Sooooooo... perhaps an appropriate game for which to practice thread necromancy! I finally got around to playing this game after picking it up for $20, and came away with mixed feelings.
As far as versions, I played the 360 version. I was initially irritated because of disc swapping, but after playing through the whole thing I was glad it's the version I got because of how trigger-heavy the controls are (I hate hate HATE the dualshock 3's L2 and R2 buttons and like the 360 controller a lot). If the controller thing isn't an issue for you and you're looking at this game, I believe the PS3 is likely the way to go, though - I think I've read the frame rate is a little better and that would be helpful.
I'll be honest - at the beginning of the game I basically hated it. It felt nothing at all like a Castlevania, and the story, characters, and setting all felt like super generic tripe. I very nearly stopped playing the game during chapter 1. As the game went on, I slowly started to like it more and more. The gameplay started to click a little bit more, everything started to feel more Castlevania-y, and the settings became exceptionally cool. I like that the level progression was kind of like the original games, where you went through the countryside and then eventually made your way through the vampire castle (though not Dracula's...). The last couple chapters were just a bit strange, though. I kind of feel like maybe Mercurystream had created the first and last levels of this for their non-Castlevania game. Then when Konami came along and had them add the franchise, they made the middle chapters trying to be more faithful to the series and largely succeeded. Those first and last ones, though...
Anyway, the music is serviceable and probably technically quite good, but it's just not what I'm looking for in a game soundtrack. ESPECIALLY a Castlevania soundtrack. Too bad they didn't get some Konami vets to do it in the way that Nintendo had Yamamoto do Metroid Prime's ost even though that was developed in the west.
So did anyone else play this? I enjoyed my time with it, but didn't exceptionally love it or anything. Curious what other people thought post-play (since the lion's share of discussion here was pre-release).