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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ( Koji Igarashi ) PS4/X1/PC
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Join Date:Posts: 51590
Fred The Red wrote: »Anyone have the Switch version? How does it perform?
Not played it but apparently has major performance issues that they are at least working to fix.
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,019 CMod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 28726
Finished it the other night, and filled in the whole map (after spending 20 mins perusing a map online to find one dastardly final hidden room :P). As I said before, I think it's a good, fun game that falls short of being anything more than that.
Don't get me wrong: it has got that very particular draw where an hour or two can quickly disappear just expanding the old map. The game takes too many hours to get going but there are some cool navigation abilities that eventually unlock. It is what it is with the confidence of a creative team who know what they're doing.
But could never shake the feeling that there was something missing: new ideas, or something that draws on the advances made since the late 90s. There's a lot of baggage here without amounting to much - a crafting system that's too busy and requires too much farting about / item drop grinding; a lazy quest system that offers no proper gameplay rewards, and cheaply recycles the same lines of dialogue dozens of times; navigation techniques that are fun but feel weirdly underutilised in gameplay terms (you finally get a fast navigation tool towards the end that has no use at all other than allowing you to quickly zip around while finding those last few rooms). The art / enemy design's a mess of ideas that don't come together in any interesting ways, and the environments are mostly a haphazard collection of generic settings without much flair (at least a few - like thelibrary and oriental sorcery lab- offer a few brief changes of pace). I know a spiralling, nonsensical castle is never going to be entirely coherent, but even accepting that this is all just rather messy.
Heck, even the bosses don't really amount to much. You can easily brute force your way through most of them, even the late/post game optional ones, at least on normal mode. Compared to something like Shovel / Hollow Knight or the Messenger, where you really needed to get a grasp on the way bosses attacked, this can't help but feel awkward.
That it's still enjoyable is testament to the enduring allure of the old Symphony of the Night model. If you want 'SotN but again', you'll largely be well served here - given games like Yooka Laylee and Mighty Number 9 shat the bed spectacularly, it's definitely an achievement of sorts. But it also shows the limits of crowd-funded nostalgia fests - 'more of the same' is what it is, but personally I like games to offer something more than that
A brief aside: also worth noting that this game shows one of the damaging impacts of 'in-game' Kickstarter rewards. There's a lot of 'stuff' in this game - jarringly random enemies, dozens of weird portraits - that's clearly a consequence of backer rewards. They'll surely provide a kick to those who donated thousands to get that stuff in there, but in a game that's already a bit of a mish-mash all these paid-for additions can't help but cheapen the overall feel and look of the game.0 -
johnny_ultimate wrote: »Finished it the other night, and filled in the whole map (after spending 20 mins perusing a map online to find one dastardly final hidden room :P). As I said before, I think it's a good, fun game that falls short of being anything more than that.
Don't get me wrong: it has got that very particular draw where an hour or two can quickly disappear just expanding the old map. The game takes too many hours to get going but there are some cool navigation abilities that eventually unlock. It is what it is with the confidence of a creative team who know what they're doing.
But could never shake the feeling that there was something missing: new ideas, or something that draws on the advances made since the late 90s. There's a lot of baggage here without amounting to much - a crafting system that's too busy and requires too much farting about / item drop grinding; a lazy quest system that offers no proper gameplay rewards, and cheaply recycles the same lines of dialogue dozens of times; navigation techniques that are fun but feel weirdly underutilised in gameplay terms (you finally get a fast navigation tool towards the end that has no use at all other than allowing you to quickly zip around while finding those last few rooms). The art / enemy design's a mess of ideas that don't come together in any interesting ways, and the environments are mostly a haphazard collection of generic settings without much flair (at least a few - like thelibrary and oriental sorcery lab- offer a few brief changes of pace). I know a spiralling, nonsensical castle is never going to be entirely coherent, but even accepting that this is all just rather messy.
Heck, even the bosses don't really amount to much. You can easily brute force your way through most of them, even the late/post game optional ones, at least on normal mode. Compared to something like Shovel / Hollow Knight or the Messenger, where you really needed to get a grasp on the way bosses attacked, this can't help but feel awkward.
That it's still enjoyable is testament to the enduring allure of the old Symphony of the Night model. If you want 'SotN but again', you'll largely be well served here - given games like Yooka Laylee and Mighty Number 9 shat the bed spectacularly, it's definitely an achievement of sorts. But it also shows the limits of crowd-funded nostalgia fests - 'more of the same' is what it is, but personally I like games to offer something more than that
A brief aside: also worth noting that this game shows one of the damaging impacts of 'in-game' Kickstarter rewards. There's a lot of 'stuff' in this game - jarringly random enemies, dozens of weird portraits - that's clearly a consequence of backer rewards. They'll surely provide a kick to those who donated thousands to get that stuff in there, but in a game that's already a bit of a mish-mash all these paid-for additions can't help but cheapen the overall feel and look of the game.
To be honest I don't find the game to me any more of a mish-mash than previous games in the genre. The enemy variety imo is eclectic and draws heavily from SotN which is why I loved it so much.
I think how much someone values this game is going to depend on what you want from it. If you're looking for genre defining advancements, you're not going to find it here. This game was never intended to be anything other than a love letter to SotN, which is exactly how it was marketed pretty much, so I think to criticise it for not capitalising on advances in the genre since the late 90's is slightly harsh IMO.
Personally I was looking for an unabashedly old school igavania, and to me they delivered that to perfection almost. Games like Hollow Knight and Ori are there if I want something more contemporary, from Iga I just wanted something to take me back to the good old days.
Some fair comments all the same, and I can see if you're looking for something a bit less focused on being old school that this wouldn't have scratched that itch, but again, it was in plain sight all along in the marketing what this was going to be so it really shouldn't have surprised anyone.0 -
Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,019 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 28726
I absolutely didn’t go in expecting anything majorly radical - the game is what it was advertised to be, no question about that For all the pleasures of getting an old-school ‘vania game though, I couldn’t help but want a little bit more. Iga and his team are talented people - they can push themselves! Even within the confines of a spiritual successor there can be plenty of room for evolution small and large... this doesn’t really offer anything like that, especially with quite a few half-baked systems and ideas. More fool on me, perhaps, but I like gifted creators to challenge themselves within their own style... without necessarily losing what appealed in the first place.
I definitely don’t think backers will feel shortchanged in the slightest (I picked it up after release so don’t have that commitment), and as I stressed overall I did enjoy the game. Just nothing to really give that dopamine kick suggesting a master like Iga operating at the very top of their game 0 -
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,019 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 28726
Any tips for beating the second Zangetsu fight? Struggling...
A few good curry dishes are your best friend
Other than stocking up on grub, worth tweaking and upgrading your shards to find something effective. The painting summoning is super handy until basically the very final bosses: decent extra range and does fairly slow but steady damage. You know yourself what other spells you have powered up and are used to Also worth cooking some of the recipes that speed up your MP recovery as their first stat boost... you might have ambrosia by that stage?
Key with both Zangetsu fights is to stay behind him as much as possible. His recovery times are fairly long so plenty of opportunities to get a few hits in.0 -
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