Am I the only one feeling a bit disappointed?

Ooooooh, a doppelganger doll! That sounds like a fantastic concept. I so want this now!
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My opinions regarding levels of disappointment and/or not such:
I think in some way I did disappoint myself for reasons that are mostly my own and not the devs.
Y'see, I kept seeing this pitched as a spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night specifically.
SotN is my favorite game of all time. So instantly the hype launched me forward and I dropped $125 into it, first (and so far only) time ever backing a crowdfunded project.
Ran the hype train the rest of the way, with Bloodstained beating out all other games in funding (till Shenmue had to steal the glory x x ) and even beating the Veronica Mars movie after Paypal was taken into account. The marketing was ingenious, not only rewarding more content for raw dollars, but also for the amount of fan content produced and shared, spreading the word like wildfire, leaving the only thing able to top its reach being an E3 reveal.

They revealed the crystal shard system, and suddenly there was this twinge of worry, but I couldn't spot why. It wasn't for quite some time later that I realized the problem.

I was a Symphony of the Night fan, not necessarily a Castlevania fan.
While SotN is my favorite game of all time, the other games don't even make it into my top 10.
And the crystal shard system sparked that concern in me when I realized that although I came into this for a spiritual successor to SotN, what I really backed was a spiritual succesor to Igavanias as a whole. And at the time I thought maybe the reason I didn't like the others as much was because I don't like playing handheld games. This is my fault alone though, and I've decided to completely own up to my decision.

Anywho, a few months ago I had the opportunity to play Dawn of Sorrow on a modded Wii U Virtual Console
(Note: Yes, technically piracy. I modded my Wii U to play DS games I own that Nintendo never put on the VC, so that I can play them on a big screen. Now that the Wii U is dead and the Switch is a single screen experience that is only touch based in handheld mode, I'm 99% sure a TV experience of the Castlevania DS games will never happen unless Konami decides to respect Iga's work all of a sudden and make a remastered collection. Many people won't care for my defense, but I thought it was worth a note, for at least if anyone was wondering how I got DoS on Wii U.)
And I beat Dawn of Sorrow... but some things about the game still didn't sit right with me. So I've taken some time to sit down and think about what it was about SotN that skyrockets it to my #1 game that I will gladly beat over and over and over again, several times on every console (PS1, 2, 3, X360, PSP, PSTV, and emulated PS1 and Saturn at some point) as opposed to the other games not really scratching the same itch.

1. A big thing was certainly aesthetic appeal. The GBA games never really hit that for me due to the limitations of the hardware and I figured that was fine. (As a seperate issue, I wasn't ever huge on the Belmont style so HoD and CotM didn't do it for me in most aspects, though I still go back to them from time to time. I like the games, they just aren't my favorite sort of games. Also they're hard and I'm bad at games. )

But in regards to Dawn of Sorrow... there was a lot of samey looking environments. The color pallete loved white and grey, maybe some stone blue mixed it. Snowy area at the start, a completely grey area like Alchemy Lab, all of the warp and save points were white/grey/stone blue, even the garden area employed more greyblue than green like you'd expect. Other colors in the game were still pretty toned down, like pale browns. Not to say Dawn didn't have any visually distinct areas, but they did seem few and far between. The only area I can think of that felt the same way in Symphony was Orlox's chamber, and this was alleviated once reaching its outdoor section. Also it was a pretty small area and most of it was optional, serving for the most part as a pathway to the Colisseum (which is visually one of my favorite areas in the game, but maybe the music is what help assisted that.)
I've played a little bit of Portrait of Ruin and so far the environments look much better in my opinion. They do a lot more to scratch the itch for unique environments than Dawn did. Maybe I'd like Portrait more like I do SotN... if only I could do a better job against the bosses so that I could actually experience more of the game ; ;

2. SotN had a lot of character. Little things like the gargoyle paralysis effect, the room in the chapel where you can speak to ghosts, being able to sit in just about any chair, the interactions with the familiars in which some can talk to you (despite the voice acting), and the way they evolve and learn and improve, especially the Fairy as it got smarter and would even use elemental potions as helpful which would even in a sense give you advice on how to take on certain enemies without just giving you a chart to read... The way your cloak actually changed your appearance as you equipped new ones (something I'm super excited that Bloodstained is taking queues from)... there were a lot of little events like these that just seemed to give the game a lot of charm compared to the others. It's like... no matter how many times I played the game, there might still be some neat little egg to unravel. Which leads me to my biggest point:

3. Unraveling things! So from what I understand, in Classicvanias, the only thing really stopping you from your goal is your own skill and execution. You had all of the tools necessary from the start to complete the level, and while having knowledge of a few things like where the wall chickens were or where certain subitems were could help, none of it was going to matter if you didn't have the skill to back it up. Which is great for some, but it does leave only one way to go about the game: Get good. Put your skill and execution to the test, learn and improve, and win. And people love that, especially seemingly these days. But that's not for everybody— personally I'm all for the idea to a point until the frustration and punishment becomes unbearing and the game just isn't fun anymore. It stops feeling like it's worth my time, I put it down, and I move onto something else... never looking back.

Okay, so what does that have to do with my point? Well... I feel like the way SotN handled its difficulty was ingenious.
So I constantly hear that SotN is "too easy" as one of the game's biggest flaws. And 0riginally I just kinda nodded along and figured that for people who weren't me, yeah that was probably true. Especially if you're a Classicvania fan. But then, after a lot of experiments with sharing the game with friends, many of which had no experience with the franchise prior to this, I've started to notice a pattern. Is SotN only too easy if you already know its secrets?

