LTTP: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

[Lt.Chips]

I finally took the plunge and bought the PS4 version of RotN on PSN (there's a sale in NA PSN right now as a part of the Retro/Remastered game sales) just a few days ago. Like many of you I am a fan of metroidvania games, and as an extension, the Souls games.

When the 8-bit classicvania-style Curse of the Moon came out, I was blown away by how well-made it was. If CotM's quality is anything to go by, RotN would likely be a proper homage of SotN.

And after pouring in 10 hours and seeing all endings, I got about 95% of the map explored, some secret bosses taken down (I think I only have one left) - but nowhere close to purchasing the expensive items and weapons from the shop - I feel content and ready to wrap it up. Metroidvanias compel me to finish the game 100%, but man that can be a time sink!

I just wanted to share my thoughts about the game here.

• Looks like and plays like SotN. With clear influences from other great igavanias like Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia - which is great!
• Soundtrack is catchy and easy to listen to. Background music is an important component of igavanias.
• Character portraits/art is somewhere between the old and new (DS) igavanias - Miriam's face looks great; others are hit or miss.
• A whole gamut of weapons, all fun to use.
• Bosses were fun to fight, many of them required actually learning their patterns to win when you don't use consumables. When you don't brute-force the boss fights, overcoming them was as fun as any Dark Souls bosses.
• That said, the boss lineup was largely lifted from CotM (albeit their patterns are now all different). It almost felt like seeing an old friend after having a such a good time with CotM, but I kept asking myself, is this it? One way they could've circumvented this: include (many) more bosses!
• Happy to hear David Hayter's voice, but man is he one-note. Sounds exactly like Solid Snake.
• The placement of save rooms/teleportation chambers is sublime. Exploring this new, tough area, your health is whittled down to the point where one or two hits will kill you, and then you arrive at a save room. Shows how well-designed the game is.
• What's the deal with giant cats & dog's heads as enemies? They gotta be pets of the backers, yes? They seemed so out of place.
• Some not-so-subtle jabs/nods at Castlevania was cute.
• The Silver Knight familiar has so much swagger when you upgrade him. He will jump in front of Miriam and repel any enemy projectile by spinning his lance like it's nothing.
• Why does loading after death takes forever, but only sometimes? This was annoying. Also, some techinical issues with massive framerate drops in one late game boss... very unoptimized.

The only thing that confuses the hell out of me is this game's relation with Curse of the Moon. The cast is largely identical, both on the player's side and the enemies side. But they all act as if they've met for the first time in both games. I always thought CotM was a prequel to RotN, but that's clearly not the case. Now that I've played both they seem to take place in alternate timelines/universes? Anyways... overall, this game was well worth my time. Not as timeless as SotN, but still good fun that people should check out more.

 

[Nessus]

COTM isn't canon basically. Or an alternate reality.

 

[Petruccis Biceps]

Yeah I enjoyed the game and platinumed it as well, the food stuff takes forever :p

I was also confused about the stories compared to COTM. But the one thing that bothered me is they had so much quality music in Curse of the Moon but they didn't bother to put a lot of it into Ritual. There was a lot of good stuff like Defiler of Taboos

 

[Nicko]

Thanks for the write up, but I just couldn't support a game with such sexualized and objectified female character designs. Was a hard decision to make as I'm such a fan of Metroidvania style games.

 

[Transistor]

Bloodstained was everhthing I wanted in a new Igavania and more.

 

[QisTopTier]

Glad you enjoyed it, I loved my time with it myself. Figuring out the little nuances to the combat was fun



I need to go back and do a sword only run, some of the boss patterns felt really crazy later on and it was a little too easy to just end fights too quickly before you could experience them.



I really wish the rest of the content would come out already.

 

[AtomicShroom]

Bloodstained was everhthing I wanted in a new Igavania and more.

Click to shrink...

I really hope the game was considered a success from a financial point of view, because it really deserves to become a proper series! Bring it on, IGA!

 

[The Crystal Exarch]

ARISE, MY SELF AND MY SHADOW!

Glad you enjoyed it, OP. I loooooved Bloodstained to pieces, and I'm still planning on getting the platinum later on.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

Only thing I didn't like was the music, it just felt entirely forgettable and nothing stood out. And the main castle tileset was used too much. But playing the game, exploring, abilities, weapons, all great great great.

