After beating the game I can see where the Bayonetta team got a lot of their inspiration from. I was also a little disappointed coming from Bayonetta to BloodRayne. Much of this game is centered around really annoying retention mechanics. There were way too many boxes to check (quite literally) and not enough substance to make it an enjoyable experience. The end game was a real test of patience to slog through. It dragged on for way too long. This game had a really interesting and concise story from the beginning few levels, then the game went into a totally different direction and kind of remained in this mundane and tedious direction until the final stage, and then the real for realsies final stage. If this game was consolidated purely to its "good parts" it would be perfect. Maybe it would be 1 hour long, but it would be a much better game. I think a fan patch or mod project would do this game wonders. The "terminal cut" remaster didn't change enough for me to be impressed with anything in particular. It would have been nice to have raw uncompressed (or losslessly encoded) audio, voice, and cut scenes. The only bug I encountered is when I was able to get out of the map on the castle stage. There wasn't any sort of barrier in place to prevent me from getting their, either.

All of that said, If I played this closer to when it was originally released in 2002 I would have been sucked into it without much complaint. It's not a bad game by any means, but it does have its problems. I can recommend it on a sale.

6/10