Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Klasse Gothic-Castle-Game mit ´nem super Level, Charakter- und Monsterdesign von A wie Äffchen bis Z wie "zuckende Gliedmaßen" und Upgrademöglichkeiten was Skills u. Ausrüstung betrifft. Habe extra nach Metroidvania-Games gesucht die nicht übelst schwer sind also weder Souls- noch Roguelike und wurde nicht enttäuscht. Viel Backtracking, da man gewisse Fähigkeiten erst finden und/oder erbeuten muss um z. B. verschlossene Wege zu öffnen. Oft hat man keinen Plan wie/wo es weitergeht, aber YT hat geholfen. Sehr gute Steuerung mit dem X-Box-Controller. Bloodstained macht süchtig und der Preis passt ebenfalls. Absolute Kaufempfehlung!

Bloodstained is one of those "Fine, i´ll do it myself" type of games.
What Project Wingman was for the Ace Combat community, Bloodstained is for all the starving Castlevania fans. Does it succeed? Hell if i know. I just wanted to try out one of those Metroidvania games and this one here was on Discount for just one and a half bucks.

Anyway, i´ve plaed it for 10 hours at this point and while it didn´t blew me out of the water, somehow i kept coming back to this game which means i kinda like it so far.
It feels like a PS2 game with all its menus, the dialogue boxes, the item crafting and its sound effects as well as the clunky animations. All of this seems to be deliberate, tough as i felt reminded of an older generation of games where not every game had to be a Sony 3rd person action game where people won´t shut up for hours.

Gameplay reminded me a bit of the adventure mode from Smash Bros. Brawl out of all games. The game has an "open world", which is basically a 2d Labyrinth with several stages where you need specific skills to progress. For example, you can only explore the cistern once you acquired a skill that lets you propel yourself forward under water.
Combat is simple, you swing your weapon, you hit and if you get hit or touch an enemy, that means damage. Not a fan of the latter, tough. I can understand that i take damage from a fire ghost but an old man brushing me shouldn´t deplete my hit points as much as it did. Maybe psychic damage from disguist? Whatever. You are not agile enough in this game for this to be a problem, leading to many situations where i was one pixel off and had to waste a potion because the sceen got so cluttered with enemies.

Also, you have different weapons in this game. Sword do the most reliable damage and i went well with those, but their hitbox is microscopic. There are enemies you can´t even hit because they are only waist high and you slash your sword above waist. Hell, even crouching didn´t help sometimes.
Also, some of the bosses are just nonsene.
There´s the afforementioned old man. He fights by spamming debuff potions and runs away.
Yeah, any bossfight that reminds me of Micolash from Bloodborne is a bad bossfight.
Then there´s your clone who feels like she was designed for a different type of game entirely. Some of her attacks were just straight out unavoidable and since you´re relatively slow in this game and your clone moves like a super sayajin, you´ll get slammed a few times.
I just don´t understand the design here. The first boss is so absurdly powerful that you will think you were too far already when it´s actually the correct boss you need to fight. Then later bosses are a cakewalk. There´s a two headed dragon who climbs a tower and tries to rip you apart from both sides of the screen. Was it hard? Nope. First try, maybe one or two potions had to be used but the rest was easy.
Then you get your face rearranged by the old man. Okay.

And why is there no real dodge? You can press a button to jump backwards, but since this is rather slow and directional bound, it´s practically useless in more hectic situations. Why not a dodge roll where you can control the direction? Would have made more sense and then i would have used it more often.

Oh and i would really appreciate if there was some sort of saving system outside of safe rooms. Fighting through several corridors of monsters and a lava pit is not very motivating when there´s still no safe room insight and a dragon blocks my path. If you die without a safe, all progress will be lost. No autosave, no quicksave, nothing.
Sorry, Bloodstained, but my countries Prime Minister said my generation needs to work 80h a week. Can´t afford a setback like that anymore. Even the Castlevania retro games respect your time properly.

Anyway, i am nagging quite a bit, aren´t i?
That´s because all in all, i actually like this game a lot. I mean, i gave it a thumbs up because it is geniuenely a good platformer with combat, exploration, good music and very good character design. It´s obviously a Castlevania clone but still manages to keep its own identity.

And i can totally understand why people are into these kinds of games now.

Dieses Spiel ist gut. Ich mag die Vielzahl an Waffen, Skills und Möglichkeiten sich zu stärken. Die Story ist interessant und das Konzept vom Game ist super. Die Gegner sind sehr cool und das Rätseln ist nicht all zu schwer. Ich hing tatsächlich in der Story, als man Unterwasser gehen musste, aber sonst fand ich es extrem spaßig. Das Farmen von dingen wird auf dauer echt ermüdend, aber sonst gibt es keine Beschwerden. Würde es auf jedem Fall weiter empfehlen. 8/10

Ein richtig geiles Spiel!!

one of greatest games ever

Erinnert sehr an Castlevania SotN!^^

goated