Spoilers for the entire story:
So yeah, the story is fine. However, I was surprised at how much IGA recycled his own tropes. There's the "good guy is actually controlled by a bad guy"-element from SotN, Zangetsu is a very obvious Belmont analogue complete with the "I could curpstomp you at any moment but I choose not to"-attitude, a character who pretends he's evil but is actually doing this because he's trying to protect the main character, and of course the betrayal from someone who pretented to be your ally.
I still have to replay the game, so I'm not sure about this, but I didn't really like the "character who pretends to be an asshole but is actually doing it to protect the main character"-element, because it relies on Miriam and Alfred not properly communicating with each other. This is actually lampshades by Zangets when he says that if he could have teamed up with Alfred and Miriam, the first part of the game would be over in five minutes. So I feel they could have come up with a better reason for why this team up didn't happen.
The story was kind of "meh" for me...I didn't really get invested in the beginning, but his recycling of ideas certainly didn't help it, either. Not only in story, but in gameplay elements, as well. Spike-nullifying armor, familiars, a huge waterfall, the doppleganger, a librarian, and those are just off the very top of my head. I still really love the game for what it is (I think I actually liked this better than the GBA and DS games, tbh), but it feels like a patchwork of previous CV games, especially SotN.
One thing that I missed the most in Bloodstained RotN was the creepiness on the CV games. The supposedly dark and scary areas were not so impressive.
Just remember the perfect SotN Catacombs. This is probably the best creepy area in ALL Castlevania games. I missed that a lot in RotN.
I feel the same. I really love RotN and Curse of the Moon, but they still can't touch CV in terms of atmosphere and enemies, especially the earlier games. But for me, they don't really have to, either. Bloodstained could never really be a replacement for CV. I like to look at it as its own series. And both Bloodstained games were really, really fun to play.
I never expected IGA to step out of his own shoes for this game. As the sole creator/director he only has so much in his well of creativity before falling back on old ideas. It happened while he was making CV games I noticed. I think there should have been more creativity involved. This would have allowed IGA to dip his bucket into other wells of creativity and bring up some fresh ideas cause there's only so much one person can do over a few decades.
I really think this could've helped, too. He could've gotten help from someone for the storyline, or started with basic ideas and handed the rest over to someone else entirely. Then just keep his focus on making the gameplay tight and fun. He seems to be really good at building great gameplay, but it really takes a lot of effort to come up with a compelling, cohesive story.