Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

In the age of Kickstarter or populist financing, we are seeing the return of many classic games, especially those whose publishers lost hope and locked them away in a warehouse full of dust. Some developers found opportunities to come back with their games in these funding campaigns, and while the results were mixed, that didn’t stop others from trying their luck. One of these developers is Koji Igarashi, a former Konami employee known for developing the most popular Castlevania games. Through the Kickstarter website he received one of the most successful financing for the development of his next game, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and this game promised to become the spiritual successor to the famous Konami series Castlevania, which was retired. We waited a long time and experienced more than one delay until we reached the point where we could fully experience the game.

Castlevania Who doesn’t know Castlevania? It is a classic action game series from the beginning of the video game world in which you walk along a straight path, fighting enemies in their various forms and using the weapons at your disposal. The series later underwent a major change in direction when it morphed into Metroidvania, borrowing a number of key ideas from the Metroid series. The most important of these is returning to old areas via the upgrade system, which gives you new abilities. Bloodstained doesn’t deviate from the old path and presents the same basic ideas that we know from Metroidvania games. You will see this complex map and fight against many enemies and then bosses to gain new abilities that will open paths that were not available to you before. An example of this is the double jump ability, which allows you to reach high areas that you couldn’t reach before.

Many things are returning from the old archives, including clothing, drinks and other items. Various weapons, armor and rings return, allowing you to jump into different items. There are also some new elements that I found had little impact on the experience. For example, the ability to grow some crops to learn some cooking and then replace them with new tools. In the game, as in some parts of Castlevania, killing enemies gives you some special abilities based on them. There are several side characters, and one of them, for example, gives you side missions, most of which depend on killing a certain number of a certain monster in order to receive a gift from the tool list. As for the characters, whether supporting or main, they all lacked mastery. I felt like they were empty and indistinguishable.

Art of Fighting In Bloodstained you will find many combat options, and here it is similar to action RPG games that offer you multiple options to build your character. For example, you can focus on increasing your attack power if you’re good at dodging enemies, or you can focus on defense to play safer. When it comes to weapons, you can choose weapons with long range and weak effects, or you can choose heavy weapons that can hit effectively at close range. Even the monster abilities you gain give you many attack options to choose from depending on the type of danger you face. One of the most important things in Castlevania games in general is fighting bosses. What frustrated me about this game is that for about the first half of the game, fighting bosses was very easy thanks to a special long-range weapon, and this is where I feel strongly that the development team didn’t find the right balance in the game .

One of the options I liked in this game is the ability to equip more than one combination of your weapons and armor, and you can quickly switch between them throughout the game. This will be important when we return to the previous paragraph where we talked about different fighting styles. Now you don’t have to go to the menus every time you want to change your playing style, just save the most frequently used menus and quickly switch between them.

Holding on to the past Since the release of the last Castlevania game and in our current times, many games inspired by the Metroidvania style have been released, and we have seen many wonderful ideas among them. The problem with the Bloodstained development team is that they are so stuck on some of the ideas of the past that perhaps they should have continued. For example, some of these ideas involve suffering damage by simply touching the enemy. For example, one of the leaders takes a strange step back in a tight spot and you have to take two to three hits in a row before you get out of the situation. A large part of the reason for this is that the game doesn’t leave much room to get out of the situation after you get hit, as you can strike one at a time and quickly. A game like Dead Cells has proven that touching the enemy doesn’t have to be a hit to get a game that offers an excellent and entertaining challenge. The same game also introduced the ability to roll dice, which proved to be a very effective addition. In “Bloodstained” I remember entering one of the narrow corridors and there was a horse continuously running towards me and I had no other way to avoid him but to return to the last room. Here, through the rolling element, it was possible for me, for a trivial reason, to continue on my way and fight against it in some way without being harmed.

In general, the game will appeal to anyone who loves EGA’s Castlevania series and doesn’t mind seeing things as they are. It’s everything you’ve come to expect from the series, with some new, understated touches. It’s not the best Castlevania I’ve ever been to, but it offers that experience. But for the gamer who likes to see their games progress and change, this experience was somewhat disappointing and didn’t benefit from the many developments we’ve seen in modern games, despite many years invested in development.