I never liked castelvania. Any of them. Though I did download and play... what was it... uh... Symphony of the night? I think. I played that for all of 5 minutes. Before I turned it off and its still collecting dust on my HDD D:

- Shanoa is the main character - first time a female stars

or not.

Hahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

The story sounds so dumb. I guess it's fitting though.

Yeah, it's a shame because the story should live up to all the great storylines in the series. Who could forget classics like "Dracula is bad, kill him" and "Your best friend is a traitor"?

- Returning from previous versions: Leveling-up, dodging (L/R buttons), select button to switch between map and stats, hard difficulty setting, multiple endings, Wi-Fi support

I wonder if that means HoD's dashing back and forward system will return in this game? Despite how bad the music quality is in that game (I've learned from listening to remixes that the music itself actually wasn't that bad when played using better quality midis or real instruments) I still love HoD because of that dashing system.

- Can create combos

Seriously? About damn time. I look at other modern 2D side-scrollers such as MegaMan ZX or Konami's own CV-ish Shaman King games that both had at the least 3 different animations when you attacked and I can't help but feel that CV is falling behind the times in this area. I always thought it'd be pretty awesome to have LoI or CoD's combo system in one of the 2D CVs. It'd add more to the battle system and using different weapon types would have more meaning if they did different combos.

- Side quests given by rescued villagers - villager data available in menui

This makes it sound like there will be villages and NPC interactions in this game which would be a cool step up for CV games. Probably make it feel more like CV2.

- World map utilized

I wonder if this means world map as in RPG world map where you walk around to go to different places or just that all the places you go to in the game are shown on another map (probably a map of Europe, Romania or Translyvania or whatever) when you for instance use the teleport chambers but in reality it's the same interconnected places system used in previous games. I'm expecting the second one but either way this still means that you get to go out of the damn castle for a change (heh, be cool if they made the game feel sorta 2 parted like how the upside down castle made SotN feel and make the 2nd part of this game Dracula's Castle).