[PSX] "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!" AKA the Castlevania topic

We had this discussion in the IRC the other day, but I'd like to talk a little bit about the evolution of Castlevania games, and my own experience with them. I first played Castlevania on the NES, and I thought it was a really hard game back then. I never really got into it, because I just couldn't get past the 3rd or 4th stage. So, I went many many years without touching a Castlevania game. In fact, it wasn't until 2007 when I finally picked one up again. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision; I only had like 3 or 4 DS games at the time, and I was looking for a new one to get me hooked. I went onto GameSpot or whatever site I went to at the time to see popular games, and I saw a new release on the front page: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin. This game was my first experience with Castlevania's unique Metroidvania-style, since this was the first Castlevania game I played since the NES version, and I played the crap out of Portrait of Ruin. I'm not a huge fan of handheld systems, but I loved this game, and I always loved Metroid style gameplay (I still consider Super Metroid to be my favorite non-RPG of all time) so to add RPG elements to it takes it a step further. Although I haven't played every Castlevania game, I'm sure there are games in the series out there which I would place among my top favorite games ever. I played Symphony of the Night when it came out on PSN, and I loved that one, but I wished that I could get more out of it. Had I found the game back when it was first released, I'd probably, to this day, put it in my top 5 games of all time.

Anyway, there's my short little rant. Anyone else have any Castlevania experiences to share?