Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

This is a fantastic metroidvania, even if you don’t really like them. The difficulty level is perfect, it’s challenging but not frustrating. You will get stuck, but some careful exploration of the map will save the day, although there are two or three spots where it’s not all obvious where to go or what to do next. The abilities are fun and the plethora of weapons with unique abilities keeps things interesting.
The cast of characters is fun too, even if Miriam isn’t the most charismatic protagonist. There’s lots of little secrets and Easter eggs to discover. Almost finished, I’m liking this way more than I thought I would!

I love this game. This straight up feels & plays like a modern day Castlevania game. Even though the game has a brilliant artstyle and music, there are some problems which need to be addressed that doesn't make the game pixel perfect.

- 1. The Bosses: You won't be having a fun & memorable time fighting these bosses as they suck @ss. The only engaging boss in the game is probably Zangetsu as he has some interesting and good movesets that you need to study, in order to defeat him. And for some reason, the big monsters are soo boring to fight as compared to human size bosses which is such a shame. Also, the BloodLess fight was the worst & unfair at times.

-2. The Dlc Costume Integration: I think the developers missed a huge oppurtunity here to make character skins and armour sets different entities as now, after owning the Succubus skin dlc I cannot equip her skin without changing my armour which is quite annoying.

-3. I wished there was a quick access item section in the game just like any Souls game which allowed me to use any item on the go. The repetitive nature of opening the inventory, search for the item, and use it gets quite exhausting when you're half through the game.

Other than that, it's quite a fun & engaging game with a ginormous map with unique locations that will take you hours to complete. Also, if you're not a big story driven game guy, you're in for a treat as the story is linear and doesn't diverge into several plotlines. Would recommend.

It's honestly great that we got another Metroidvania/Action-adventure Platformer from the creator of Castlevania SotN...
But...
See this is one of the few times I wish there was a "Meh..." rating on Steam. At its core, it is a great game that is packed with loads of content. Not only in the base game, but also in bonus modes such as playing as other characters, boss rush, and even a built-in randomizer. There's a huge variety of weapons, abilities, enemies, bosses, and even food! And artistically the majority of the game looks incredible.
The "Meh" portion of this game though is its lack of polish in most aspects of the game. None of the bonus modes have descriptions so if you don't follow the game's news articles (from years ago at this point), you'll have no idea what most of them are until you jump in, and even then you may still not be sure what's going on. Some are sorta self-evident, like Boss Rush, or Randomizer (if you've ever seen a randomizer mod in another game at least), but most are not. What is Chaos mode? Classic? Boss Revenge?
The lack of descriptions isn't just in the game modes though. The in-game item descriptions can be lacking or even outright not tell you about an item's ability. Did you know the Apron gives you a chance to double your cooking output? Neither did I until I happened to read it in the wiki. Others are vague in their ability descriptions leaving you to search the wiki to find out what exactly it does so you know whether you want to use it or not. I just use an "Improved Descriptions" mod to get most of that info now, but it doesn't cover everything unfortunately. Did you know that INT is your magic damage and MND is your magic resistance? I didn't know the difference until, again, a trip to the wiki.
Then there's the grind. Now to be clear, you don't have to grind, but it vastly improves your abilities and is almost required in the harder difficulties. Every enemy drops a Power Shard, which gives you one of 5 types of abilities. The drop rate varies from enemy to enemy but generally they are between 3-6%. Since these stack to 9 to reach full power (listed as the Grade of the shard, again not explained anywhere what increasing the grade does beyond "makes shards stronger"), that means an enemy with 4% drop rate has to be killed hundreds of times to max your stacks. Arguably the most important shards are the Yellow Shards that give Passive abilities. When these are upgraded to Rank 9 at the alchemist, they become Skill shards and are always active regardless of whether or not you have them equipped. As you can imagine, that makes these pretty strong. Getting a permanent STR up, Attack Speed up, or HP Regen is a massive boon. So combine the couple dozen passive shards with the low drop rates of both the shards themselves and the ingredients to upgrade them, and you're looking at a massive multi-thousand enemy grind. Again, not really necessary for Normal difficulty, but almost required to have a chance at Hard or Nightmare.
This review is getting a little long so I'll speedrun the other issues I had:
After the many patches that this game has received, there are still many bugs I encountered throughout my playthroughs; accessories not working, some passive shards behaving as if I have them equipped like Pickpocket, Familiars not unsummoning when I unequip them or summon themselves twice, etc.
While most of the backgrounds look gorgeous, there are some that seem like rush jobs, like the path between the village and the castle or the fact that riding the train backwards doesn't reverse the distant background scroll.
Guns, while a cool weapon idea, feel way too clunky to use as a primary weapon (why can't I aim anywhere except straight ahead? Could have been easily fixed with a directional shard that lets you aim it like other D-shards).
The characters (especially Miriam) during dialogue show almost no emotion. They could have invested into more than 2 or 3 preset poses. As it is they all feel too stiff, despite the voice actors killing it most of the time.
Despite all of my complaining, I'm still giving this a recommend for the sheer size and variety that Bloodstained offers. I only sound critical in hopes that the devs are still looking at reviews and may address some of my issues, if not in this game, then in its upcoming sequel. If you like Metroidvania games, I'd definitely recommend getting this one (probably on sale however). It's got too many flaws to make it a fun, replayable classic that other games are, like Hollow Knight, but I'd still consider it worth a couple playthroughs.

Amazing Metroidvania-style game. Challenging main and side bosses. Huge areas of different environments to explore. Items, armor and weapons crafting. Abilities ranging from summoning magic to manipulations and transformations. I enjoyed my time.

AMAZING spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night! Great graphics, sound, gameplay, voice acting (especially from Solid Snake himself!), and INSANE customization. Only complaints are that it might be a little overwhelming with how much there is to do and craft, and it can be a little too grind-heavy sometimes. Other than that, it's incredible! You can really tell that the people making this game actually cared about making a good game, which is sadly rare nowadays. Kudos to everyone that made this!

For all its quirks and flaws, Bloodstained is Castlevania in all things but name.

I was initially rebuffed on my first playthrough; I didn't quite understand what this beast was. I was playing as though this were a newer iteration of Symphony of the Night (SotN). Technically, Bloodstained is a modern iteration of Aria of Sorrow (or Dawn of Sorrow).

What is the main difference between these two games, you ask? About 20 hours of grinding. Bloodstained even takes it a step further: It's not enough to max out the number of monster souls (shards, whatever), you must also gather materials to improve those shards. The long-term power gain is absolutely worth it though.

Musically, I find the game exceptional and impressive. Visually, it's a bit of a hodgepodge. Full 3D modeled backgrounds for a game played entirely in 2D? Sure. They do some interesting things with it, but it can be hard to track where the ground is supposed to be. It helps to lean as hard as possible into the RPG mechanics to take the brunt out of inconveniences like this.

Speaking of: The enemies are a motley collection. I've no real complaints or criticisms, though it is still very odd and surreal to have to fight so many kickstarter backer pets.

My least favorite mechanic concerns enemies: Contact damage is absurdly high. The full 3D rendering does you no favors in projecting accurate hitboxes for a solid third of the enemies and most bosses. Consider this another reason to focus on stat bolstering for survival.

Despite this, I had a pretty good time.

I liked the base-game with the normal storymode. I think they spent way too much time adding alternate modes and characters. If they had instead spent that time on extending or enhancing the base game with its normal storymode, this would have been even better. Instead, half of what they made is pretty good and the other half is junk I have no interest in.