How did they butcher it? They reinvented it for a new audience that has different expectations of horror given its the 20s and not back in the 90s. That in of itself is enough reason to say why you're making radical changes, because times change. We've had 30 years of changes in the horror genre, and Ravenloft was not timeless enough you can just plug it in today.
The Core in of itself was a retcon by itself, the original Ravenloft stuff didn't have that. Vlad's "Oh its a tyranical government!" schitt doesn't work as horror in a day when it very easily just veers into politics and "Boy how many various people across the world can I describe that fit this exact stereotype", Victor's one made Adam the Darklord because apparently they never read Frankenstein when they were writing Ravenloft (and this ia day and age where the monster is viewed far more sympathetically) and that's before we get into the weird anti-athiest angle it had, Tristen didn't even do anything to become a Darklord and was a victim of 'oh the curse passes down how spoooky~' which flies in the face of Ravenloft's whole entire concept to begin with (where the Darklords have damned themselves to this hell by their actions, not just gotten unlucky), Tsien was a racist pulp villain that you could smell the orientalism coming off (You remember how much of a stink OA got for being put up on the DMs guild, do you honestly think they'd just drag this back?) and I'm 90% sure she was just an old comedy horror movie reference. I can keep going if you want, Ravenloft has problems for days and I haven't even gotten to the Dreamland's frankly insulting depiction of indiginous Australians, because 2E was incredibly weirdly racist at how it portrayed them twice
If Ravenloft wanted more respect, it should have been better written for play and not a "Ohhh its a brain in a jar! Take a horror check for hearing of such a terrifying concept~!"
