@GameDadGrant
Yeah I'm kind of enjoying it, it's not great but it's definitely not awful. Solid C+ in my book. If the story wasn't atrocious (and un-skippable) it would be a B- or maybe even a B.

In the lead-up to Samus Returns I decided to play Zero Mission again as well and man... that game is even better than I remember. When it first came out I was a little bit disappointed because it wasn't quite as tight and polished as Fusion, and artistically it just wasn't as stellar, but it's still a hell of a game.

@Anand
E3 impressions were mostly positive, but it seemed like they weren't really letting many people get hands on, they just had a treehouse person playing.

@deathly_hallows

I wasn't even bothered by the story. I mean, it's Castlevania. The whole story for that series is "Dracula is being a jerk. Go kill him."

And that's basically the entire story of this game. It's all it really has to be, to be honest.

@GameDadGrant
Exactly. There is no reason for 10 minutes of unskippable and incomprehensible cut-scenes at the very beginning of this game, which is why the story is atrocious and nearly game-ruining. Even Naughty Dog allows you to skip cut-scenes, but the difference is their cutscenes are interesting and are performed by good actors.

@deathly_hallows

Yeah it's weird that those scenes aren't skippable. I didn't find them as disruptive as you did...except for one. Their is a scene with Simon Belmont where he meets the spirit and it shows him...something...in a shard from the mirror. Simon is shocked by what he sees and demands to see more, but is denied. The player is never shown what he saw. And it is never talked about or referenced again.

Like...what was the point of that, lol?!?

Everything else is pretty tame and inconsequential, IMO.

Thankfully the gameplay is pretty fun. They got that part right, anyway!