I have played through Castlevanias SotN for the first time this year and I am a bit surprised people hold it to that high a regard (
ULTROS!
says it is the best PS1 game!). Th edifficulty curve is totally whack (starting rather challenging, then getting ridiculously easy to the point of boss strategies not even mattering anmyore, because you can just tank them to death), the second half of the game feels like a ROM hack, but has no clever ideas at all, its new enemies are worthless due to how strong one already is at that point.
There are no good puzzles and the platforming is very rudmentary, so what remains is exploring - which SotN is doing much worse than the years older Super Metroid - and combat, which is only interesting in the first third of the game. A particular let down for me was the huge number of long sections that repeated the same minimal idea again and again. Hop-slash-hop-slash-hop-slash or hop left-hop right-hop left-hop right (and so on) without any variation or challenge. Almost every other Metroidvania I have played over the years was better designed from my pov.