I just finished the season and I liked all the references to Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness (although they turned Hector into a weakling). There a few omissions that annoy me though, no Death or Grant is disappointing. Dracula never felt like a threat at all, he spends most of his time sitting in a room while his generals scheme against him.

My biggest complaint however is that the main trio spend almost the entire season in the library and that Dracula's castle comes to them. Castlevania is about getting through Dracula's huge castle and fighting him in his throne room, you're supposed to get a sense of adventure as whoever you're playing slowly makes their way through it and discovers more about it. The classic Castlevania games always show a map screen of your character slowly making their way through Dracula's castle after you complete a level and the Metroidvania Castlevania games have a map you can open at any time that shows the percentage of how much of the castle you have discovered since it's a giant labyrinth. The show fails to capture this feeling and when they do enter the castle, it feels really small. That fight scene in episode 7 should have been the majority of the show stretched over a longer period of time. Imagine the trio slowly making their way through the castle and fighting the generals one by one. None of the vampires felt like a threat when they are all destroyed at once by the trio in a single fight scene.

The show has the same characters, designs and story of the games, but it doesn't really feel like Castlevania to me. Maybe what I want is too video gamey, but I wasn't a fan of how the characters were static in one place until episode 7.