At some point, I had to review this. This is a title I have been waiting a long time on. Not just with the kick starter, I've been waiting since completing Order of Ecclesia all those years ago. We've had a lot of indie titles with Metroidvania like elements but nothing that really played like a Castlevania game, nothing with that level of detail and fluidity that I desire.
I have waited so long for a game like this and it's finally here.
Bloodstained is just about everything I've wanted in a follow to OoE and even though it isn't, mechanically it feels like that. The first six hours I played ROTN was the most fun I've had in a video game in years. It captured the feeling that I've missed of not just the Castlevania experience, but just playing a really fun game I can get lost in with no depressingly modern bullshit like buying skins or getting fake money with real money for the "free" stuff added, bullshit roadmaps as an excuse for lack of content. It's just nice to have something enjoyable...that also wasn't a Nintendo IP.
It was a goddamn blissful experience. While I can give general praise all day, let's focus on specifics.
Story.
Story-wise...it's fine. Let's be real, the story side of Castlevania was never a super strong suit, it's not a full-fledged RPG. It should come as no surprise it's much of the same here.
The general plot outline is that as the industrial revolution kicks off, wealthy investors shift their money from spiritual endeavors to more practical technology-oriented ones. A guild of Alchemists warn that should this continue, demons will invade that earth. The alchemists themselves going about the summoning, using children as catalysts for the ritual, binding them to demonic crystals called shards. Although one, Miriam, would end up in a coma for 10 years and be of no use causing the ritual to be flawed but still serviceable. Another child, her dear friend Gebel, would seemingly go mad and command the armies of hell himself in revenge for the atrocities inflicted upon him by the alchemists. Miriam, awaking from her coma, sets out to stop the person who once gave her hope at her lowest moment, promising to free him from his corrupt path by any means.
Along her journey, she is joined by Johannes, an alchemist who was strictly opposed to the guilds doings. He provides assistance by creating weapons and enhancing abilities for Miriam.
And Dominique, an exorcist with ties to the church and their trade, running a shop for Miriam to buy supplies from.
Finally there's Zangetsu, basically the not Belmont who at first treats Miriam like any other monster.
Really the biggest complaint story wise is that there are a lot of moments of characters just saying exposition rather than the dialogue sounding more natural. Which there are times when characters are actively explaining things to others and it sounds fine. But there are also characters simply talking and then very awkwardly slipping in backstory via a very contrived and forced manner. "You're doing this out of revenge for your parents" That sorta thing. There is a way to have characters announce their intent and thoughts without coming off like a Madlib bio, but this isn't it.
The plot twists are also painfully predictable, everything plays out exactly how I expected, which again isn't surprising either. OoE had that same issue where you knew the person that seemed bad was actually good and the person who seemed good was actually bad. You can see this coming a mile away.
That said, while the story and some exposition exchanges are a bit of the drag, the voice acting is really good.
Erica Lindbeck, Kari Wahlgren, David Hayter, Ray Chase and many more do such a fantastic job in their portrays. Plus Robert Belgrade returns in a surprise roll (I like to call his character Alucart) and goddamn his voice is still fantastic to hear. It's aged up quite a bit of course, which basically makes him sound like a rougher Alucard. You can also switch to the Japanese voices at any time, which I greatly appreciate. So hey, if you ever want to hear Ryōtarō Okiayu instead, there ya go.
I should also the lip flaps are all over the place in quality and syncing. I suppose that might the consiquince of the Japanese audio being included.
One minor issue I did find is that sometimes the subs are off or different from what's being said.
The actual voiced line is "Try me, you'll see"
That isn't too uncommon, I've seen the same thing happen in really big games multiple times, sometimes the VA reads it differently and they keep the take. Although I've never seen a sub box seemingly without an entire word and a gap where it should be.
