I definitely enjoyed it more than Season 3 myself.
I hold by my ideas that this sort of thing would be way better served as a movie, or fewer, but longer, episodes, like an OVA.
As someone who liked Lords of Shadow, my take is always that it's interesting to see where they go with the source material.
Super super spoilery thoughts ahead:
If I had some serious complaints it's that there's a fair bit of padding, in the form of a lot of throwaway characters. The handful of vampires that the trio fight on their way to St Germain, for example, served absolutely no purpose but as padding. Even the foreign vampires from Season 1 were at least somewhat established as minor characters.
The whole Targovista thing was way beyond under baked I felt. They introduced that character and don't do anything with her. her plot arc has little substance beyond the twist that the royal family is dead, which itself was kind of a worthless item which exists solely for that character, but nothing really comes of it other than Trevor finding some loot, and advancing the plot forward.
St Germain's part in all of this surprised me, and then surprised me again that they didn't go where I thought they would go. The moment Isaac started talking about change and how his goals had changed, I knew they weren't gonna do him like in the game. He no longer sought Dracula's return. but St Germain did. I was *certain* they were going to sub him for Isaac. He has the facial structure for it. I was sure, practically right up until the end, that they were going to do that, since the whole alchemical hermaphrodite seemed really contrived to actually happen. So surprise surprise when it actually does, and actually works. Well. For the brief moment, anyway.
The twist of Death being the final boss surprised me, I definitely didn't see it coming. I saw them acknowledge his existence early on, but the twist of him actually being both Varney and the Infinite Corridor lady, caught me off guard. Pleasantly surprised me though, that the shithead Varney turned out to *actually* be the big shot he kept claiming to be. Although, it was a bit off putting to see big bad death still talking with that generic cockney kind of foul mouthed accent. Considering how he spoke as the woman, they could've toned that down a bit in his death form.
Greta of Danesti was a surprise, but felt a bit underused at the very end. But, it's still better than Grant has had in a long time, and the character was fine, so whatever. It works.
I'm a *bit* disappointed we didn't get a nice sequence of the 4 of them all being badass together.
The twist at the end of Dracula and Lisa both being back to life definitely surprised me, but creatively, was clearly a loose end to continue the series again down the road. I am more than willing to bet that if they were to take up Simon, you can easily see a scenario not unlike how the story started:
Lisa over the decades dies due to human lifespan. Dracula continues to hide around, accepting that she died happy, etc etc whatever- and then someone does something to wrong him, and the whole thing starts all over again. And they can macguffin some magicky bullshit too if they like.
As for the infinite corridor itself, Can someone say, "chaos"? because I definitely got those vibes from it, as far as being a weird extra-dimensional energy/spacetime thing.
As for Hector and Isaac themselves, I was interested in how Isaac turned around. Hector was kind of... "There", and it doesnt feel like he really grew much as a character with goals, like Isaac did, by the end. The Vampire sisters broke up and that's that, they didn't have to *die*, but something about it felt a bit disjointed. Again, I feel like things like that suffer from being a continuation of plot threads from last season. you've already forgotten the character motivations and inner workings, etc.
Overall, better than Season 3, way better- In fact, You could say it feels like 3 and 4 should've been one long season, with some of the inbetween cut out.
I do definitely hope they do more. I'm not expecting a whole animated franchise out of this or anything, but overall, I was pleased enough with the whole thing that I would be curious enough to want more at some point. Taking the story up a hundred or two hundred years later.
Hopefully slightly smoother animation when we get there.
final thought which bugged me:
What the fuck was with
the whip disappearing every other episode. One episode it was there, then in the next it seems as if it's gone, and Trevor acts as if he had no weapon, only to pull it back out of his ass again later. This is reflected in the animation, mind you- And this is the same animation that made *sure* to include the tracking beacon on the back of whatsername's collar in every scene she was in after it's placed there, so it's not like they are overlooking details. Then near the end, when the trio is fighting those vampires, Trevor pulls out the leather whip that we haven't seen in ages, only to again pull out the chain whip for the final fight. That really genuinely aggravated me, bot more specifically confused me, because I'd find myself thinking "wait, did he lose the whip? When did that happen, wait where did I miss that part?"