Playing as Zangetsu is a hollow experience

All right, let me preface this by saying that, honestly, I should have expected this. Guest characters in Castlevania games have always been this way. You get a character with their own moveset, but they start off powerful and you really just play around with them. That's...fine...mostly. However, we had to wait a long time for Zangetsu. More than that, it was given more hype and billing than just "here's an extra toy you can play with". It was billed as a major feature of the game, and a mode in its own right. What's there...well, it's lacklustre. It doesn't have that spark that I'm looking for, and far from reigniting my spark to play a game that I love, it snuffed it out.

Zangetsu at the very least deserved to get a story. Seeing either the story of the game through Zangetsu's eyes, or an entirely new story that picks up after the game ends (less likely), would have given playing as Zangetsu a sense of purpose, and a sense of discovery. For someone who's gotten all the achievements and seen all the map, the current Zangetsu Mode is sorely lacking that. You can get basically anywhere from the start of the game, and Zangetsu is only unlocked post True Ending. Yes, you do still have the ability to level up, but there's two problems with that. First, on the critical path you start overpowered and can easily gain enough levels to stay that way. If you take advantage of your mobility to get to sequence break, you'll run into enemies that give you trouble unless you level up some, but that still just feels like grinding...it's busywork. As Zangetsu, the game becomes a big playground with nothing to really do in it. Nowhere emphasizes this more than Arantville, an empty ghost town without even the ability to talk to NPCs, it was there that I realized just how little interest I had in just going wherever I wanted and steamrolling. I'd already done that as endgame Miriam, and there it had a purpose. Miriam could actually use the money I collected, could craft items with enemy drops, and power up shards. Zangetsu doesn't need to do any of that, and without the thread of story to tie things together, it all just filled me with a profound sense of ennui and borderline nihilism. Nothing I do matters, so why do anything at all?

It's a real shame, because there was a lot of potential to do things with Zangetsu. If you have him run a parallel story, there's plenty of chances to make that work. We know he was doing things while Miriam was on her own journey. There's even times where we're really left to wonder what he was up to. It would have been great to not just go through the game with his moves, but see the world through his eyes. Not to mention gameplay. Even with what a badass he is, there could have been progression, or at least some puzzles. Let's say that you didn't want to gate some of his abilities in his mode. You could still present him with unique challenges and paths to open. For instance, that cannon wall on the critical path is already opened for him, but did you know he can still open the shortcut with the other cannon? His fire sword lights the fuse. Imagine if there had been obstacles that required different techniques to clear. For that matter, stop assuming that they had to front-load him and imagine if he had to unlock his elements instead. Killing bosses could have led to him gathering their shards. After all, the lore tells us that you don't have to be a shardbinder to collect the shards, only to absorb them. Dominique could have had Zangetsu bring her shards in exchange for rituals that would afford him greater control over his curse, thus unlocking more elemental powers. Maybe in addition to money, sets of common shards could have been turned in for stat upgrades to replace the HP and MP increasing items, or like food for Miriam. Even the alchemy system could have still been used for accessories and armour, not to mention consumables, which the game really ought to still have for Zangetsu.

Enemies still deal damage, and can still cause status effects. Why is healing not a thing Zangetsu does? Why is a "you have all movement abilities, but you can't heal" mode not just a difficulty option or challenge, instead of being tied to a character? Especially a character that is not particularly difficult. All of this makes me feel like this content was not very well thought out. It's playable, and it works, but as I said before, it feels as lifeless as the empty environments left behind by gutting out content. (Seriously, not even enemy placements or upgrade items where things used to be?) The experience is all surface level, with nothing underneath.