Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

There are many Metrovania-style games, but Bloodstained is definitely the special one -- made by one of creators of Metrovania-style. Bloodstained looks like: - Symphony of the night - Aria of Sorrow / Down of Sorrow (Shard System, Weapon System) - Portrain of Ruin (Quest System) - Order of Ecclecia (Female protagonist, and Miriam looks like the protagonist of that game)

Everything in this game feels meh. Animations, character design, combat - everything is good enough to not be considered bad, but not much more than that.

I bought this on PS4 as I don't have my PC set up. This game is massive. In three hours, my map completion had only reached 10%. There is incredible variety. Right from the first shop, you're introduced to a selection of weapons that would account for about half of what would be found in Dawn of Sorrow, yet, their stats quickly imply they are all low level gear. The plethora of gear compliments the visual customization they can provide. You won't always need to sacrifice cosmetic appeal for stats. Furthermore, weapons and armor quickly transition from tattered and rusted to valuable and impressive in design. Difficulty is very well paced. Normal enemies are somewhere between Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia. Bosses lean more towards the latter. Grinding is greatly rewarded with experience, crafting items (used for upgrading skills and making gear), and duplicate shards to enhance your skills. This, combined with multiple difficulties, allows the game to be as easy or as hard as you make it on yourself. Environments are a joy to explore with secrets cleverly hidden in ways that use the environment, camera, and destructible walls

I came into the game pretty level headed and as a backer for the Kickstarter. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed. I'm mainly disappointed because I've played a lot of metroidvanias since Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and I feel that this game pales in comparison to other metroidvanias as well as Symphony of the Night. I found myself playing two different comparison games. One that compared Bloodstained the original game that it takes inspiration from and another that compared it to other metroidvanias that have since come out. If you compare it to the original, you'll find that its the same game but with more spells. However, it also has really pointless side quests and the majority of the spells are pretty useless. If you were to compare it to modern metroidvanias, you'll find fleshed out ideas that take the genre in interesting directions like Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight and Cave Story+. By comparison, this game feels like its stuck in 1997 without the good music and memorable boss fights. The reason why I gave it three stars is that I don't think these marks against it make it a bad game. In fact, it seems to have given everyone exactly what they wanted and that's fine. It's good that they're having fun. I just wanted to give my own two cents on the matter.

If I had to pick two games that Bloodstained is most similar to from the castlevania series it would be Dawn of Sorrow and Symphony of the night, which is a great thing because I loved both of those titles. I've nearly completed the game after marathoning it and am already thinking of beginning to replay it almost immediately.