I'm sure there are at least some other Metroidvania style game fans here, so I thought it would be of interest.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/17/5514588/koji-igarashi-castlevania-leaves-konami

He will be giving a talk at GDC regarding Metroidvania games. From this article:

"I've decided to break out on my own to have the freedom to make the kind of games I really want to make — the same kind I think fans of my past games want as well,"

Considering last I heard he was demoted to making Kinect games, this is good news to me.

So does Konami have any good brains for them still besides Kojima?

It was inenvitable, Castlevania has been around for awhile. Sadly Metal Gear is their only BIG title to give a damn about any more.

Heck I was dissipointed when Zone of the Enders 3 was "put on Hold".

Konami is like Warner Bros. when it comes to making DC movies thats not batman.

I smell a kickstarter...

I liked the DS Castlevania games, but they were bloated with superfluous nonsense and everyone and their mother who makes a "Metroidvania" keeps copying that nonsense. What I mean are the RPG mechanics that really don't add anything to the game. Let's be honest, there really wasn't any real choice to equipment and skills in those games, in the end you would always use the weapon with the best damage/speed ratio and pick two or three spells you're going to use. Everything else was just padding.

That's why I always enjoy the alternate modes more than the main game. In Dawn of Sorrow playing Julius mode give you all the items and skills from the start, and you only have a handful. You can go explore the castle in any order you want once you find Alucard, and you can find him very early on when you know where he is. Levelling up is just a simple matter of getting slightly stronger, you'll barely even notice when it happens. There is no artificial "get item/skill X to get past obstacle Y". And you don't have to do some stupid chore like finding all hidden villagers to get the proper ending or solve stupid quests for grinding randomly dropping items.

It's fast, it's based on skill, it gives you true free exploration... that's the kind of Metroidvania I would like to play. And i would like to play it from the start, not have to play through bloated mode first. So what if it's shorter, it's more fun.

Symphony of the Night is probably the last console game I really loved and an amazing game. I'll keep an eye on what he does in the future.