One thing you didn't point out is that there was originally supposed to be a CV3-style setup to getting Cornell and Coller on board; Cornell was replaced by a Lizardman in Castle Centre, and Coller was probably supposed to be trapped in the Garden Maze in the area the Thorn Key opens in Legacy, since that area is totally useless in 64.
I seem to recall reading about it in a preview, that you'd have to unlock Cornell and Coller, and Cornell was described as a 'prisoner of Dracula' which is why his original model [LoD second costume] is wearing a leg iron. I figured it was the Lizardman since it seems so completely random; I'd guess the 'device to turn people into demons' was just supposed to be Cornell's bed and the bloodstains are from a trip to the torture chamber where he pocketed the key.
Let's see now...I don't think it's a matter of Franky getting Coller's chainsaw so much as the Frank model being Coller with a retextured face and a new gun; the same thing was done to Cornell, his wolf mode was used as an enemy in CV64's Forest of Silence. I don't think the boosts refer to a stat system so much as simply providing an attack bonus; supposedly, there was a 'momentum' ability to Reinhardt's whip and that's what 'focus' refers to.
The guys who have made Castlevania64 and LoD, they should have teach Iga and his team how to make a true 3D Castlevania game. I only hope that Iga will take in mind these two games, while he is developing the new Castlevania for x360 and probably for ps3.
64 is the better of the two, with Legacy's additions, other than save points in Duel Tower, being rather uniformly terrible. Hi-res mode is barely playable, and the game's full of horribly balanced abilities, like throwing multiple subweapons at once, or giving one character a hitscan, infinite range gun with a skippable reload animation.
The new levels are a mixed bag, but it's a mixed bag of different kinds of awful. Foggy Lake is dull, the new Forest of Silence lacks the sense of scale the old one had, and Cornell's quest redefines the concept of 'filler;' whether it's being forced to climb one of the towers in Castle Wall twice, or the unbearably boring run through Villa's garden maze backwards with no music and nothing chasing you [or the unbearably boring escort mission that follows] the majority is just focused on time-wasting and padding. Art Tower is the worst since the padding is spent listening to ticking sounds on the pause menu or falling off an impossibly narrow rope, but all the re-imagined levels are pretty poor: Tower of Sorcery has lost most of its graphical detail [the sparkles in the background and floating bubbles are AWOL], Science goes from hilariously difficult to hilariously easy, and so on. The game closes on two cheap, stupid bossfights, the last being particularly heinous in that regard.
Henry is worse, especially as a replacement for Coller. He's Reinhardt's character model with what appears to be an axe armour's head thrown on the top, given a ludicrously prefunctory quest that really adds nothing to the storyline and no enemies designed to take his unique abilities into account.
Henry sucks, incase you haven't noticed! Not only is he a whiny brat in comparison to Malus, but I can't stand using him when he's older because I was being timed the whole time! I had to
I'd have to say though, that I like the level designs in CV64 better than in LoD. There's just a bit more meat to them in the first game and levels like the Towers of Sorcery and Execution just play so much better.