 

[Strangelove_77]

It was finally the "Metroidvania" I wanted. It perfected that formula.

 

[RiOrius]

I enjoyed it, but man, the Switch version struggled. Frame drops all over the place, plus a weird glitch where I kept getting stuck on the floor (especially after using a certain late-game traversal option). At first I thought it was analog stick drifting, but the thing's rock solid in calibration mode and any other game I've played since, so it's gotta be Bloodstained somehow.

Still, it had good stuff going on. Loved the crafting, especially once I found out that

Spoiler

level 9 passives become always-on.

 

[Dennis8K]

It is on my Steam Wishlist.

Hopefully a good sale price will come around soon.

 

[Maledict]

I enjoyed it, but man, the Switch version struggled. Frame drops all over the place, plus a weird glitch where I kept getting stuck on the floor (especially after using a certain late-game traversal option). At first I thought it was analog stick drifting, but the thing's rock solid in calibration mode and any other game I've played since, so it's gotta be Bloodstained somehow.

Still, it had good stuff going on. Loved the crafting, especially once I found out that

Spoiler

level 9 passives become always-on.

Click to shrink...

Is the switch version still buggered? I wanted to play it and was under the iMpression it has been fixed?

 

[RiOrius]

Is the switch version still buggered? I wanted to play it and was under the iMpression it has been fixed?

Click to shrink...

Things may be better than they were at launch, but I was playing on the most recent (1/15) patch and still found it a poor experience. Maybe it's better on PC or other consoles?

 

[Sphinx]

I am play through it as I post here and while I am having a great time with it, it feels very "Boot-leggy", it's not as polished as regular Castlevanias

 

[BanditoMac]

Been waiting to get this on Switch, but keep seeing reports of the port being utter garbage which is sad

 

[zektbach]

As much as I loved my time with the game, it could do with some gameplay changes, particularly around the shard powers. The fact that you can very easily grind some common shards very early on that will see you through the entire game with no issue is a problem. A simple Rarity = Power/Benefit analysis and patch would incentivize grinding for shards in the late game

 

[Ruu]

I just finished it a couple days ago and thought it was pretty good but I do have some major gripes with it. Not sure if anyone else would agree but I think the directional shards were a huge mistake. I would remove them and a great deal of the other shards as well. The directional shards force you to plant yourself and just spam an attack and with the windup/down time on using it there is no great way to be quick enough to react to attacks. I beat all but the last boss by standing in front of a boss and just using the heretical grinder until they died with little to no problems. I might have died like 6 times total in the entire game (and 4 of those being the first time you fight the sword guy with solid snakes voice (i think i was just way under leveled). I know my problem with the directional shards is partially my own fault (I mean I could just not use them) but by a few hours in the amount of damage they did was just too hard to resist. I am sort of starting a new playthrough where I'm challenging myself to not use them at all to attack.

I sound way down on the game but I did actually enjoy it quite a bit. Solid 7.5-8 / 10 for me.

*edit* For what its worth I played on the Switch and they have done "ok" with fixing it. Still some areas with massive slow down (tower and the final boss especially) and the library still has a section with 10+ seconds of loading. It was playable though.

 

[nded]

You can actually aim directional shards using the dpad while jumping. No idea why you can't do this while on the ground.

Just finished up a hard mode run and still really enjoy this game, though the pacing issues of the back half of the game seemed more apparent this time around. Looking forward to driving back in whenever the Zangetsu DLC shows up.

 

[Kaguya]

Handa down the best Metroidvania this generation.

 

[SantosStrife]

I still think SotN is the perfect Igavania.

Actually I'm really happy for both Bloodstained games being great.

I liked the game a lot, have the same quality from GBA/DS games and SotN. I'm still waiting the updates with more content, but for now is already a great game.

But for me the biggest let down is the OST, the only game music I liked a lot and keep listening are the main theme and the end credits. Is not as memorable as I'm hoping will be.

 

[SofNascimento]

It's a fantastic game. Playing SofN for the first time just a couple of months ago and then jumping into this one was a cool experience. I believe it has a few rough edges, but it's a must for anyone who like metroidvanias and/or action platformers.