I am perfectly aware of the majesty this game carries with it. Perhaps unluckily, I got to experience the GBA-followups that had the benefit, not the burden, of getting to build off of one of the great formula-shifts in the medium. In response, I have the dark honor of getting to be contrarian and nit-picky where SOTN's contemporary audience had no choice but stare in wonder.
The game is utterly beautiful. It's presentation and UI's are perfect, having a reserved touch of nostalgia for the 4th console gen and neighboring design to the RPG god-king of its day, Final Fantasy.
But god damn, the art and the music. I am not close to qualified to really praise it properly, but you have to stare for hours to notice the weakness in the sprite work (It's the protagonist faces, even under the CRT glow). The backgrounds are flawless on their own, though I feel (as the later games agreed) that the set dressings could have been more diverse than different brickwork styles.
The weakest song in the game is the end credits music, which I could write a paragraph defending even then, but I'm certain would have stood well against your childhood shelf full of Disney-competitor VHS tapes that made you wait past the credits for a music video. Outside of that, the game varies the genre of song and everything is an absolute blast. They figured out how to make rock, hip hop and electric jazz work in a dour, gothic environment years before that became an iconic cinema style in the new millenia
The game is distilled energy. The combat is a more free version of the earlier game's arcade movement. You progress by killing, by opening doors, by doing everything that you already want to do. It mixes gameplay with progression in ways you have to fight to find even in today's 30 minute indie crazes. In all areas, SOTN does things right that other games should see and listen to. It's the best example of a game that should be part of a Gen Ed curriculum for University. You will learn things about yourself and your craft by giving it your time.
That said, it's a product. It's struck down in my eyes from its rightful place in a 5/5 list because the creators were too eager. They achieved good ways of dealing with the loading issues, but you can feel this game strain for a higher base movement speed. Your navigation options are mostly hidden (I don't particularly feel like praising it for having a gravity jump or a flying bat charge when a 100% run and read through of the manual doesn't reveal it) and usually require repeated fighting game inputs rather than... movement. I completed All-Boss Richter, I can super jump, but this is just one of those "casual filters" that I feel is indefensible.
Finally, the great debate of our times... I think reverse castle was a mistake. I feel by saying this I've signed on to a political party, but I did not feel like it was an appropriate ask of my time as a player. You can argue that playing Richter mode back to back with Alucard mode is not intended play, but you definitely do not get the full challenge of the game from Alucard, so in the roughly 40 hours I spent playing I had to navigate Castlevania 4 times when only 1 was perfectly paced. I get the value proposition, I understand the idea of only getting one game a year at Christmas, but my 10th birthday was a long, long time ago, and SOTN remains as it was. The game is too slow, the advance movement is clunky, it's padded, and frankly none of this had to be the case.
The game is refined, but it's unfair for us to further refine it ourselves to try to make it the best game of all time just because, from a couple of angles, it's got devilishly close. It's a wonder that the game is so good that it makes us want to push it up to a pedestal it didn't quite qualify for, afraid that we'll never be lucky enough to see something wholey better. I'm happy though, it's not about perfection anyway.
