Loved it! I give it an S rank, which for all of those who don't play a lot of Japanese video games translates roughly to A+.
Right off the bat, we got another one of those amazing Twilight "Uuuuhhh!" frustration sounds, followed by a great visual gag with the book pasting Spike's feather duster.
Twilight was in top adorkable form, Spike had some great "Oh, great" moments, and the shenanigans with the four "exploring" the castle had me laughing throughout. I especially love how both RD and AJ nervously proclaim "So hey, if you left, I win right?" independently of each other after losing track of one another.
And Rarity's dejected - yet perfectly logical - "She's with me." response to Rainbow asking Fluttershy what she's dong there, while dripping wet and covered in tapestry and delivered in that signature fashion that only Tabitha St. Germain is capable of, had me in stitches.
That the organist was Pinkie I figured out a bit before they revealed it, but only like a minute or two before. When Twilight manages to calm everyone down, I noticed that the current roster of present characters was the mane
five + Spike, and then it occurred to me that surely, Pinkie + ringing a bell wouldn't last long, if anypony else in the vicinity of said bell had anything to say about it. "OKAY THANK YOU THE BELL SOUNDS WONDERFUL NO MORE TESTING NEEDED BYE." So at that point, I thought ok, I bet the "Shadow Pony" is really just her. I didn't mind it, really - I don't see what happened in this ep as her being "stupid" exactly, anymore than she was before. Just more random. That said, it would be good to see them do something with her other than
just pure wall-bounce kookiness.
Lastly, it was just cool to see them use that castle again. The lore in this world is actually pretty interesting, and I really like the fact that - if what we've seen so far is any indication - season 4 is going to be heavy with it. I don't have a favored theory about who the glowy-eyed shadow at the end was. I think it would be amazingly cool if it DID turn out to be Starswirl (or some kind of projection of him or something), but I'm not sure.
Oh, and as for Castlevania references - that I spotted, there weren't any
specific references per se, i.e. a particular moment in the ep that was a callback to a particular moment in one of the games. More just the general atmosphere of the castle, the pipe organ music, the trap doors and hidden passages everywhere, etc.
So far, season 4 has been ace. Can't wait for next week!
