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It seems all the patches do work for me. I would recommend this hack because of the good it does overall. I did notice that the character portraits aren't matching the next character. For instance, it will show Sypha but switches to Grant. Then it shows Grant but Switches to Alucard, and finally it will show Alucard's face and switch to Sypha. I don't know if this is an issue with the ROM I'm patching or what. I don't think anyone else has mentioned it in the other reviews that I'm aware of.

This hack makes the game much more dynamic, thanks to (among other tweaks) Faster animations switching between you and your partner (a la Bloodstained Curse of the Moon). It also adds Drop old subweapon on new subweapon pickup, introduced in Castlevania Rondo of Blood. These are absolutely necessary in my eyes, regardless of any other changes.

In conjunction with another hack from the author Mureisky, Castlevania 3 Revision, we have between our hands what I would call a Definitive Edition!

I love the fact that this patch is pretty much customizable so you can mix and match what improvements you want and which you don't. I only really wish that Drop Old Subweapons was available for the Japanese version of CV3 as a separate patch

This is the best way to play CV3 as far as I'm concerned

This hack is one of, if not the single most polarizing and ambitious hacks I have ever seen. When it works, it's one of a kind. When it doesn't, it really doesn't. But it mostly does.

To start off, everything on the Akumajou Densetsu side of things seems to work perfectly fine, aside from a shared bug I will get to. The game seems laggier than the original even on decent hardware and a good, optimized emulator, but otherwise it seems to be working just about perfectly (and even then, the lag might just be me).

Dracula's Curse, on the other hand, only works with certain patches and still has small quirks when it does. From what I've tested, any patch with improved controls (the Water Dragon, standalone, and all-in-one patches) crashes immediately after trying to jump, but everything else combined seems to work somehow.

The reason I say somehow is because of how impressive this hack is on a functional level. The subweapon dropping, reduced knockback, fast character switching, and most importantly the three character switching is all here at once. I genuinely have no idea how some of the stuff was even programmed. The difficulties shine through a little bit, as there is a shared quirk (with a bug) between both the US and JP versions: Whenever a secondary character (Sypha, Grant, or Alucard) picks up a subweapon, every other one gets it, too. Also, whenever they get it, it seems to take after their palette. For Alucard and Grant, they usually just shoot a mish-mash of sprites (although Alucard's ice looks like bats, which is awesome) and the same can mostly be said of Sypha, however her dagger seems to be a perfect replica of a book sprite, so she throws books. It's not my place to give recommendations, but if I'm allowed to, one recommendation (besides the compatibility) I would like it to make every secondary subweapon look "normal" (ie, parallel to a given character's existing sprites and palettes), if possible, since at least 2 already do.

Overall, some work needs to be done on the patch compatibility but otherwise there's no major flaws to this (frankly) miraculous hack. It is, in my opinion, the current best way to play Castlevania 3.