Pros: Massive quantities of items, easy to learn controls, good music, wicked main character
Cons: Voice acting could have been better, troublesome flea men
The bottom line: Yo, get this game or my friend Guido...he'll breaka yo face. With that said I believe this is the greatest 2D platformer of all time, buy it.
This is probably the most addictive game I have ever played in my life. I have spent over 200 hours slicing through flesh and bone on this puppy. The only thing that can even come close to Castlevania on the addictive scale are those time consuming online monsters such as Diablo 2. Or cocaine. If you are looking to hide yourself away from society and not emerge from your game room until the earth has colonies in the Andromeda galaxy then search no further than Castlevania. I'll tell you what you need to know to determine if you're ready to lose connection with reality.

The Shortcomings

I reasoned that I should put this section near the top as after you have read the rest of this review nothing here will matter. Firstly the voice acting is bad, the only character I thought had a somewhat matching voice was Dracula. The other characters sound as if they were talking into a toy megaphone. Enough said, fortunately there are relatively few voice acting scenes and the primary ones have Dracula in them anyway. The graphics are dated, however they are quite fitting for a 2D platformer of its kind. Players of the old NES and Genesis rejoice at the principal of a new 2D platformer. While if that generally isn't your bag chances are with all of the options this game offers it may change your mind about the style. Getting back on topic, as thousands and thousands of reviewer have said before me, graphics do not a good game make...hmmm, well, maybe they didn't say it like that, more likely that was Yoda. On a final note one of the more annoying things about the game is those pesky flea men...just keep slicin' at 'em.

From Redemption to Perfection

The plot goes as follows: The grooviest vampire hunter to date, Richter Belmont, disappears. His sister-in-law, the shaggadelic chick, Maria Renard, starts to look for him and suddenly Dracula's pad just appears out of no where like some freaky deja vu. She swings her way on into the rave and being brave you, Alucard, Adrienne Fahrenheit Tepes, son of Dracula, kicker of butt, enter the castle to rid your father's evil from the earth once more.
And...as much as I'd like to continue talking like that I think I'll stop there and start redeeming Castlevania from the brutal (yeah right) beating I put on it earlier. This game works almost like an RPG, it has levels and HP and stats. From what I've seen depending on how you fight with your character different stats, including strength, constitution (defense without armor, status change recovery rate), intelligence (spell strength) and luck (item dropping), increase with level.
The entire game map, which includes a normal castle and an inverted castle, which contains harder enemies, is gargantuan in proportion to other games of its kind. Each map block is considered a room, which is about a screen length long. I have been through over 2000 rooms. There are about 14 or so areas in both of the castles, the areas are rooms of the castle that are closely related. I was thoroughly confused about the locations of the separate areas when I first played the game, you get the idea of how large it is.
The normal enemies are generally easy to avoid, with the exception of enemies with throwing items and that float around while chasing you. There are a great number of normal enemies in the game, I believe near 200, most are completely different from one another. The bosses are the normal 2D platform fare, generally hard the first time but easy after you learn their patterns. A few though, such as Galamoth might keep you trying for quit a while though.
The game really shines in the area of weapons and items. I haven't even got an estimate on how many items there are but equipment locations include right hand, left hand, head, armor, and two spaces for accessories. This results in nearly unlimited combinations of items, besides normal swords and shields there are also one-time use items. Quite honestly I didn't find much purpose for the use items, but many of them are quite fun to use after obtaining the duplicator item (allows unlimited use).
There are also a few spells to use to your pleasure, one of which allows you to shoot either three small fireballs which disappear on contact or two large fireballs that can pass through anything. Another spell allows you to hit every enemy in the screen a number of times restoring 8 of your hit points with each hit.
Three forms other than your normal half-vampire form become available for your use as you acquire them. The wolf form, which allows you to run fast, look cool, and bark the theme to Bonanza. The bat form, which allows you to fly, use sonar, and spurt up your heartburn on unsuspecting victims. Finally, the mist form, which allows you to pass through enemies, beams, and cheese graters unharmed.
The last important topic that must be covered here are the relics. They do various things such as allow you to chop candles up and obtain items from them, transform into the previously mentioned forms, and allow you to be accompanied by familiars which help you whoop butt. Of these familiars are the Fairy which heals you, the Sword which slices enemies, the Ghost which attacks and recovers HP for you, the Bat which flies around, attacks enemies and looks cool, and the Demon, the most powerful of the familiars which rips your enemies hearts out ruthlessly and feeds their pathetic blood to the cold earth...sorry, got carried away there.
Finally, the game contains multiple endings but I wouldn't give any of those away as that's a surprise you'll have to discover on your own. Now that everything that needed covered has been here's a tip if you want to get to the inverted castle: you must get an item from Maria and equip it before battling Richter. But be warned, by going to the inverted castle you eliminate two possible endings...