Boss Battle Information

Options are nice but sometimes having too many muddies the water.

Weaknesses are already part of Castlevania. How important or useful depends on the game. Order of Ecclesia is really good at using them.

If the demo has damage numbers by default as well as enemy names is there really a reason to make those shards to get? Seems kind of superfluous.

That's what I'm thinking.  While it would be interesting to see again, I'm more of the mind that seeing damage numbers & enemy names should be by default.

Surely, there doesn't need to be Shards obtained in the game devoted to displaying combat feedback.

I also don't agree with the need of buying or collecting things for bestiary info or enemy names. 

In the newest games, many things in the Igavania formula was changed for the better in my opinion. Enemy names when you attack them and bestiary with unlockable information. ( itens and shard dropped are ? until you obtain / discover them). Backdash and slide and damage indicators (numbers). All of that should be on by default. 

Hello all. Thought I would weigh-in on this topic. Not sure how I missed it from January.

Health bars...YES! A hundred times, YES! The small enemies don't need health bars, but bosses absolutely do need them. I know that IGAvania games tend to not have them, but the classic CV games did. So did the N64 games, the PS2-era CV games, and the Lords of Shadow games. This is something that I hope makes it into the final game. I love the way they did the health bars in Lament of Innocence.

As for my vote, I would like to have health bars, damage numbers, and a flash on the enemies when you connect with a hit. I prefer the health bar centered, at the bottom of the screen, along with the boss's name. (As opposed to the upper right...although upper right is better than not at all.) Also, if you don't have the health bar with the boss's name, you could battle something and not even know what it was called unless you open up your bestiary (aside from some cutscene that displays the name on a stop-frame image).

This health bar topic is something that I have run into on other games as well. I just don't get why people would NOT want them. It's the same with Monster Hunter--one of my most favorite game series'. Most hardcore MH fans will vehemently oppose health bars. I feel like they would make the game even better. It's one of those QoL additions that make for a better game, IMO. Let's not devolve to a less functional boss fight.

I would also like to have boss health bars, damage numbers, enemy names, ability to drop items from candles, etc all turned on by default. Leave the relics to things like double jump, griffon wing, and other traversal-related abillities.

Health bars make the most sense imo in games that are more difficult, and as an indicator to how effective you're being against a (usually pretty hard) enemy. In Igavania style games, I agree that it's more entertaining to not know how much more of the fight is left, it just adds to the suspense and surprise all while not being hard enough anyway to where you NEED to know how much more is left.

OG Castlevania games and the 3D ones benefited from this, and definitely games like Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, etc.

In any case, coming back to this topic, the display of enemy health-bars [by default] would most likely only be a thing in CLASSIC MODE.

And by "enemy health-bars", I don't mean for every enemy. I mean BOSS enemies.

Yeah, though only within the bounds of Classic Mode.  Not the actual Igavania-style main game.