I'm a few chapters into the original. I'm kind of stuck at one part, though: it's in a big tree where you begin fighting giant spiders (which are cool). It's not always clear where you can and can't jump though, so I'm dying a lot by falling into surprise pits.
Yeah, that's not the world's greatest section, though I didn't have much trouble with it. I thought the original Lords of Shadow was rather up-and-down until around chapter 3 or so, after you take down Cornell.
That reminds me, though: something I really liked about Lords of Shadow was how it would not only drop references to things from other Castlevania games, but fairly
obscure ones as well. Take Cornell for example: the werewolf main character from a game that not many people played and even fewer liked (Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness on the N64). The big boss of the Lords of Shadow DLC was a bonus boss from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, another 3D Castlevania game that wasn't especially well-received.
I hope this trend continues with Lords of Shadow 2, and it seems like it does because the mysterious warrior at the end of the teaser trailer looks a
lot like Hector Belmont from Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (the
other troubled PS2 Castlevania game). Plus, Konami's already confirmed that Gabriel will be fighting Belmonts, so it makes sense.
I hope that Lords of Shadow 2 has more world-building like its predecessor as well, because the mythology presented in that game was one of the things that got me into the game the most.
I'd actually like to play those two PS2 Castlevanias some day, whenever Konami gets around to finally putting them up as PS2 Classics on PSN.