yea CV64 and CVLoD are really the two Castlevania games I'm interested in the most, aside from Castlevania II's open world style, and Harmony of Despair's timeless co-op and 2nd greatest selection of playable characters, only surpassed by Serio's Castlevania Fighter roster.
with CV64/LoD 3D level design, weather and gameplay, CVII's open world towns and Harmony of Despair/Serio's playable selection, and add some character creation in the mix, and they could make even greater masterpieces!!
and its amazing how CV64 and LoD even surpassed the IGAvanias in how even the extra playable characters got their own indepth version of the story, but I do appreciate IGA's efforts in adding more playable characters in the games, like in PoR, even those Stella and Loretta's story and gameplay was somewhat tacked on, it still make the game entirely better than without it. Serio's Castlevania Fighter team gave them more sprites, animations ,actions, they could even walk, and still have their floating ability, except balanced. it's amazing how things can be improved, and if fans can do it, so can devs.
and CV64.LoD is so awesome providing great variety, a whipper, a magic user, and some hybrid, as well as some armor knight. well yes Castlevania 3 had variety too but it didn't fully dedicate the campaign to each character, in CV64/LoD, each character can have the full journey to themselves and be solid in beating it all on their own. it really is incredible that they were able to more fully realize their game than SOTN, and 3D is much more complex to do. well yea it did take two games for CV64 to reach LOD tier epic, but where's another story driven Castlevania that made the game for 4 characters to play through? on top of incredible level design, realtime day/night, and other complexities. not to mention the mindblowing combat that favors function and naturalness above the combo gimmicks of other 3D games.
there's a lot of things there developers can learn from overall.