Most of what Konami did to IGA almost taints whatever the fuck they tried and sincerely wished for Castlevania by handing it to MercurySteam, and makes it a very hard sell to look at what they tried doing in any positive light.
- Castlevania became annualized by Konami as of 2001, and one of the reasons IGA games may feel rushed is literally because the heads at Konami wanted him to make the series an annual thing. It is not shocking that arguably his best titles post-Symphony of the Night games, Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia, were as good as they were was because they had more than a year to make them. To IGA's credit, I can't name many developers who start and finish making a major title in about 9 months, which is exactly what happened with Portrait of Ruin. You can almost argue that its decline in popularity was the fact the games came out so often, and the teams IGA had didn't really have much cooldown time. While anecdotal, despite Castlevania being my favorite series pre-reboot, I was getting tired of the franchise for these very same reasons.
- IGA gave such an interest in the IP he was told to produce he was willing to physically relocate to other countries if they were going to outsource production. Instead, they kind of tossed him aside for who was, and you can argue still is, a consistently unproven developer like MercurySteam. During this transition, they cancelled not one but two Castlevania projects he was working on, and delegated him to mobile. One of which was a console game focused on Alucard penned as the game sequel to Symphony of the Night, and I believe the other was a handheld game, presumably in development for the 3DS.
- The salt in the wound probably hit a breaking point for IGA as he was working on a mobile game for almost two years, which Konami later cancelled for, and I shit you not, not being microtransaction heavy. IGA wanted a game where the core mechanics didn't have to be nickle and dimed, and the company objected so much to this approach his game was canned. His janitorial efforts were essentially being put in a bucket with no mop.
Konami has been fucking bad for years, but it's great to see how the collective have woken up, even if took their last key developer being thrown under the bus, just like the rest of their key developers.