Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Do you like igavania's? If you do then buy this game. Iga delivered with a well polished single player experience that really shows just how much iga and his team put into crafting this masterpiece of a game. Great music, solid combant, well written story so far, excelent pacing and level design, creative and well balanced bosses that fits that balance between chanllenging and fun. With tuns of extra goodies that add onto the experience.

We wanted more CotM and SotN. This is it. Igarashi, the Grandmaster of his own Igavania genre, absolutely nailed it. Something to remember, people seem to keep forgetting this is a crowdfunded game and Way Forward was only called in last minute towards the latter end of development to help with its looks and shiny polish. It still "feels" like an authentic and true Castlevania with its very responsive controls and added input lag reduction toggle as well. Regardless about not having AAA graphics, the art design is off the charts - and what I really cared about is in its gameplay, which is top quality through and through and can be tailored from easy to extremely difficult settings, but not after you start (that I know of). With great art design/ set pieces, secrets EVERYWHERE and yes that amazing "Castlevania" music to run around with while killing off very creative enemies with fun weapons, it's just a game where next thing you know many hours have past. Also, this game rewards the CHOICE to grind/exploration - both of which are not required. It's not like most AAA shallow, asset flipped games like AC:Odyssey where you are REQUIRED to grind grind grind to pad the low content, get beyond some level gating garbage, and intentionally frustrate players to spend on microtransactions - but if the grinding is done there's some good stuff to be had. After the single instance I did this, grew a nice group of 5 Dullahammer Heads (Medusas) that just follow me everywhere. Sure they are OP but its some gd fun and when I do run through the harder difficulties I understand the mechanics better from playing around like this, again, by choice. I see myself running through this game many times like I did with past Castlevanias. Would argue this is yet another great Igarashi title standing right next to top tier Castlevanias like CotM and SotN. If you wanted more of those with some newness, this is it. A MUST BUY!

This is an amazing work of art and I'm quite glad I backed it all those years ago. From the well-written characters to the lovely music of Miss Yamane and Keji Infaue, I enjoyed it all. Even though some parts were difficult for me, I managed to use my katana and shards and power through. This game does get a bit grindy in some spots and has some flaws but those are far and few between. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys games, especially Metroidvanias.

I own this on Steam and I haven't finished it yet, but I've played far enough to give it a glowing recommendation. It's the purest Metroidvania with all the hallmarks and strengths and it's worth every pretty penny. The pacing is great, the level design is intuitive and there's a lot of stuff to do in the game. It's not perfect; there are some minor annoyances with the controls and the hitboxes and some irritating aspects of older Metoidvanias persist. Additionally, the shards are great, but there might be a bit too many of them, the choice can get overwhelming. The best thing about Bloodstained is that it's not an immitation or an homage; it's a pure SOTN follow-up, including years of progress in the genre, made with modern conventions, but without stripping away the familiarity of how this type of game works. The fact that from the first minute you don't miss the Castlevania license at all is a testament to how good this feels to play. It's a culimantion of the improvements older Metroidvanias made and it's absolutely worth your time and money.

I've been playing Castlevania games since the very first one came out on the NES over 30 years ago. Since then, I've been a huge fan of the series and have played every single game of the series. Of all of them, my favorites were the "Metroidvanias" made by IGA and his team with my personal favorites being the ones released on the Nintendo DS. It has been a long, long time since we've had a game in the series and even longer since we've had one by IGA. But today, finally, we have a new one! Even though this isn't officially a Castlevania game, all it's really missing is Dracula and the Belmont clan. The feel and atmosphere of the game...it's what I've longed to experience anew for entirely too long. This game is *fantastic* and if you like Metroidvanias or Castlevanias at all, you owe it to yourself to get this game. I'm also a rather frugal sort, and this game is worth full price in my opinion.