@broodwars
1. If I had to bet, I'd wager the new 3DS game will follow from the reboot's plot. So, take solace in that. Although, do you have a 3DS?
3. When exactly was the franchise "driven into the ground"? All the flagship games have been met with at least moderate commercial and critical success.
1. No, I don't have a 3DS and at this moment it's looking unlikely that I ever will. But it really depends on the games it gets. After all, I pretty much bought a PSP just for KH: Birth By Sleep; Valkyria Chronicles 2; and Resistance Retribution. And yeah, considering these two games (Lords of Shadow 2 and Mirror of Fate) are rumored to have some kind of cross-platform thing, it's likely the two share the same timeline.
3. For me, I thought the franchise first showed signs of growing stale around Dawn of Sorrow (since it was just regurgitating pretty much what Aria of Sorrow did), but for me it all came to a head with Order of Ecclesia. I really can't convey in words how much I dislike that game,
especially given how much of a complete non-character Shanoa is (and how what happens to her is IMO indicative of how misogynistic Japanese society can be). In fact, years ago when it had just released I was originally planning to write a fairly negative review of it as my application to become a NWR writer, but I couldn't edit my thoughts down to something manageable so I decided against it.
Besides, to put it simply, the franchise would not have gone on its multi-year hiatus after 7 or so years of nearly uninterrupted (and mostly identical, with minor variations) Castlevania releases if Konami hadn't felt they had hit a creative and commercial dead-end.