The scripting for the flavor text also doesn't account for you possibly being ahead in some instances. For example, you get little chitchats with the two shop keeps in the game which sometimes provides where to go next or just general background stuff. I visited the shop and Miriam expressed surprised that the regular shop runner, Dominique wasn't there, after it has already been established that she had gone off. The same occurred on a second visit with getting a letter from Zangetsu saying to "cut the moon in the Garden" again, something that had already been done much earlier.
You just came from there Miriam! This is what happens when you eat food from behind a wall, your mind starts to go.
But, I don't want to dwell on small stuff like that, lets really move onto how it plays.
Gameplay.
The controls feel fantastic, everything feels spot on to any Castlevania title by Iga- although I did change the back dash button from L1 to Triangle. Aside from feeling more natural to me, almost all of your spells are mapped to the shoulder buttons so it just makes more sense. But you can customize them however you want. Using your spells or "shards" feels really smooth, it's easy to just cast stuff here and there while attacking with a regular weapon. Again mechanically this feels a lot like OoE with more refinement, so if you've played that you've got a good idea on how this feels. You kill a creature and you can get an ability from it, the simple formula we've seen before.
You get five different sections for spells;
Familiars which act just like you would expect; flying swords and ghost knights to attack enemies, faeries that can also assist with healing items.
Passive; usually stuff that provides healing or a raises in a certain stat, prevents poison.
Directional; You can aim these with the right stick before firing them off and it's surprisingly easy even during combat to shot off everything from daggers to fireballs.
Summon: This ranges from anything to summoning giant fire pillars to conjuring animals and beasts.
Manipulative: which are more utility. These are things like using a giant hand to move pillars, draining your MP to heal a small amount, a duplicate shadow for attacking, etc. These are probably the most seldom used.
Finally, you have skill shards which are upgrades similar to passive but that you can have multiple ones active and they're permanent upgrades that you can turn on and off. Walking under water, double jump, high jump etc.
In addition to the shards you also have spells that require button inputs, but they're relegated to special techniques performed with different weapons, similar to the shield rod in SOTN.
Strangely you do not have a second hand, so you can't equip a sword and knife, there are no shields that aren't also weapons. You get a single weapon to equip and that's it. I'm fine with that, it puts more emphasis on using spells along with your main weapon and I think overall just cuts out the middleman of having to equip spells to a certain hand.
The one thing I wish is a quick menu for selecting your spells. The bottom left shoulder button does eventually serve as a quick change of sorts- but it does everything. Your accessories, your spells, your weapons, it's the whole load out and I never used it outside of setting up a Luck based outfit for farming. I never find myself wanting to switch everything so drastically in regular gameplay, it's usually just spells and weapons I end up changing. I suppose there's nothing keeping you from saving multiple slots with everything but the spells the same- but that would mean you'd have to go through and change all of them every single time you got a new piece of armor or weapon which will happen semi-frequent enough. Honestly, I just stick to the menus like always. You can, however, favorite any item or shard which will always list them at the top, I highly suggest doing this for anything needed to traverse the castle. I do hope in an update they might add a quick change for just the summon and direction shard spells, the circle button on the controller as far as I can tell currently has no use outside menus, so might as well map it to that.
As for the shards themselves, I believe most people will use a large variety until they get into a groove of their favorites which they'll then focus on upgrading for a while before discovering new favorites. It really helps to be a little flexible and experiment. For my part, I love the welcome company shard which is a shield of portraits, very helpful with annoying floating heads and just damaging enemies in general.
The shard system is also quite deep. Not only can you enhance shards to make them better, but you can also combine a shard with a gem and create new powers you can't get any other way.
Crafting is a big component of ROTN and it's very well done. Aside from the shards, you can also craft weapons, armor, accessories and even food.
While you can find plenty of really good stuff from drops and especially chests, the absolute best components come from crafting them yourself much like in OoE. They also don't cost anything aside from the materials, so there's a lot of incentive to do so- although you don't actually have to if its something you're not interested in but I would highly recommend it. Materials can be dropped by monsters and chest but can also be gotten via quests which you receive in the local village outside the castle. Specific villagers will provide quests for killing X amount of specific monsters, asking for mementoes to bury for the dead, or something to eat. You'll usually be rewarded with material or rare items including accessories and weapons for completing these. Their inclusion is brilliant as not only additional content but as a way to encourage crafting new items and food.
