Just to be clear, I was not critiqueing Lords in my previous post. And I actually think changing the names would have been inrelevant, since they're just labels.
e105beta, I don't feel like debating this for very long, but I see your point about non-gradual change. However, I think it's also fair to say Lords sometimes stepped out the "parameters" established by the series. For example, the music doesn't particularly support a gothic-horror game most of the time regardless of quality, and the atmosphere of gothic-horror is completely abscent in the Land of the Lycans, while the Land of the Dead may conceive a sense of horror, but not particularly gothic (except Baba Yaga's domain, which is great). Last not but not least, the point I made earlier about the game's structure not being focused on a castle. I would like to emphasise these are completely fair points to make.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the castle section, nor do I think the game betrays the series in every conceivable way, it's just a few major decisions that spoil the experience. For example, MoF already fixed most of those issues, therefore I can recognise the game from being of a related branch of the Castlevania series. The game still falls flat in other areas, but those have to with overall quality and personal taste.
However, my conclusion is that both views can be true at the same time. I'm sure there are people bone-headed enough to fixate on very trivial details like soley on Kojima art, or like I mentioned before, on specific story details. It's as they say: the truth is in the middle somewhere.
Edit: regarding the "glue" that holds the series together, that's obviously the castle itself and the fact that it's gothic horror.