Let's hit the good, because what's good here is VERY good... the production values. These are amazing. All around. We'll skip the graphics and move to sometimes-under-appreciated areas... music and voice acting, both of which are great here. The music definitely evokes Castlevania SOTN in all the right ways... and the voice acting brings some solid performances. Often voices in games on NG are... ugh (sorry, but... yeah), but this game does great there.
There are some minor... well, not so much complaints, but... the closest I have to a complaint is Anselm's oddly-limited aiming range. I don't really see much reason for him to not be able to fire straight up, but it's not a terribly important thing.
I would like to see there be more non-boss-fighting. The lesser demons are dispatched with astounding ease, and the zombies aren't terribly difficult. And then the back half of the game has pretty much no non-boss fights at all. A greater enemy variety and longer levels would push this game even further into greatness, but the production values do mitigate that... I don't feel like I'm playing an "incomplete" game. Just that there's room to expand in the sequel now that the harder work is done (and done well).
Sadly, I have to drop 1 star because of a game-breaking flaw... control lag. Sometimes Anselm does just keep going, right into something painful. Sometimes my aiming cursor weirds out... ESPECIALLY when trying to draw the pentagrams. It was especially awful the first time I hit the final boss. I spent so much time fighting the cursor, which wanted to slip off in random directions, that it was impossible to get the pentagrams drawn before my lamp fizzled out. I ended up just quitting and waiting a day to come back to it, I was so annoyed by it. No lag that time (ONWARD! achievement unlocked, baby), but still.
Still. I'm really looking forward to see what's coming next. Lil more non-boss level and fighting, fix that mind-of-its-own-sometimes control issue, and you're so gonna have 5 stars.