Graphically looks great, and I'm much more of a fan of level based Castlevania titles than I am of exploration type Castlevania titles.

However, the video posted by Siliconera if you pull up the link is the entire third stage. The stage itself is nothing more than going right, going up a vertical hallway after getting there, going left, going up a vertical hallway after getting there, repeat. It more or less looks like a very bland creation in which all the places you're going through don't have much of a change, especially with the vertical hallways on each side. The boss is really the only thing that looks remotely challenging, but as dumb as the player was, no. But this is the third stage, not the first or second.

Anyways. Obvious Castlevania ripoff. Not just looking similar style, but the way alot of enemies attacked if you watch a few more videos, all the way down to how some of them look. If you look at the character that's controlled, she uses a whip, and also looks like the Circle of the Moon incarnation of Camilla(except instead of just a pink dress, it's a black and red dress.) Now Camilla doesn't use a whip, but the Belmont clan does. Check out the skeletons who throw bones, they have almost the same AI as any of them on the earlier games and look like they were used as reference for the art. How about the skeletons that slash at the character with the sword? Oh look, modeled exactly after Bone Scimitar.

Anyways. Even though I'm complaining about all its flaws, it looks good. But considering when attempting to download it it says "trial," It's not something I'd pay for the full version unless it happens to get much better.

Speaking of being inspired, indie developer Frontier Aja looked at Castlevania while developing Koumajou Densetsu: Scarlet Symphony, an upcoming PC title scheduled to debut this weekend at Comiket 76. (Thanks for the tip Destron Prime!!)

This video does a fantastic job explaining Koumajou Densetsu: Scarlet Symphony. It even covers little quirks about hit boxes so I’ll let it take you through the game. I just want to explain a reference that might fly over your head. The main character, Reimu Hakurei, is part of a series of doujin or hobby developed Japanese games. She’s a key character in the Touhou Project, which includes a bunch of PC shoot ‘em ups like Mountain of Faith from Team Shanghai Alice.

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/08/13...e-castlevania/

http://aja-games.com/products_koumajo/index.htm