Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ( Koji Igarashi ) PS4/X1/PC

Zapp Brannigan

pixelburp wrote: »

Anyone else find the controls a bit ... Floaty? I think it's my creaky PC needing the settings turned down but it doesn't feel like the FPS is too garbage so not sure...

I’m playing on PS4 and the controls feel tight and responsive.

Retr0gamer

This game is full of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure references. Just holding up makes Miriam do Jojo poses.

johnny_ultimate

Started playing this last night and it’s definitely good fun. Plays nice and smooth and does what it does with confidence. It’s a tad uninspired though - like it aims to be a traditional Castlevania and nothing more. That’s what many want, I guess, but means it all feels just a touch dated and overfamiliar compared to far more ambitious and forward-thinking games like Hollow Knight. It’s still fun to explore, mind, although a lot of the new systems feel like bloat more than integral additions.

The one thing I really don’t like is the art design. Looks cheap and half-realised. A few nicely gothic touches like the save room aside and neat monsters (plus the always welcome addition of armour that’s actually reflected in the game), it’s not a looker. Think that also hurts the game’s atmosphere, as there’s not a whole lot of it. Hopefully improves later on, but again can’t quite hold up against the best modern examples of the genre so far. Music is pitch perfect though.

Retr0gamer

Keep playing it. Movement gets insane at later stages of the game.

Sephiroth_dude

The bosses have no health meters?

Mr E

Did they ever? Don't think so...

Retr0gamer

They never did

[Deleted User]

Wrapped this up last night, some game but the balance goes off the wall towards the end, not enough to dampen my enjoyment but it is very noticeable.

I'm looking forward to future dlc, which is something I don't think I've said before.

Sephiroth_dude

Cake of Tremendous Power wrote: »

but the balance goes off the wall towards the end,

Were you too overpowered and smashing everything? or do you mean game difficulty wise?

[Deleted User]

Game difficulty at the end takes a massive leap even though you feel really overpowered for most of the game if you've farmed shards at all.
It doesn't get to infuriating levels of hardness or anything but the spikes in difficulty are definitely annoying

johnny_ultimate

Even early on the difficulty is a bit wonky. The first castle boss

samurai guy

seemed like a big difficulty jump (albeit fairly manageable when you get the pattern down), but then the next one I encountered -

stained glass creature

- I breezed through first go barely taking a hit. Exploration wise it’s the same with a bit of a wild difference in standard mobs. Was surprised to encounter

Shovel Knight!

Finding the floating pig balloon thing a nicely powerful attack at the moment.

johnny_ultimate

Around five hours in and just finished the

speed demon

boss. Don't know if I'd have found my way through the

station turnstile

if I hadn't accidentally stumbled across the solution by

deciding to chat to the library guy again

while trying to figure out where to go next!

Still think it's a grand old time, although felt for a while like it was a little sluggish dishing out the traversal upgrades. Think the first one at least should have been handed out a bit sooner than it is.

One weird annoyance with it so far is the 2.5D segments, particularly the tower segments. Feels like a coat of polish away from working - as is it's janky and the transitions back to 2D feel awkward and sometimes confusing.

Anyone have the Switch version? How does it perform?

Retr0gamer

Fred The Red wrote: »

Anyone have the Switch version? How does it perform?

Not played it but apparently has major performance issues that they are at least working to fix.

Star Lord

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Not played it but apparently has major performance issues that they are at least working to fix.

Late game ones from what I've read, I've not experienced any issues yet myself, but I'm not particularly far into the game.

goon_magee

This is probably my GotY so far. I love the art direction and the enemy design is great the further you get in. I agree with what was said above in respect of the movement abilities, the first one could definitely be handed out sooner and it renders the first third of the game a rather linear affair.

johnny_ultimate

Finished it the other night, and filled in the whole map (after spending 20 mins perusing a map online to find one dastardly final hidden room :P). As I said before, I think it's a good, fun game that falls short of being anything more than that.

Don't get me wrong: it has got that very particular draw where an hour or two can quickly disappear just expanding the old map. The game takes too many hours to get going but there are some cool navigation abilities that eventually unlock. It is what it is with the confidence of a creative team who know what they're doing.

