So I've played through the LoS Demo and replayed parts of Castlevania 64 recently, and a question came to mind. What kind of combat best serves Castlevania in 3D? What engenders a balanced game design of action-platforming? Combo/option-heavy, or simple. Hear me out: I won't deny that LoS' combat system is fun and very cool-looking, but I also found a surprising amount of variety in CV64's simplicity. To illustrate, I'll use two examples. Gabriel vs. Lycans and Reinhardt vs. Skeletons.
*With Gabriel, with the right timing, you can spam a Lycan by knocking it into the air and coming around with a spinning whip slam that eliminates the foe. (Or you can throw a knife and watch it explode). Later on, magic comes into play.
*With Reinhardt, you whip a skeleton, go into a slide tackle, and come up with a short-ranged blade swipe. (Or, jump in, whip, and then hit with the holy water or sub-weapon of choice). In LoD, you can upgrade sub-weapons to do more damage.
Now, it seems to me that the pre-programmed button-press combos of LoS make the game more about calculation, and less about player ingenuity. Also, the amount of combos, and the power within them, lessen (almost negate) the importance of sub-weapons. More importantly, the simple combat of CV64 means most enemies take less hits, which in turn makes for scenarios like Level 2 of CV64 where you have to platform-jump while dealing with medusa heads, bats, bone pillars (and their projectiles), as well as crumbling/flipping platforms and falling guillotines.
Meanwhile, heavy combo-centric combat doesn't naturally engender the gameplay rhythm necessary to dodge structural obstacles AND fight the enemies. In fact, it emphasizes the "fight action," resulting in more arena-type scenarios, and less strategic enemy placement (bone-throwers on broken bridges) and free-form pursuing enemies (like the Forest of Silence's running skeletons). The former scenario is also where sub-weapons come most in handy, yet if the scenario is lacking, the sub-weapons again dip in their importance. As a result, the sections of action and platforming seem to become stratified and separated in LoS as I understand it, which isn't the Castlevania norm.
All that said, I think, as fun/cool as the combos are, they might need to be pared back some and more lessons taken from CV64/LoD. That would go a long way to helping future Castlevanias capture the full essence of its franchise gameplay premise. Thoughts?