They are not infinite though, so you will eventually clear all the quests.
The possibilities are nearly endless for crafting. Swords, spears, boots, knives, whips, axes, flails and muskets. The latter of which has an entire plethora of special bullets you can use with it, although ammunition is limited, requiring you to buy or craft it. As such, I never had a desire to use it myself and simply stuck to the usual weapons and putting more effort into armor rather than a special bullet.
Also if you're wondering they do keep naming weapons after mythological ones from around the world.
There is far more customization and crafting than just your abilities and weapons. Even Miriam can be customized to have different hair styles, hair colors, eye colors, skins colors, clothing colors, etc. Some of the items you can equip even become visible on your person. Usually hats, masks, helmets, glasses. But some dresses also change your main outfit. Although most of the time, if you're like me, you prioritize stats over looks and end up looking like proZD.
And yes, everything that you can find as drops can be crafted provided you have the recipe. Likewise, a few of the accessories have humorous secondary effects'; a voice changer that makes you squeaky in cut scenes- can't wait to see that at a GDQ run, squeaky shoes when you walk.
While crafting is all well and good, the real meat is the castle map itself and I'm struggling to describe how it is in any great detail. Frankly, all I can say is it is very much like Castlevania in terms of navigation. Navigating the castle is insanely fun for the most part. Finding little hidden areas with goodies, seeing an area you'll have to return to when you have a new power. The powers here are very different from those in Castlevania titles yet perfectly suited. While you do eventually gain a double jump and even the option for a high jump, everything else is different or has a twist on an old concept. One of the first major upgrades is the reflector ray, which allows you to bounce off mirrors in small areas. (Kinda reminds me a lot of Paranoia's attacks.) But it can also be used without a mirror to squeeze into tight gaps. This one is a little finicky, it didn't always work but I found double tapping the button would usually solve that issue.
Bloodsteal does exactly what you think and is probably the most questionable one as it's only ever needed to unlock one major area and it's general use is more niche, it's like a less good soul steal combined with Dark Metamorphosis- you have to actively spread blood by attacking enemies before you can use it correctly. Invert is one of the final movement upgrades and arguably the most important. It's the one the funnest abilities to use and I much prefer it over the old high jumps in Castlevania. It's also an ability that doesn't have to be equipped, simply input down, up and jump and it'll activate. Miriam is the only one that has her gravity inverted, so everything else including enemies stay in place, this can help you get out of a pinch and it's really interesting to use for boss fights.
There are some weird bits when it comes to exploring. The strangest to me was for the underground water area you can't swim and the way that you're supposed to navigate the water seems wrong. The actual intended way is to farm one of the enemies for a shard that allows you to shoot a water jet, which you can then use to force yourself into the water and move around, using the right stick to aim your shot kinda like an old Atari space game. I honestly didn't believe it at first, it felt more like a sequence break. But sure enough, you navigate the water until you find the next location where you can then acquire the ability to walk underwater.
One final note about travelling is that usually, your get movement speed upgrades very late in the game, here that is not the case. You can get an enhancement to walking faster barely a quarter in. Very very happy to have that. You can get a faster and much more traditional super fast upgrade late game if you beat a ninja in a race.
The map system is also very good and improved over past Metroidvania. You can zoom in super fine to see if you've missed anything and the minimap in the corner can be made more transparent, larger, smaller, or gone entirely. You don't have to hug corners to complete sections either. My one gripe is there's no legend system so you'll often times be confused as to what some of the icons on the map are. I also have a strange pink dot stuck on mine indicating a person...who isn't there now. You also can set custom waypoints post patch with a little rose icon, but they're all the same color and I would have like at least three for marking specific areas. There are a few odd oversights like that, such as the archive system in the game.
