A great game with simple mechanics with average replay value. Gameplay is addictive. Money well spent.
Gameplay is just as it should be. After hunderds of hours in D3, I was looking for something else. Path of Exile was too overwhelming for me, Van Helsing didn't pull me in like Grim Dawn. Core gameplay is worth it. Graphics aren't up to date, but not terrible. Story is ok, but what can you expect from ARPG. TL-DR: it has a gameplay loop that I want to come back over and over again and that's a good treat in a game which can be rare these days. Btw, if you liked Titan Quest, you'll love Grim Dawn too.
Game is good. I like the atmosphere, story, grahics and the best thing is I can run it on my 6 year old PC. However, in spite all of that, intro got the better of me. Don't get me wrong, intro is looking good, but when you see it for who knows how many times, it somewhat loses its charm. As far as my machine was concerned, it CANNOT be skipped. I have looked for solutions online: - devs themsleves say theres a button at the begining with which you can skip it. After starting the game 8 times (due to technical issues with GOG Galaxy and even without issues), not once I saw this prompt. Mashing every single key on the keyboard doesn't help. - renaming the intro animation name in file explorer (as one of the solutions) only makes my game stutter and barely playable - alt + Tab is useless - alt+F4 CANNOT interrupt it - f-ing task manager won't show up during the intro Only thing that can interrupt this thing is hard reset or hard reboot. I must congratulate whoever designed that intro to go to security business and patent, because that thing is interruptible. Wish I could say more about the game, but wasting time watching intro isn't my idea of fun. Why is it become so difficult lately just to quickly jump in the game and play it?
TL:DR - definitely recommended game with little nitpicks here and there. Far above average! This game picked up best of previous Castlevania games and used it in this game. Art style, music and mechanics (shard system) are fenomenal. Story and combat are ok. There's some balancing to be done (imho) with difficulty as sometimes I feel overpowered, and sometimes I don't have enough health potions and food to restore my health, but that might just be me. I had to compare this game to my favorite metroidvania game - Hollow Knight. Is Bloodstained as good as Hollow Knight? No! Don't take this as something negative as each game is unique, and Bloodstained being different from Hollow Knight (HK) is a good thing. For comparison, I would put Bloodstained as second best game only to Hollow Knight. The environments, art style, music and mechanics differ from HK which makes this game stand on it's own as a good example of how games should be done: unique direction without trying to copy/paste someone else. This game does originate from Castlevania but it has improved on it. What I would like to see is a better looking representation of the map: instead of just making them squares, I would realy like to see something like a Hollow knight map which is poster worthy. The map representation, final boss and melee combat are things I didn't like in this game. Melee combat is a bit laggy and slow but this is contrasted with very good choice of spells. Final boss is just a big endurance test, especially the second phase. Definitely buy it on sale and if there's no sale, buy it as you can't go wrong.
