It's good, but the lack of improvement is notable.
Soma's powers are interesting and all, but lots of them feel forced, and are really useless.
There are other that are really cool though, but nothing groundbreaking.
But here's the thing, the whip in super castlevania 4 is better than knifes, swords, axes, hammers, or even Julius' whip!
Seriously, that whip could hit in 8 directions, it was awesome, and in 2005 we're using one direction? The hell?
It feels like the makers of castlevania are just running in circles without having the balls to try to improve in the near-perfect formula that castlevania 4 was.
I also don't see why choosing a metroid style over a linear style, there's no real point to it except lots of backtracking that makes the game longer.
And the leveling makes the game easy, I even skipped most of the castle in Julius mode so I could have a challenge in the final battle, which was really challenging, but only that battle.
Overall, fun, but disappointing.