It bothers me it’s what the genre ended up called as the term was originally used to describe SOTN just because it was Castlevania doing a Metroid thing. Seems weird to then go on to use that to describe all future games that also did a Metroid thing
Yeah I’m a Retrovania fan myself. I like SOTN a lot but it’s both a worse Metroidvania than Metroid (and I’ve always disagreed with the genre partly being named after it) and a worse Castlevania than the classic ones.
When I had driving lessons I was in a retro phase and was playing the original Castlevania, when my instructor asked what I played and I said that he hit me with “I played that when I was younger, have they not made anymore games?”