You can look up anything from current and past quests. Past and present collected items and their stats, crafting recipes, various monsters and they'll even show what they can drop and where to find them, yet for some reason, you can't sort alphabetically. Likewise, if you look at certain items they'll list which creatures can drop them, but you can't highlight those monsters to immediately switch to the bestiary to see where they're at. It's small, but I think some quality of life updates like that would help. Especially as right now there is so much missing information online. Go try to look up "Bloodstained Dies Iraes sword" You'll just get the defunct company.
So... one thing I haven't touched upon yet is difficulty. Bloodstained's difficulty is a bit chaotic. I found the first boss a bit challenging just because of the way the camera zooms in and out and the ship bobs up and down and being limited as you are in a Metroidvania during the first part. The second fight, on the other hand, was goddamn insane for that early on. Holy shit it was hard.
This is a weird comparison, but ROTN reminds me a lot of Mario 3 where the difficulty is a bit all over the place. Some early stuff can be insanely hard, some later stuff easy. Sometimes the areas are harder than the bosses and sometimes its the opposite. Generally speaking, the initial part of the game can be surprisingly difficult and after a while it gets easier as you get more gear, shards, etc. You get the hang of everything only to then run into a crap ton of other stuff as it ping pongs from there. Remember fleamen? Classic fleamen that are hard to hit. This game has monkeys that are like that and also Ninjas, which are like the damn martial artists in RoB. Imagine a room with seven of those. They fucking hurt. But as I said the difficulty can be weird. The second boss you fight in the game you end up having a rematch with, the rematch is nowhere near as difficult despite the added move set, it's far more predictable. In fact, some of the bosses aren't so much hard as absolute sponges. You usually end up taking damage just because of how long the fights can last. In my encounter with Bloodless, I didn't really do too bad until the last quarter simply because the fight had been going on for nearly 20 minutes and I was getting fatigued at the repetition. It's very much a case of them not trying to defeat you so much as outlast you. I was playing on Normal btw so even on that you want to exploit weaknesses as much as possible.
I can see Bloodstained being a hard time for beginners so do be advised and bring a lot of potions and food to every battle. Also, don't forget to craft to be in tiptop shape for dmg and def. Food is very important.
As for issues that shouldn't be, like glitches, this is where things get interesting. Every game has glitches of some sort, how impactful and harmful they are is another matter. Generally speaking, Bloodstained was quite good in this regard. Initially, during my first day of playing (the first 6 hours) I encountered a minor graphical hiccup with a platform flickering near the castle entrance, the beams in the chapel area holding up bells also had no hitboxes in that you actually walk through the beams rather than standing atop them.
That one seems to have been patched, thankfully.
An enemy froze after attacking while in the castle, again patched out now. Mostly minor stuff. I did at one point clip badly into the environment and got stuck in the twin dragon's tower, I couldn't see myself at all, this wasn't at all like the chapel beams. I could only wiggle around and see slight camera movement. If you've ever seen a Castlevania Speedrun at GDQ where they clip to zip around, that's the sorta glitch I got- except no zip. I was able to get out with a wayward stone. This same glitch also happened much later in an underground lava area. Thankfully had a wayward stone again. Make sure you have a stock of those cause they're cheap and can save you a lot of backtracking, regardless of any glitches.
Speaking of, the lava area flickered Reallllllly bad. The lava was glitched to hell as if being super bright wasn't bad enough. I think the latest patch fixed that issue, I haven't noticed anything since and the brightness seems to have been tweaked too.
Something that the patch didn't fix was a framerate issue with a late-game boss called Valefor. You've probably seen him in the trailers where they slam poker chips together.
The framerate absolutely shits the bed during this segment, it slows down like an SNES game with too much going on.
