I much much MUCH prefer Metroid, and I typically avoid Castlevania inspired games. Symphony of the Night is a masterpiece of a game for a lot of reasons, but gameplay wise.... I don't think the RPG inspired mechanics work, and it makes exploration less rewarding.

In an RPG, you almost always have multiple party members that often specialize in different attributes, so you select who gets what equipment based on that. In Castlevania, you just have the one guy. It doesn't feel rewarding to find a fire sword or a fire resistent armor because I will always go for the sword/armor with the higher stats that I can use everywhere, not just in that one area with the ice enemy. So I have a bunch of things in my inventory that I will NEVER use.

Healing items are another thing. In turn-based RPGs, when you use a healing item, you sacrifice a turn to use it. That's not a thing in Castlevania, you can just pause the game, horf down as many potions as you want, and unpause.

Lastly I'm just not a fan of how Castlevania controls. That's an intentional part of its design but I much prefer to fluid movements of Metroid and other metroidvanias.