I cleared it long ago on its hardest setting, but I just popped in LOS the other night to play a few levels and see if I could get some extra fun out of its gameplay and atmosphere...and you know what? I found that rather than growing on me, the game has soured on me. I never outright loved it, but as I played it after walking away from it for a while, I just felt an indifference to it. There's a reason I didn't get the DLC and this reinforced that. I realized how un-Castlevania it is in its usage of practically on-rails "platforming," and how repetitive the combo-based enemy scenarios are, battling in what largely amount to glorified LoI arenas. The game isn't bad, but its level design doesn't inspire a Castlevania pick up and play/replay value. It's just hard to explain...this is a bit of an exaggeration, but a lot of the levels feel like re-skins, and you're doing the same things over and over again, and those things, as designed, are not very appealing in the long run.
Oh, disregarding the pre-programmed shimmy-jumping, it's sad how on-rails the swinging is, too. I tried to extend my jump and delay hitting the next grappling point in one of the waterfall levels, and it resulted in me dipping my toes into a no-touch invisible wall that resulted in that "falling animation," even though I clearly had enough time to attach to the next point and I believe I had begun to do so visually. Good effort, but sorry, I really need an alternative vision of Castlevania from this alternative vision. (And I could care less about this left-field Forgotten One plot that, while visually nice, looks like it came out of Middle Earth. This story is not compelling to me). Give me something more open, minimalist, and moody like the N64 games.