7.5 is not a bad fucking score, if you think that, you've got some fucked up issues lol.

I just played Darksiders which has score around 82/100.. It looks exactly like this. And it was pretty good game but nothing special, unlike those great Castlevanias that I have been playing on gameboys.

20 hours is incredibly long for an action game, historically.

It's not bad, but considering the game in question, not amazing either...

NES. The games took 5 minutes to beat, but 3 years to memorize!

On a serious note I would agree to some extent, however look at the range he gave. 15-20 hours. No More Heroes was considered to be a good length for being 12ish. Heavenly Sword was mocked relentlessly for being 8. 20 hours would be a long action, but nothing completely unexpected. 15 would have been seen as the longer side of average. Incredibly long for either of them even last gen would have only been used by fanboys rather than acceptable for a reviewer.

A fair point and well-made. I could see his statement holding weight if the pacing were bad or he wasn't having fun, though.

I had heard HS was five hours. My memory must be getting faulty.

A quick search showed that it averaged 6-8 so your memory isn't so faulty. I do see your point with pacing, but he seemed to be exalting it which would run counter to your thoughts. I will back off a bit though as I am not trying to slam the game or reviewer.

All that said 20 hours would be a good length regardless of gen so I don't want to make it seem like I think the game is too short or anything of that sort. I really hope that it marks a bright spot for the future as length and cost seem to be hitting a good equilibrium. Hopefully it starts to reverse the trend for the rest of this, and into the next generation.

20 hours is very long. If this game had an average hacknslash game length I probably wouldn't get it, but when I heard it's 20 hours I thought it's worth at least $30 for me personally.

I think I may stay away from this game.  And not because of the score, cause I don't think its that low.  But, IGN's comment about not being for Castlevania fans has me worried.  Maybe I'll rent it, but I doubt I'll be buying it.

I have it sealed at home waiting to be played.  I like action games, I like action games with story, and if I can sit through Golden Axe: Beast Rider and think it was worth the 20 I spent on it, then I should enjoy this game.  On another note I think IGN is trying to knock their reviews down a peg, they have some kind of article on Castlevania getting a 7.5 they called it: "7.5 is a good score" so I'm guessing this was the first game that's going to start getting lower scores.  Which I hope is true cause I don't like their current 7-10 scoring scheme now (Yes I know it's 1-10, but once someone sees 7 from IGN they might as well give it 0 cause that's all fans see).