But could never shake the feeling that there was something missing: new ideas, or something that draws on the advances made since the late 90s. There's a lot of baggage here without amounting to much - a crafting system that's too busy and requires too much farting about / item drop grinding; a lazy quest system that offers no proper gameplay rewards, and cheaply recycles the same lines of dialogue dozens of times; navigation techniques that are fun but feel weirdly underutilised in gameplay terms (you finally get a fast navigation tool towards the end that has no use at all other than allowing you to quickly zip around while finding those last few rooms). The art / enemy design's a mess of ideas that don't come together in any interesting ways, and the environments are mostly a haphazard collection of generic settings without much flair (at least a few - like the

library and oriental sorcery lab

- offer a few brief changes of pace). I know a spiralling, nonsensical castle is never going to be entirely coherent, but even accepting that this is all just rather messy.

Heck, even the bosses don't really amount to much. You can easily brute force your way through most of them, even the late/post game optional ones, at least on normal mode. Compared to something like Shovel / Hollow Knight or the Messenger, where you really needed to get a grasp on the way bosses attacked, this can't help but feel awkward.

That it's still enjoyable is testament to the enduring allure of the old Symphony of the Night model. If you want 'SotN but again', you'll largely be well served here - given games like Yooka Laylee and Mighty Number 9 shat the bed spectacularly, it's definitely an achievement of sorts. But it also shows the limits of crowd-funded nostalgia fests - 'more of the same' is what it is, but personally I like games to offer something more than that

A brief aside: also worth noting that this game shows one of the damaging impacts of 'in-game' Kickstarter rewards. There's a lot of 'stuff' in this game - jarringly random enemies, dozens of weird portraits - that's clearly a consequence of backer rewards. They'll surely provide a kick to those who donated thousands to get that stuff in there, but in a game that's already a bit of a mish-mash all these paid-for additions can't help but cheapen the overall feel and look of the game.

goon_magee

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Finished it the other night, and filled in the whole map (after spending 20 mins perusing a map online to find one dastardly final hidden room :P). As I said before, I think it's a good, fun game that falls short of being anything more than that.

Don't get me wrong: it has got that very particular draw where an hour or two can quickly disappear just expanding the old map. The game takes too many hours to get going but there are some cool navigation abilities that eventually unlock. It is what it is with the confidence of a creative team who know what they're doing.

But could never shake the feeling that there was something missing: new ideas, or something that draws on the advances made since the late 90s. There's a lot of baggage here without amounting to much - a crafting system that's too busy and requires too much farting about / item drop grinding; a lazy quest system that offers no proper gameplay rewards, and cheaply recycles the same lines of dialogue dozens of times; navigation techniques that are fun but feel weirdly underutilised in gameplay terms (you finally get a fast navigation tool towards the end that has no use at all other than allowing you to quickly zip around while finding those last few rooms). The art / enemy design's a mess of ideas that don't come together in any interesting ways, and the environments are mostly a haphazard collection of generic settings without much flair (at least a few - like the

library and oriental sorcery lab

- offer a few brief changes of pace). I know a spiralling, nonsensical castle is never going to be entirely coherent, but even accepting that this is all just rather messy.

Heck, even the bosses don't really amount to much. You can easily brute force your way through most of them, even the late/post game optional ones, at least on normal mode. Compared to something like Shovel / Hollow Knight or the Messenger, where you really needed to get a grasp on the way bosses attacked, this can't help but feel awkward.

That it's still enjoyable is testament to the enduring allure of the old Symphony of the Night model. If you want 'SotN but again', you'll largely be well served here - given games like Yooka Laylee and Mighty Number 9 shat the bed spectacularly, it's definitely an achievement of sorts. But it also shows the limits of crowd-funded nostalgia fests - 'more of the same' is what it is, but personally I like games to offer something more than that

A brief aside: also worth noting that this game shows one of the damaging impacts of 'in-game' Kickstarter rewards. There's a lot of 'stuff' in this game - jarringly random enemies, dozens of weird portraits - that's clearly a consequence of backer rewards. They'll surely provide a kick to those who donated thousands to get that stuff in there, but in a game that's already a bit of a mish-mash all these paid-for additions can't help but cheapen the overall feel and look of the game.

