Everything below based off the 360 version.
I like it for the most part, but it's plagued with problems that are genre standards by now. The camera being one of them and I wont go into that, we all know how that goes to some degree or another. The thing that really, really gets to me in this game are the QTEs. I hate QTEs more than anything, but this game has used them way to often and requires them to kill off certain mid-sized enemies you should just be able to slash down. That aside, the controls are way out of whack in some instances and that's a huge problem for me. In most games when the camera angle shifts at least durin' your already initialized push or pull on the stick, the memory sticks and you keep progressing as if your were movin' in the proper direction. They seemed to have forgotten to do that in this game. Another problem is the button recognition. While fightin' everything is spot on, but I noticed durin' a Titan fight, when they shake and you have to hold on, much like the circle matching QTE, simply pulling the trigger once to steady your hold wont always work I have to pull my trigger multiple times, sometimes in order to re-establish my hold. Like I said, a bit of the same scenario with the circle matching QTEs. Sometimes the system doesn't recognize my input until it's a fraction of a second to late.
My last huge issue. The game looks terrible, because they over did the HD. The bloom is way to jacked up and the rain, instead of having a water effect on the environment and people/creatures, looks like it's just pooring lubricant everywhere. I've played a lot of games where I thought they over did the HD, but this one takes the cake. On two occasions after playin' for less than an hour I developed a splitting headache, most likely due to the heavy bloom.
All of that aside, I think it's a fun game. It's part of my favorite genre so over time I've come to grips with the shit controlling in them and fine my pleasure regardless. That being said, if I wasn't such a fan of the genre I'd trash this game every chance I got. The level of challenge is also acceptable, which surprised me. I'm playin' through on Knight difficulty right now and based off it I can not wait to go through again on Paladin. This game really doesn't allow for you to button spam during combat like a lot others. Something else, I got a little mad when I crossed a checkpoint. I don't think checkpoints belong in a Castlevania game. However, if you're goin' to do it, I believe they handled it perfectly. So yeah, you hit a check point and then die a little after it. Usually you start from the checkpoint with full health in which allows you to just beat the hardest difficulties with relative ease, just by pinging the points. Well, in this game you only get the HP back that you had when you crossed. So if you hit that boss checkpoint with a sliver of life, you best get some damn game or you're in for a frustrated time.
All that said, I would only recommend this to Castlevania fans and most of them would probably be rather pissed at the direction of the game (so probably -lite- fans). For everyone else, I'd recommend Enslaved first, though I'm finding even on Hard it's terribly easy. I can't recommend the PS3 version of that at all though. Yeah, they killed down the motion blur, which is awesome, but Ninja Theory forgot to throw on the V-sync so it tears really bad. It also has some slowdown on the PS3 version.
). Anyawys