But again, mostly minor and some of it even fixed. Then things started getting weird. I started going back through areas I've been in multiple times, taking the same pathways and stuff started respawning. Stuff that shouldn't, like HP and MP ups that I had already collected or some that weren't there before. I was in the Underground Sorcery Lab, dropped down into a hidden alcove and when I popped back up there was suddenly an HP up to my left. Another area that I've had this happen- and on multiple occasions- is the garden area near a Gazebo. You can kick jump off a fairy to collect the HP up and I've collected at least three from there and it's not the only one.
I've also collected two capacity ups for bullets in the chapel area in front of the teleporter just across from where the barber. I've returned to areas where I've collected upgrades to find more. I've even had that happen with chests that aren't supposed to reset.
But aside from getting stuck, most of those aren't actually harmful, or game breaking. Well, maybe the HP ups but not in a bad way. But now I need to talk about the major issue, the big ugly blight that happened upon this otherwise fine game. Update 1.02. This patch added in boss rush, speed run mode, and also fixed some of those weird graphical glitches. The problem is that it also somehow fucked up the possibility of progress for those playing before the patch went live. Many chests, some containing plot important items for progressing the game, were all opened. Now, I had already played 6 hours by the time I finally updated, I played 8 when I heard about it, I played 9 and a half once I found chests open in an area I hadn't reached before. The general suggestion was to just start all over as that did fix the issue.
I can't even begin to describe my reaction when this happened. It was almost a sort of heartbreak, dramatic as that sounds especially as I'm not one to get truly worked up over frivolous things like that, usually just frustrated. I know it seems silly and overly passionate to describe it in such a way, it isn't as if this is some super important societal issue. But as far as enjoying a piece of media goes, on the level that I was- because Castlevania is my favorite franchise and this is as a close to a new one I've gotten in over a decade- it was devastating at the time to learn of something so horribly game breaking. Taking in all that I have missed dearly and getting all that I wanted- only to suddenly be presented with a brick wall for playing it sooner than later, felt such a slap in the face. Inadvertent as it was, it felt like punishment for paying for the game before it was out and then playing ASAP. By the time I ran into the issue with the chests it had been nine and a half hours of total playtime 50.6% of the map complete, various shards upgraded and collected. All that appeared to be just wasted time and effort at the moment.
When I usually replay a Metroidvania it's because I've already played through once and I love it that much, not because the game apparently broke partway through. I own a physical copy, so I was able to uninstall the game and then reinstall it while blocking the patch, which did reset the chests I was looking at prior. Although I have still seen some chests open, nothing super important. Which kinda makes me wonder if there isn't already a flaw that the patch exacerbated.
As far as I can tell the Twin Dragon's tower is the only major one with a key item, which is where most people were having trouble, which I had already done. Still, getting really good weapons and recipes from chests is really important too, it's practically needed by the end game, not to mention keys that open up bonus rooms/bosses in the castle.
As shitty as this is, it at least happened super early on, not like a week later. But with this happening does it sour my opinion on the game? A bit, yeah. I can't sugar coat it and say it was fine because it's not, I got luckier than a lot of others and again we still don't know what the future holds for other patches or if this one can even be corrected. We have 13 DLCs coming and 1.03 could do something similar for all we know.
If I did have to restart I would have been probably even angrier, but at the same time, I enjoy playing the game so much that I probably would have anyway because there is so much to enjoy. That is a testament to how fun the game is. It's still certainly my favorite MV since Order of Ecclesia in 2008, nothing else feels like this, it was satisfying a desire for a game that played, looked and sounded far beyond what I could even imagine. It still provided the most fun I've had with a game in years. But I can't ignore the problem of what happened. Regardless of any fixes that may come, this is something that affected many people and shouldn't have been in the first place. Especially the poor people on X-Box, they're not even getting the patch for a week from release because of how stupidly slow patches work for each console. So honestly they probably shouldn't even play at all or at least not update until completing the game or getting all the important stuff.
