Ah, I'm gonna watch it again now that my sister's awake. Later.
Edit: Okay, watched episodes 3-8 again.
There are lots of neat references throughout this season. Dracula's silhouette and posture in some scenes was probably the most standoutish thing alongside the portrait of Leon. If you pause whenever the camera is showing shelves or pages in the Belmont vault, you'll see a ton of little references, with the most obvious ones being potions/sub-weapons but there are also more obscure things, like the winged boots. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the smoke Dracula disperses into might have been a reference to his second form from CV3? Perhaps there's a more fitting comparison to it elsewhere in the series, though. There are quite a few ability references as well, though not nearly as many as there could have been. I thought the music overall was improved from Season 1, and the sound was better balanced; I didn't have nearly as hard a time making out what people were saying this time around.
The first time I watched S2, I got a weird feeling, and the second time confirmed it. I honestly do not understand why show Isaac wasn't simply Death instead. He plays the right-hand man; he should have been Death in disguise, not Isaac, and he should have thwarted Carmilla, but Hector would have escaped. Isaac's ability to forge devils barely plays any role at all in the show, so just change him to Death in disguise and almost nothing needs to be tweaked, then put Isaac back in the story and give him the new backstory along with his sister. Alternatively, he could have been Shaft. This would have fixed a lot of narrative problems I had with the season. Carmilla had way too much work out in her favor.
There are some scenes that are just completely worthless; most of them are Godbrand-related like the stupid dream sequence, but I also thought the flashback where Dracula was thinking about how much he used to enjoy killing people was a waste of time that could have been spent on other things.
Sypha's dialogue in the final episode was not very good, and I disliked the attempt to make it out as though Trevor had undergone massive amounts of development because he really, really didn't.
Leaving Alucard alone in Castlevania was a really crappy thing for both Sypha/Trevor and the writers to do, particularly considering that they made him younger than he looks. I'm very confused as to why they didn't just have Castlevania disappear and have Alucard sleep in the Belmont Vault or Gresit. Why did they insist on deviating so significantly from canon with these two points? It's a terrible decision that's going to negatively impact any future content.
As an aside, I really do think it's a shame that they didn't do anything with Grant, and that so many of the enemies were just... there.
I wish Hector had gone to Castlevania when he was a child like in the video game canon instead of knowing Dracula only recently.
I would have liked to have seen how Alucard escaped Castlevania and got to Gresit.
The scene where we see Lisa being taken away was poorly executed.
Upon a second watch, I'm even more bothered by the lack of spellcasting from Dracula, the lack of innocent devils and preferred weapons from Isaac (especially Abel), the lack of spells/familiars/bat form/mist form from Alucard, the lack of lightning spells from Sypha, and the lack of Belmont sub-weapons/holy power from Trevor.
Hector was perfectly capable of kicking ass in the video game, so why is he so pathetic compared to Isaac when it comes to combat. He doesn't even put up a fight against Carmilla. I suspect this was due to time constraints but that was caused by them wasting too much time on less important scenes. Worse still, Hector already knows that Carmilla cannot be trusted by the time they're at the water's edge; why didn't he push the b**** in? He didn't fight back at all and it felt ridiculous because we know he's killed people before, so why would he not defend himself against something far more hostile than mere humans? I get that we were supposed to feel bad for poor naive babby Hector but it just doesn't line up with his track record very well. I guess it does make his video game counterpart look that much more competent, at least, lol.
I like the snarky dialogue. I think that the character dialogue could have done a bit more to individualize the characters, though; some of it was a bit homogeneous.
What's wrong with calling the Belmont whip the "Vampire Killer"? >_>
Oh, an observation. Trevor says he was named after someone who traveled with Leon, supposedly named "Trefor." What if this is actually a muddled up reference to Sara Trantoul, and Trevor is actually roughly named after her, lol?
I know this probably makes it sound like I hated it but I don't; I quite enjoyed it, all things considered. It could have been much better, but what we got was still decent and there are some sequences that are outright excellent. I suspect that, just like with the first season, many of my issues with S2 come from time constraints, both due to run time and due to wasting screen time on superfluous stuff that no one cares about.