Metroidvania is dead. It was good in SotN but everything since has been a pale imitation that has failed to advance the series. Castlevania games used to be about challenge. Metroidvania has nothing approaching challenge. Metroidvania's lazy design strategy of corridor-room-corridor-room with no platforming challenges has influenced the design of 2 incredibly poor 3d Castlevanias.
Metroidvania needs to be put out to pasture. The Metroidvania games aren't even as good looking as Super Castlevania 4. They have these long, Hanna Barbara-style repeating backgrounds that are ludicrously cheezy. What little platforming is there is ruined by the lack of weight to it. If you fall, you don't die, and the platforming is so ridiculously simple and by the books that it is unlikely you will fall to begin with.
Sure, the moves are cool and the controls are smooth, but what purpose is served without there being anything that resembles challenge? The bosses are big and cool looking, and the castles are enormous, but it's all for naught when you're playing a game a 7 year old would be pressed to have trouble with. All the equipment, items, soul collecting, familiars, non-linearity, mapping, all these things added to the series, yet without challenge and weight the games are just a shell of what the series used to be.
I will admit, I liked the Metroidvanias at first. I have skipped only the most recent one because I am tired of them. They are like gaming crack, they're easy to plow through and the experience is usually compulsive enough to propel you through a quick playthrough. But remember, crack is BAD, and these games are bad. I can play Super Castlevania now and see that it is still great, but if I pop in one of the GBA games, I will see that without the novelty of new gameness, it is poorly designed shit.
IGA has to die. He needs to be killed for his sin. Metroidvania is like the Holocaust of gaming - it seemed like a good idea at teh time, but a few years later, the smart people are willing to admit that it wasn't so bright.
DEATH TO METROIDVANIA! LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!