Please do not misunderstand my complaints here, there is so much in Bloodstained I love, so much love from the makers that went into crafting a fantastic game and I feel truly horrible dragging it out like this because I know how hard and stressful the development process had to be for this. Multiple platforms two of which died during development- now that's a serious time loss. Several delays, a massive overhaul for the graphics (For the better I might add). This has people behind it that care. I want this to do good, I know IGA and his team were really putting their hearts into this and I can feel that even now. But this was still a bad thing to happen and I'm worried about how impactful this issue will end up being because this was a first impressions scenario. Bloodstained has a solid foundation but there are some cracks in the walls. Enough where because of this accident, I don't plan on preordering a follow up immediately should it happen (and I do want one) yet I wouldn't blame anyone else for taking such a cautious approach either. I'll wait to see what happens next time before I play.
With all of that being said, it is important to keep in mind this is a new franchise made almost entirely from scratch by an indie developer. You naturally want to compare it to IGA's last game; OoE. I know I have plenty already and that's also not completely fair. OoE was made for a single console that they already had two games on prior. The closest thing you could compare it to would actually be SOTN, but even that isn't fair because SOTN used a lot of art assets from past Castlevania games and was still an exclusive. As much as ROTN does play like something made after OoE with a lot of its mechanical elements in mind, and as much as it doesn't feel like an indie project for how high quality it is in most areas, it's still an indie development and it's important to remember that. Everything here is new and by a small team. Hopefully, should we get a Bloodstained 2, the familiarity of this production will help prevent futures issues both minor and major.
The chest glitch was legitimately shitty, but there are far more egregious game breaking glitches from big developers that don't have an excuse and go months without a fix, or none at all. Just look at Bethesda.
Now that we have that cleared up, I'm gonna praise the shit out of this game's music.
Music.
Castlevania's own wonderful and brilliant Michiru Yamane serves as the primary composer for ROTN and Goddamn is it satisfying. She left Konami shortly after her work on OoE which she did alongside Yasuhiro Ichihashi. Yamane became freelance and you've probably heard her work in titles like Skullgirls. It's great to have her for this and also without any limitations on compression. With a majority of Castlevania titles being handheld after SOTN, we never could hear her compositions without the restriction of FM chips. Don't get me wrong, I love those too and there is some merit to limitations pushing for better melodies. But CD quality is certainly where she shines and is the most comfortable.
I can't go through the entire soundtrack praising each track, but I think probably one of the best compliments is that upon hearing the tracks you will instantly know what sort of setting they're supposed to be in. You listen to Gears of Fortune, hear the fast paced strings and instantly know it's perfect for a tower with a lot of rotating bits. You hear Theme of OD and think Library. Forgotten Jade- calm watery area. Bibliotheca Ex Machina- a torture chamber or a death trap.
Surprisingly they keep things pretty traditional in terms of instruments. There is a couple of rock elements but not much else which I'm fine with, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd like to hear something a bit bluesy again like Wandering Ghosts.
I also would be remiss if I didn't note that there are other composers on the soundtrack as well, including Ippo Yamada- who has composed for many Megaman Zero games, Shutaro Iida- a former Castlevania programmer and designer, and finally the group Noisycroak. But I'm not able to find what specific tracks they've actually composed for.
Graphics.
When Bloodstained was first shown in a 2.5D I was a bit apprehensive and became more so as time went on. It wasn't a deal breaker, but the game initially to me just looked slightly better than a PSP title. The graphics would eventually get improved but I still kept wishing that they went with an HD spite look instead. Then the graphics updated again and looked beautiful. I can safely say the final product shut me up.
This is gorgeous and exactly how it should look. The 2.5D is also used wonderfully in a few areas, from spinning towers to sudden turns. I wouldn't have it any other way now.
The color palette is also just lovely. So many gothic games go for bleak atmospheres from environments to creature design. Not Bloodstained, it's vibrant and lush in most instances. Every environment is just so spot on with backgrounds that rival anything that's come before. Nothing here is overly or needlessly bleak looking, it's colorful yet gothic. Highly Detailed but never overdone, even for the area that's almost entirely ornate gold.
