Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Wow. Just wow! This is what a Castlevania should be like. Thanks for reminding us, Iga.

This was a very fun Metroidvania, I'm glad it managed to succeed like it did unlike other games that started from a Kickstarter. It's not the best Metroidvania I have played, but it was really fun and definitely worth a try, there's a LOT of variety in builds and overall, it scratched my Castlevania itch, when that franchise died in the hands of a company that didn't care for the IP.

if you like metroidvanias then you will like this one. solid game

A very competent Metroidvenia that sadly falls into the trap most of them fall in, a bad end game. The last areas and bosses for the most part are just boring, badly designed and or tedious (mostly the areas). It also suffers a bit from ''Yeah, without looking it up I would have searched forever'' syndrom. The story as well feels pretty bad, there is not much of it but what there is kind of just feels bad because it is just a different version of the timeline from curse of moon where everyone lived. So this just being a timeline where all goes worse is very eh.

Had a blast playing this one. Beautiful graphics and fun playstyle.

A solid Metroidvania. The exploration and discovery of new upgrades was satisfying and enjoyable. The invert upgrade was notable as it was super unique and fun to use, if not a bit finicky to activate. The game looked good with its art direction, sprites, and textures, particularly the Castle which was so amazingly detailed. However, I did find the character models during dialogue scenes to be quite ugly. The story itself was functional, and none of the characters had any real depth. The gameplay was fairly strong. The amount of available spells, shards, and upgrades was enthralling, creating tons of depth to the combat, even if the game was too short to fully capture it. By the end of my playtime, and despite having 95% map completion, the latter upgrades to my equipment and spells required materials I had still never encountered. I also agree that, whilst deep, this system was quite grindy. I also concur that the movement was stiff. It simply lacked fluidity, conflicting with bosses that demanded seamless traversal that just wasn’t ever accessible. I also dislike how I couldn’t move and attack at the same time.