Castlevania fan or not, this is a game you'd do well not to miss out on.
The game is composed of six stages--all taking place in the corridors of Dracula's Castle. As Christopher Belmont, the protagonist of the Game Boy games and great-grandfather of Simon, it is your sworn duty to confront the ancient nemesis of your family lineage, Count Dracula, and bury him for all eternity with your time-honored birthright--the Vampire Killer. Castlevania Rebirth is set up exactly as you remember it--a mostly linear path crawling with traps, enemies and environmental hazards like collapsing floors. Taking a page from Rondo of Blood, you can also find keys to open locked gates and travel through new passageways--the purpose of these serve to lead you to caches of hidden items or shortcuts to end-level bosses.
The gameplay is pretty basic, but it works. Your whip can be powered up to two levels--the latter granting you the temporary ability to shoot fireballs with each crack of the whip just like you could in the Game Boy games; although it might have been nice if Christopher were able to do more with the Vampire Killer (i.e. swing across gaps, snap in all eight directions, etc.) You'll run across enemies new and familiar--even a few from the aforementioned Game Boy titles--like the rolling eyeballs, rope-climbing skeletons and hooded reapers that throw boomerangs (all of them from Belmont's Revenge.) You can use one of up to four different control schemes, but I have found that the Classic Controller works the best--it just feels right.
The graphics are done well--with some graphical nods to Symphony of the Night. Not surprising with IGA (Koji Igarashi) on board. The music arrangement is unique in a sense that it sounds arcade-like in nature much like the Rebirths before it, but this is by no means a bad thing. It actually sounds great. There are some familiar songs in the mix, including a couple of tunes from Belmont's Revenge and Bloodlines that badly needed a good remixing.
Overall, Castlevania: the Adventure Rebirth did exactly what it set out to do--it revisited the franchise's roots, explored the backlog of Christopher Belmont, and delivered a fun and rewarding old-school gameplay experience that many of us long for. Whether you're a fan of the series or just somebody looking for a fun game to test your gaming thumbs, you need look no further.