Castlevania Rebirth - played through it, impressions

[Jumpin]

I've already finished it. It is about half the length to 60% of Super Castlevania or Dracula's Curse.

First off: visually it is in the style of Super Castlevania, but superior in graphics and animations. It also has some nice Audio. The main character handles like Trevor Belmont, except your level 3 whip has fireballs for a certain period of time (adjusted lower if you get hit) before reverting to level 2.

Is the game as good as Dracula's Curse and Super Castlevania? No, I don't think so. Though if you are not very familiar with the unforgiving original Castlevania series, this one comes strongly recommended over Dracula's Curse and Super Castlevania, as those two will chew you up and spit you out. If you are only familiar with the new series Castlevania (Symphony of the Night and the GBA/DS sequels) then I would recommend getting this one first before going for the others. For more advanced players, you probably already have all the classic series games, but if not this one comes after you get Castlevania 3 and 4.

Pluses for new players: the game is lighter, less oppressive than 3 and 4. There are no frustrating jumps or traps at any point. Medusa heads never swarm you during tough spots with instant death traps around like in the other games; and they're very easy to hit. Overall, it was lighter than the others, less intense. All of the boss creatures are easy enough to solve (possibly because they're all familiar).

When I finished the game, I noticed an options mode had unlocked where you can adjust difficulty, lives (you can push them up to 9, but probably won't need more than 3), and some sort of character style (classic and normal, I am not sure what this means).