Take Dark Souls as an example. I've played up to Sen's Fortress, where the environmental traps and catwalks became too much for me to handle. But before that, I used a guide to get that far, and the game was relatively easy. No, it certainly wasn't a breeze, but it was nothing compared to its reputation. This is because Dark Souls rewarded your exploration, your observational skills in both enemy tactics and hidden secrets, so well that it became an alternative to raw skill (At least for the segments I had gotten through— no words on what I haven't played.)

When I had friends play SotN for the first time and observed their experience telling them nothing of the game, those that charged through without grinding and didn't happen to explore as much got their butts reamed. I was puzzled at first— I run through the game fairly easily while never stopping once to grind and I'm certainly not very skilled when it comes to reflexes and the like, so why is it that my friends who are way better at me in that regard are dying to Gaibon and Slogra?

Because I had a better eye for secrets. I didn't even know how at the time, but looking back at SotN's game design, it actually does a really good job at making you want to inspect the areas in which it hides stuff. (I could go on a whole other tangent on how that works, but this post is already way too long.) Anywho, I was good at finding these secrets, so I typically had more HP and Heart max UPs. I had better gear in certain places. I never needed to grind because the secret rewards made up for my lower levels and my lesser skill. I simply was offered the ability to make more mistakes than my friends.

And this is the case of my point: There are three ways to beat SotN: Skill, Exploration, and Patience. You could run through the game without grinding and using easy to find gear if you're good at not getting hit. That's Skill. You could grind for levels or maybe a rare weapon like the Crissaegrim, spending your hours getting powerful so that you can face the oncoming obstacles with ease. That's Patience. I don't see the appeal of it very much, but others like that, and that's okay. Or, you can keep a close eye out, look for breakable walls and hidden items, maybe secret special abilities that your weapons (or dare I say, Shields) can do, and use that to power you up in place of grinding. The game rewarded your skill, your exploration, and your patience, and that reward was sufficient so long as you were adept at one of these three things.

I FRICKING LOVE THAT.

So back to Dawn of Sorrow. I really wanted to like Dawn of Sorrow. But the Exploration felt... lacking. And sadly, this feels the same way for what I've played of every other Igavania to date. Not nearly as many secrets, not as rewarding of secrets, and in some unfortunate cases, not even as well designed secrets. There were walls that I'd regularly wonder "How was I supposed to find this without a random check or accidentally hitting it while goofing off?" Almost every secret in SotN, I can see in some way the player is supposed to be able to figure it out. That's not the case in many of the other Igavanias for many of the secrets I could find.  And you know what Dawn of Sorrow did instead? It actually strengthened its focus on the "Patience" side, locking behind the game's powerful gear behind grinding for souls over and over and over and over and over and over to upgrade the ones you have. You don't get to find and discover the interesting weapons, you have to spend hours grinding the same enemies for them. I'd argue it's even worse than grinding Schmoo for the Crissaegrim, cause at least you only need it to drop once, then you never have to look at a Schmoo again. The Final Guard needs its soul for practically all of the major weapons. I will never forget re-entering the same room to kill Final Guards to get the best weapons. And that's for all of the wrong reasons.

OK, so what does this all have to do with Bloodstained? Well... my biggest worry was that I backed a game for the elements I loved in SotN, and that Bloodstained would likely be as faithful to these elements as the other Igavanias are. So while in my mind at the time, I backed the spiritual successor to my favorite game of all time, it began to dawn on me that I more likely dropped $125 on the spiritual successor to those "similar games that were pretty neat and fun I guess but not my favorite and I'd probably never spend full price on them." In the back of my chest is this sincere hope that this game will provide what I want as well as those who enjoy the other vanias as much if not more than SotN. But my hopes are kind of being poked and prodded here.

-Seeing a lot of whites and greys and washed out browns in everything we've seen in Bloodstained. It's got me pretty worried. The environments haven't interested me. I haven't seen anything that makes me want to explore it like I did SotN. It just feels like a setpiece for the combat.
-Bloodstained likely isn't going to use Shard grinding to upgrade your weapons... but a crafting system of some sort is confirmed. This has the risk of being as bad if not worse than Dawn soul farming.
-The demo... It was great for relieving concerns with character (Decent equipment slots, appearance changes are huge, and what's this? A familiar slot?! Yes!) But it really disappointed me in regards to exploration. For those of you who have played the demo and found the breakable wall in it (that wasn't through cannonfire). Did you find it because something in the game's design hinted to its possible secret? Or did you find it because you knew Castlevania had breakable walls so you were checking all or most of the walls for one just in case, and then happened to find it? Cause I'm willing to bet on the latter. There was nothing particularly distinctive about that wall. The sad thing is, if I remember correctly, there was another wall that did look conspicuous, had some stairs leading up to it or something, and it was nothing. That would have been far better design for a secret wall!

You could argue that no conspicuous elements make for better hidden secrets, but I'd argue back that going through the castle attacking every wall you find for the hope that there could be something there isn't fun, and it's better for there to be some level of design to hint me into checking a wall out so that I don't have to do something so monotonous. Because that just drains the explorative wonder right out of me when I start having to search for these things systematically. I don't feel cunning and observant. Just patient. That's the other thing, with the leveling and grinding and stuff, remember?

So all in all, I love SotN because it makes me want to explore. I love finding its secrets. I love powering through the castle with the secrets I've found. And the art and music is amazing and makes me want to see what's next. What other areas are out there. What other crazy enemy designs are there. I'm not in it for the skill based challenge. Lord knows I'm not in it for the grinding. I'm in it for the exploration. That's what makes SotN special to me. That's what hasn't hit as well for me for the other Igavanias. And that's what I find is really important for Bloodstained to hit the mark on for me— and what I'm especially concerned it won't do.

TL;DR: Bloodstained looks like a fun action game I suppose, but SotN appealed to me as an adventure to explore.