Hello everyone, hope you're all doing well and welcome to my review of Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night! I can't get into this game without first talking about Castlevania and it's developers, Konami. That series has been one of my favorites since I was a kid and I still love playing those old classics even today. The last stand out game in the Castlevania series was Symphony Of The Night. Then, for some reason, the developers just couldn't make it work anymore and eventually they abandoned the old style for a more modern take on the franchise.
Those games weren't very successful and Konami seemed to give up on the idea of making anything new that was actually any good. The Castlevania name faded away into obscurity, leaving long time fans like me with little hope for a possible comeback. But that's what Bloodstained is all about. It's here to hopefully revive this old neglected series and give the fans what they've been waiting for, just with a different name. Now that it's finally been released I'd love to tell you all about it, so let's get started.
Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night is a metroidvania style game developed by ArtPlay. This new series is meant to be a spiritual successor to the Castlevania franchise and is clearly inspired by Symphony Of The Night, the game that helped create this popular metroidvania genre back in 1997. The lead developer and driving force behind this project is the amazing Koji Igarashi, who has worked on over ten Castlevania games during his career at Konami.
He decided to leave the company in 2014, unhappy with the direction they were heading in and put up a Kickstarter to hopefully raise $500,000 so he could make Bloodstained independently. The crowd funding idea worked very well, showing that there was a huge demand for this to get made and he ended up getting $5.5 million instead, far more than originally intended.
Since the Kickstarter was such a success Koji was able to actually make two games, planting the seeds for this new series. Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon, an 8-bit style game, was released last year and it directly ties into this latest one, sharing a lot of the same characters. Then, after some set backs and delays, Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night was finally released on June 18, 2019.
You play as a girl named Miriam, who was orphaned at birth and taken in by a group called the Alchemists Guild. The Guild subjected her and her friend Gebel, to strange experiments with demonic crystals that gave them both incredible power. Now you're what's known as a Shardbinder and are able to absorb these crystals to gain new abilities. Your childhood friend Gebel has gone mad due to these experiments and raises an evil castle that's filled with demonic creatures. Since you're the only other Shardbinder you have no choice but to try and stop your old friend Gebel, even if it means killing him. Now Miriam sets out on her journey to Hellhold Castle, preparing for battle against the legions of horrible monsters awaiting her there.
The story isn't the main focus here though, it's all about the gameplay and Bloodstained absolutely nails it. Everything feels tight and responsive no matter what you're doing. You can tell Koji and his team put the effort in to make this game as good as they possibly could. It's like a modern day sequel to Symphony Of The Night, with the same mechanics, focus on exploration and a huge variety of weapons and enemies. The size of the castle map is massive, it's broken down into many distinct areas that all look incredible and richly detailed, with secrets hidden all over. I'd say it's probably about twice the size of SOTN and will take you at least 20 hours to finish the main story line. The developers really did an amazing job of crafting a well thought out experience.
Miriam can find a plethora of different melee weapons and guns to use in combat, as well as a ridiculous amount of powers from various crystals you get from defeating enemies, but at the beginning she's fairly weak. You start off with low level weapons and basic powers, then by the halfway point you're basically a superhuman with an arsenal of offensive options. Dozens, upon dozens of weapons to use that are broken down into different types like, daggers, whips, swords, clubs, great swords and guns. The number of crystals you find is even higher, each one providing you with a new ability, or power to use. You're always coming across new gear of some kind that makes you more powerful, giving you a constant sense of progression.
The castle is basically one large, interconnected map, that you're free to explore as you want. But of course, there are areas that you can't access until you acquire a specific power or ability, which is pretty standard for a metroidvania game. You gain these powers by killing enemies and absorbing their crystals, then you can select which ones you want to use from the ever growing list. The enemy variety is stunning in this game. Every new area you enter will have a whole new set of creatures to fight against and they all have excellent, creative designs and animations. The only complaint I can think of are some very minor technical issues that will hopefully get patched out soon, but with such a large project I'm actually surprised it's not worse.
Longtime Castlevania fans, like myself, have been eagerly awaiting the release of this game and I was so worried it wouldn't turn out good. Luckily, the people behind this project really cared about delivering something special and they didn't disappoint. The environments are absolutely beautiful, amazing enemy design, an astounding amount of customization, with so many weapons and powers it's hard to keep track of them all. You get a massive castle to explore that's full of characters to meet and secrets to discover. Besides a few minor technical issues, the developers did an incredible job creating a nearly perfect experience. I haven't had this much fun playing through a metroidvania game in a very long time and I'd highly recommend this to any fan of the genre. I'm going to give Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night a grade of..................................
A -
Thank you for reading my review of Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night, I hope you enjoyed it!