Not a fan of Lament of Innocence either, here.
I thought it was pretty boring, with uninteresting environments that all seemed geometrically 'even' and there was not much variety to the playing field as I recall. I remember running into a lot of square rooms with enemies to kill.
By way of comparison, Devil May Cry had that damnable fixed camera but the environments were much more varied and, in some cases constrained to mix up the gameplay from the typical 'open area combat' elements. The basement of the airplane hanger in DMC was pretty much every combat environment in LoI. Also, the level design was more imaginative on an aesthetic level and the combat totally stomps a fucking mudhole in LoI's ass and walks it dry.
I remember that after playing DMC, I was thinking 'why couldn't a 3D Castlevania be more like this?' It completely stole the PS2 Castlevania offerings' thunder, IMO. And many of my friends, who were hardcore 8 bit CV players, felt exactly the same way. They were all pretty pissed off that Capcom out 'vania'd Konami.
Curse of Darkness is a miserable pile of shit. It's long, boring, tedious and completely uninspired except for the character designs and the soundtrack. The concept of the Innocent Devils could have really worked if they would have been more fun to level up. But even the animations and textures were terrible in that game. At least Lament of Innocence's characters and enemies looked all right. It was like CoD was developed before LoI but were released in reverse order.
I agree that the N64 Castilevania games were superior to either of the PS2 offerings, and that is saying something.
And Lords of Shadow, despite peoples' constant complaining and comparison to God of War, is WAY, WAY better than either of the PS2 games IMO.
