Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Heard it was good, didn't expect it to be THIS good.

If you love metroidvanias, youll love this game to.

I'm a kickstarter backer of the game, and I was in love with it from the beginning. Best $60 I ever spent on a kickstarted project. The game is beautiful, the music is excellent. Gameplay is an improved, or dare I say it, perfected form of the gameplay in Symphony of the Night and Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. At the risk of spoilers, I wish the inversion had been more deeply integrated into the late game, as the inverted castle of SotN was one of my favorite aspects of SotN, that first moment as the castle descends from the clouds...chills... I'd avoid more spoilers, but there is just so much done right here. Excellent nostalgia, even outright references to Castlevania. OD is easily my favorite character, the next best thing to including Alucard. The _ONLY_ thing this game is missing.....is a sequel. Like, a LOT of sequels. Go Iga, go! This entire game just shows how collossally stupid Konami was for dumping it's star developers to focus on mobile games. Hey Konami, now that the mobile gold rush is over, feeling a little regret perhaps? $5.5 million kickstarted, and probably that much again in the next few months in sales across platforms. Sucks to be you, Konami! :D

At the moment the game is so good so far, just a few bugs with dropped items. But indeed its a greag game to play for a Metroidvania style.

Written as a Metroidvania 1-st timer. The first impression of this game was an experience typical for a game which is hard to put down, which keeps you wanting more of it. An objective analysis from the get-go was an impossible task for myself. After letting the impressions sink in, I can say that the game is definitely worth your time. And it's going to ask a lot of it, if you want the complete experience. But at no point did the game feel like a chore. The colourful and quirky design of the enemies, the sometimes tricky platforming sequences, the vast amounts of collectible and usable items, all that makes the game very enjoyable through and through. The gameplay feels smooth and well-optimized. The wide variety of enemies always keeps the player on their toes, but at no point does it restrict the options it gives them. Combat can be approached any way you want it. It's not perfect, some tools/weapons are definitely more effective than others, but at no point is the player forced to approach it using one single method. That isn't the case with traversing the castle and other areas, but that's the main motive for exploration of the game's world. The narration is not the strongest point of this game, but IMHO, it's not the main point of it anyway. The music and the visuals are top-notch, a true feast for the senses. Both the English and Japanese voice-banks are well done too. The only gripe I had with the game is that sometimes, the solution to get past certain obstacles is either rather convoluted or simple to the point that one would hardly think of it. Still, way better than hand-holding in games. The verdict: A wholeheartedly recommended title.