I've always been pretty forgiving about artistic liberty, as long as i enjoy the ultimate work.
I can't say I'm feeling any which way about this tbh. If this is setting up rondo, im not sure why they felt it was needed, other than to drag out Richter's arc. Which means most of the season will be original, which is ok, but yknow, why bother then. Might as well take some of the side Belmonts who dont have a lot going on and use them for original stories. if its just a massively deviated Rondo, then Im not sure I get that either.
I get the feeling that they simply don't want to keep using Dracula unlike the games, because it cheapens him as a character. it's something you can get away with in an NES/SNES game series with little story, based on old B movies which themselves had really loose continuity, with belmonts all being pretty interchangeable, but when you have a proper narrative structure, it becomes kind of an issue to bring him back after you've already written him in a specific way and kind of ended his arc. Which is their own fault if they wrote themselves into that corner. I wonder if they will find a way to shoehorn Dracula into what so far, seems like a plot devoid of him.
my guess is they'll instead find a way to convolute him back in a Symphony adaptation. hell, with how they changed death, and with Death showing up in Symphony in the way he does, I wouldn't be surprised if they give him a greater role in that. Some plot between Shaft and Death.
Either way, we'll see how this goes.
also it has to be said
It's not like they're race-swapping for no reason whatsoever, given the time period they arguably have better reasons for the ethnicity changes than they did in the original.
They raceswap because it's Netflix. A California based production company, with all that implies and carries with it. If there is not at least one (or more) raceswapped significant character(s) or subversive element (such as religion bashing) it just wont get made at all.