To be honest I don't find the game to me any more of a mish-mash than previous games in the genre. The enemy variety imo is eclectic and draws heavily from SotN which is why I loved it so much.

I think how much someone values this game is going to depend on what you want from it. If you're looking for genre defining advancements, you're not going to find it here. This game was never intended to be anything other than a love letter to SotN, which is exactly how it was marketed pretty much, so I think to criticise it for not capitalising on advances in the genre since the late 90's is slightly harsh IMO.

Personally I was looking for an unabashedly old school igavania, and to me they delivered that to perfection almost. Games like Hollow Knight and Ori are there if I want something more contemporary, from Iga I just wanted something to take me back to the good old days.

Some fair comments all the same, and I can see if you're looking for something a bit less focused on being old school that this wouldn't have scratched that itch, but again, it was in plain sight all along in the marketing what this was going to be so it really shouldn't have surprised anyone.

johnny_ultimate

I absolutely didn’t go in expecting anything majorly radical - the game is what it was advertised to be, no question about that For all the pleasures of getting an old-school ‘vania game though, I couldn’t help but want a little bit more. Iga and his team are talented people - they can push themselves! Even within the confines of a spiritual successor there can be plenty of room for evolution small and large... this doesn’t really offer anything like that, especially with quite a few half-baked systems and ideas. More fool on me, perhaps, but I like gifted creators to challenge themselves within their own style... without necessarily losing what appealed in the first place.

I definitely don’t think backers will feel shortchanged in the slightest (I picked it up after release so don’t have that commitment), and as I stressed overall I did enjoy the game. Just nothing to really give that dopamine kick suggesting a master like Iga operating at the very top of their game

Sephiroth_dude

Took the plunge and got this on pc for 30, hope I like it.

Doctor Nick

Just started this. Never played a Castlevania style game and digging it so far. Can anyone explain the levelling system? I've leveled up a few times. Do stats increase automatically or is there some way I can distribute points to stats myself? Tres confused.

johnny_ultimate

Doctor Nick wrote: »

Just started this. Never played a Castlevania style game and digging it so far. Can anyone explain the levelling system? I've leveled up a few times. Do stats increase automatically or is there some way I can distribute points to stats myself? Tres confused.

Nope, it's automatic levelling. You can level up shards manually though, albeit separately to the character levelling.

Mr E

I'm in the forbidden waterway (or whatever the area is called). Miriam has frozen mid-animation at least 4 times while swimming in the water, usually while swinging a sword overhead. All controls are locked out apart from movement. When it happens, I have to quit to title and restart from the save room.

I had to change to a different weaker stabby sword just to get through the area.

Very annoying.

Mr E

Any tips for beating the second Zangetsu fight? Struggling...

johnny_ultimate

Mr E wrote: »

Any tips for beating the second Zangetsu fight? Struggling...

A few good curry dishes are your best friend

Other than stocking up on grub, worth tweaking and upgrading your shards to find something effective. The painting summoning is super handy until basically the very final bosses: decent extra range and does fairly slow but steady damage. You know yourself what other spells you have powered up and are used to Also worth cooking some of the recipes that speed up your MP recovery as their first stat boost... you might have ambrosia by that stage?

Key with both Zangetsu fights is to stay behind him as much as possible. His recovery times are fairly long so plenty of opportunities to get a few hits in.

Mr E

Yeah the first fight against him was easy once you started getting behind him.
Harder this time though. I'll keep plugging away so.

Retr0gamer

The painting summon was nerfed big time in the latest patch.

Mr E

The July update isn't out on Switch yet.

Beat Zangetsu earlier and now on Behemoth area.

Doctor Nick

Fought and beat Gebel followed by a cut scene and Game Over. Just under 50% map completion. Couldn't understand this at all so had to Google it.

Doctor Nick

Hadn't been finding the game too challenging until the Hidden Desert where it seemed to crank up the difficulty ten fold. So many status effects. At one stage I was cursed, poisoned and slow. Think I need to start playing around with my different shards. Been sticking to a couple of things.