Just watched the four episodes. Glad they're making another 8. Hope they'll be a little longer, too.
It seems they mixed the story of Dracula's Curse with the setting of Simon's Quest (it's not just the place, but also how it's painted - doomed cities of wallachia with despairing citizens and the recurrence of 'secret knowledge'). Both Koji Igarashi's hand at the script and the inspiration drewn from Ayami Kojima's SoTN artwork is very evident, on top of that.
Spoilers ahead:
I love the gore, it is somehow befitting the late-medieval tone, but at several points it has no significant narrative purpose which lessens its effect. The poled heads and the entrails as decoration in E2 would've had a stronger impact if gore came more selectively.
The characters felt a bit flat (like the cookie-cutter evil bishop and the other men of god), but then again, they were always very flat in what little dialogue there was in the games they're based on/inspired by. It is kind of fitting. Unfortunately, i think they missed the mark with dracula, if this is to be CV3. Rather than a devil-like warlock and an epitomy of evil, he comes off as a bit of a dork. I suspect this is Iga's vision of Dracula, rather than the Hammer Horror movies the first games were more closely inspired by, and i think it's for the worse. I liked the 'beauty and the beast' narrative, but the beast is a better beast than this version of dracula.
I love that it's a semihistoric fantasy narrative which dares to depict the social struggles of that world, so it's not all "dungeons and dragons". The peasants in the bar, the church, the minorities, and so on. It is also clear that the speakers are a way to be careful and avoid misrepresentation of Romani, but i'm not sure if it works as well as it could. I'd rather see them
be Romani rather than a Romani-like fantasy minority, that'd make the marginalisation, distrust, persecution from the church, and threat of pogroms feel more authentic (then again, nothing else is historically accurate and that's not even the point - But you have people described as Romani in CV2 so that's a slight break from the castlevania mythos).
It's also apparent they mixed up the internal timeline of CV3 by some. I think it makes it feel fresh.
Did you know Grant Danasty probably have a historical counterpart, just as Dracula?