Castlevania or Castleroids?

Everyone’s heard 1000 retrospectives explaining how Symphony of the Night revolutionized the Castlevania series, or read glowing reviews of it’s hand-held successors…the vast non-linear structure, the thousands of hidden items, the "depth" of the RPG leveling system, etc, etc. This article not going to argue with Symphony of the Night’s quality, however, it is going to argue that certain good elements of the series’ gameplay were discarded and lost when the Castlevania series turned into Gothic Metroid.