have to return at some point!
Conclusion: well worth waiting 4 years for this game, even though I finished the whole thing twice within 5 days!