The creature design is something I am two minds about. I appreciated the bright coloration and there is a lot of creativity and diverseness in appearances. Stuff like a Lion's head with spinning wheel legs straight out of the Ars Goetia is right up my alley for weird design. In fact a lot of the monsters and bosses are from or at least named after those in that grimoire. Dantalion, Decarabia, Gamigin, etc.
You also get more down to earth designs like Dragons, demons, axe knights, spear Knights and werewolves. Weird stuff like demonic bunny girls and rocker chicks. Plus monsters clearly being fill ins for Dracula's legion, such as Slime creatures with cannons instead of Dinosaur skulls shooting fire. One of the goals for the kickstarter was to have your pet included so there's a few giant dogheads and a couple of massive demon cats that look hilarious.
While there is a focus on the 72 demons of Solomon, they make sure to have folklore creatures like the Welsh Cyhyraeth, Greecian Celaeno and Ocypete, Mesopotamian Lamashtu, even Titania from a midsummer's night dream.
If there is a flaw here and there really no getting around it- of all the things in the game, this is the area where you notice it ultimately isn't very Castlevania. That isn't to be insulting or deriding the work put in here, more so that it's an inevitability. ROTN has everything other thing Castlevania did and more- except the luxury of being decades old and having a back catalogue of great designs and framework. When SOTN came out they already had over a decade of stuff to choose from that didn't require as much work, plus if you wanted to redesign something it's easier when you already have a prior base. Look at Death, he's different in each game and has new attacks, but generally speaking, is a skeleton that conjurers scythes. Pick any monster that was originally 8-bit and had to be made in 16. It's a lot of work to make it look good and move in new ways, but you have something to work off of.
With this being the first entry that isn't an 8-bit side game, you'll notice some oddities and a lot of recolors, which every game has variants but Bloodstained's are more noticeable than others. There's a desert area that has bone Dragons, frogs, a giant dog's head and mystical floating shards- all basically reused assets and enemies with the Bone Dragon being new but ultimately just a deskined dragon. No mummies or sphinxes or even scorpions which you can't help but notice are absent. I'm a bit confused as to why they didn't reuse one of the female enemies like lili and retexture them to look pharaoh themed, perhaps named after Ammit.
Some of the creatures are reused to death and its hard not to notice how much emphasis is put on the "Morte" family of creatures. It's Bloodstained's equivalent to Castlevania's Skeletons and it just does nothing for me. I do not care for their Candlejack T-1000 designs especially with how much they're used, they just don't have the versatility of a skeleton. Some of the other designers are also a bit out of place, the Bat and some of Knights looks incredibly cartoonish for my tastes to be quite honest.
Thankfully other demons like the Grinder knights, Carabosse, Sabnock and Barbatos are much more in line with my preferred aesthetic.
What issues I do have I can give a pass since this is the first in a new series.
Final Thoughts.
Overall Bloodstained is the game I've waited years for and it gave me everything I wanted, if albeit with a very big initial bump in that road. While no game is perfect, ROTN delivers on so much for starved Metroidvania fans and is a fantastic game in its own right. I can't recommend this enough to those that are desperately craving a new title to sink their teeth into. It might not technically be a Castlevania, but when it plays and sounds just as good, do we even actually need it to be? Even if we ultimately never get a Castlevania '99, we have this and that's more than enough. I have no problems with Bloodstained replacing Castlevania as my favorite game franchise. I wish IGA and his team well and hope that we get a Bloodstained 2 in the future. But for now, they deserve a good rest but I suppose the DLC is next.
For those interested, I hope this review was informative if a bit long. That's just the sort of fervent passion that's inspired when I become enamored with something.
As one final note, if you do plan of picking Bloodstained up, be sure to wait on the patch and take your time. As enticing as it is to just dive in, it's safer to wait. So if your game isn't patched, please, don't play it. But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you?
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