I didn't hear too many people talk about Rebirth after it came out, and I felt it was a quality game. [. . .]I liked it so much I was hoping for a Rebirth 2.
I agree. It was a bit overshadowed (haha) by discussions of Lords of Shadow, which was still big news and not out yet at the time. While it does have a lot of original sprites, some of the sprite reuse is pretty obvious, like the white Soma bats. That irked me for a while, but I got over it. It's a good game, that's a great tribute not only to the Adventure games, but also to the classic stage-by-stage Castlevanias. I still really like it. Plus, the stages would be designed a little differently depending on the difficulty setting you played on. That's cool. Makes stage three a huge challenge though. You have to relearn how to play certain areas.
I also agree with those who mentioned LoI. In fact, I have the game paused on my TV right now! I still love this game. The first Castlevania I played was Circle of the Moon, but Lament was the first one I ever personally owned, so it does have a little nostalgia attached to it. But it has a fantastic soundtrack, and really beautiful, well-stylized graphics. I vastly prefer its appearance to that of CoD. This is also consistant with my view of 3D games with third-person perspective, but I really like automatic cameras that follow the action. This game does it pretty well, though not as well as LoS does (it being the only other 3D Castlevania with this kind of camera).
I love the combos, and it's fun messing with them to combine different moves for combat variety. Subweapons were made especially interesting with a system similar to the spellbooks in HoD, though instead you used the orbs obtained from beating each boss (+ the white orb). Relics really add to the experience as well. It'd be cool if one of our upcoming LoS sequels were to use this kind of system. LoS had an updated (and IMO improved) version of LoI's whip combo system, but the limited subweapons got kind of boring.
While largely repatative, LoI's stages are all pretty cool. They are all distinct from one another that you know where you are when you load your game. Yes, they all have silly hallways absent of enemies, but something I've always liked is the unique rooms that stand out. To me they're memorable, and one of the main things I think about when I think of this game. For instance, there's the room you traverse a room full of platforms in the aquaduct area before the ice elemental boss, there's the timed platforming segment in the Alchemy Laboratory, Peeping Eye/ Skeleton bowling in the Cathedral, the room in the theater where you can jump down from the first floor to the second and fight those two ogres, the neat coin minigame in the aquaduct area that you use to get to certain areas... etc.
I also like the story. It's really campy and predictable, but I've just always liked it. The cutscenes look really nice too, and the music that accompanies them fits each moment so well. I especially like the song that plays alongside Mathias' speech at the end of the game before the Death fight.
...That went on longer than expected. Now back to my game!