Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

A love letter to fans of the old school, true Metroidvania experience. The spiritual successor of SOTN from Konami's golden era.

As a huge fan of the genre, Idk why I took so long to play this game.

Metroidvanias are one of my favorite genres and this is my favorite game in that genre. I've played through it over 6 times I believe at this point. One of those few games that I really enjoy going back to.
This is the spiritual successor in multiple ways to Castlevania. It's the ultimate form of the soul collecting style introduced in Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow.
If you enjoy metroidvanias then this game is definitely worth a try. They even added new characters and several modes since launch, including a co-op mode.

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.

alsmost 5 years in, I played this game about 4 times about now ranging from normal, to hard. And to be honest this game takes me back at times that Symfony Of the Night was awesome. The game direction (and its director) has totally taken us back to those days, and moved on beyond a bar.

There is so much I love about this game, let it be the controls, the way you can customize the character, the weapons, the equipment. There is just so much when it comes to have a custom game play.

The map itself is brilliant. Especially the way the layout is made even while progressing through the game while you gain new abbilities to go beyond the map you never saw before (yeah, that's a little spoiler there, but by the time I am writing this, this won't be... probably).

There has must been gone so much time and effort just to get this map down right in the way it is presented. It is a piece of art by its own. To be honest here.

Then there is this 'grind' bit. And to be honest, this is just for nerd. You do not have to grind much if you just want to have fun with this game. But there is this little gimic here inside the game where you are tasked to 'repeat' certain stuff. Just to get a better item, let me put it that way. But heck, if you ever played Dragon Slayer 6 from 1986... you know what that type of grind will be right? Ok... So that part is well taken care of, it exists, and is there for nerds. And I love that part too... since it isn't mandatory, or anything.

So overall, I am enjoying this game. I also love the amount of love that has been put into it over the years. Especially the 2.5D part. It works for me. It doesn't always have to be 3d just to have some awesome gameplay to be honest.

Therefor, thumbs up crew and team, keep up the good work. And looking forward to patch 1.5 ;)

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.

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.