The complaint you have about the shortcut platform being unreachable through double jump gets invalid once you unlock the reflector ray ability. It is what it is: some abilities open up for some shortcuts, other abilities open up other shortcuts. Also about the abundance of weapons and stuff, just see it as collectibles not different from collecting stars in Super Mario or whatever collectathon you wanna use as a reference. Not everything needs a deeper purpose than being just another box to check off.
It's even invalid when you get double jump. Once you have double jump you can craft high jump. From that point you can jump infinitely. Plus yeah, when you play the game you unlock Reflector Ray, Invert and Dimension Shift.
You played the game for 5 to 8 hours determined to find negative things about the game, it's just impossible to grasp the depth of this game with such a superficial review. And for someone who says that love Metroidvanias and never played Symphony of the Night is like saying that I love fighting games but I missed out on the Street Fighter series... Bloodstained is a full reimagining of SotN, there's nothing on Symphony that can't be found on Bloodstained in a more polished way. And SotN coined the genre that you said you liked, so... your critics didn't make any sense to me.
I think his opinion is fair but i disagree with it. I also like to remember this is the first in a series so what it did do, it did VERY well. I love this game so much myself. I found the whole thing enjoyable start to finish. I also love the tome the developers put into variety of weapons. Its quite a simple game really i dont think its meant to be complex gameplay as much as its just meant to be hack and slash fun! I think theres always room for improvement so a sequel would be amazing to see! 😄
This is one of the best games I've played in years. Not a lot of games make me excited to get home from work and play anymore but this game did along with RE7 and Monster Sanctuary.
It was an ok analysis, but something you didn't mention is that the shards can be upgraded to be more powerful, the game itself has a crafting system, where you can improve your shards, armor and weapons too, that's one of the ways to improve your equipment efficiency, also the thing about that platform that you couldn't reach with the double jump, you can get there thanks to the chandellars, and also there's an upgrade to the double jump to craft a High jump, which helps a lot to reach to platforms out of reach for the jump or double jump, so isn't bad design, is just lack of progress and exploration from your part, which is understandable cause in 1 or 2 hours you won't discover any of that, and if you don't like crafting or if you don't like metroidvanias where you can level up abilities or stats like an action RPG, then sadly this game or many of the Castlevania Metroidvanias/Igavania games won't click for you.
Someone didn’t play the Sorrow games from Castlevania series, Portrait of Ruin, or Symphony of Night. I may not have played the last one, but they are similar. Also, someone didn’t play RPGs either. Weapon varieties *isn’t* meant for trying each kind out, but sticking to a play style, same with shards in Bloodstained, or souls in Sorrow games. Most weapons, shards/souls *aren’t* meant to be essential for progress, but to fit a person’s play style, which differs from person to person.
Everyone has their opinions, likes and dislikes my man but honestly most of your points come down to nitpicking plus the fact you strated reviewing this game after 1 hour of playtime. 1 of the few things I agree with you on that was a bad mechanic is the shard not being collected unless you waited for the animation to finish before going into another room but aside from that the game is really good considering it was a kickstarter and puts most AA and some AAA metroidvanias to shame. I am not a Castlevania fan and have only dabbled in some GBA and DS titles apart from finishing 1 on NES so I went into ROTN with no bias or nostalgia. I only remember really grinding it out for one of the demon hearts in the underground ice cave endgame since it's drop rate was so low and the demon so tough on your first normal playthrough as well as the Bovine Plume to unlock High jump that grants infinite jumps. The grind for shards and materials to craft new recipes and weapons was the most fun I've had in years. RPGs have lost my interest due to this very reason but Bloodstained made grinding fun for me again.
I platinumed this game, and have played through it at least 5 times now. It delivered exactly what it promised: an Igavania. I'm an old fart that played the crap out of all the old CV games, including the IGAs. So I got exactly what I wanted. I'm glad he included all the things that modern gamers would complain about in the old games. Until this game came out, all people like me could do is just play the old IGAvanias over and over, believing that we would never get another one. If you can't relate to that, then Bloodstained would be nothing special for you. This was pure nostalgia for me and I loved it, but I get why some people don't like it.
Why bother reviewing a game that's meant to be played longer, when you only dip your toes in it. You don't even grasp the shard and item progression. Just don't bother reviewing man. What waste of time this video was.
I feel the overabundance of shards and weapons is precisely to find ones you *enjoy* using. It was never about needing to scrape around to find a way to win, but one where the feel of the game is where you want it to be. Though so many of the weapons are samey, even if they tend to carry unique, learnable move sin that class to add to the options the weapons you've enjoying using has.
This is such a good analysis. I was very annoyed with all the issues you talked about during my playthrough and it was frustrating because online everyone seemed to be acting like the game was perfect aside from some graphical and performance issues. I was starting to wonder if anyone was even analyzing the game, because it has so many glaring issues.
Someone didn’t play the Sorrow games from Castlevania series, Portrait of Ruin, or Symphony of Night. I may not have played the last one, but they are similar. Also, someone didn’t play RPGs either. Weapon varieties *isn’t* meant for trying each kind out, but sticking to a play style, same with shards in Bloodstained, or souls in Sorrow games. Most weapons, shards/souls *aren’t* meant to be essential for progress, but to fit a person’s play style, which differs from person to person.
yeah, same. I loved Bloodstained and still do. but honestly, I feel like the game catered too much to "playstyle" rather than necessity. I personally preferred swords and magic, idk how others faired. but lol i gotta kill the final boss. too effin hard
The disposable aspect of pick-ups I think was to feel more SOTN-esque. Vania after SOTN fixed this w/less but more useful items. ROTN brings some of the small issues from SOTN back w/tons of mechanics from the later Vanias, which sure is disappointing but I think it solely comes from trying to please what it promised to be, and some Vania fans have pointed out this regression. I imagine since ROTN sold well and the 8bit spin offs have made Bloodstained a desirable IP that they'll feel more comfortable optimizing instead of pandering for ROTN's sequel. I do enjoy the game a ton but I'm not gonna say it's perfect.
I don't know man, I've put hundreds of hours in this game on Steam and I can say for certain that there's nothing disposable about any itens in this game, you literally use everything on alchemy/crafting to produce better gear and powers. Many shards are indeed generic but if you level up any power trough alchemy it becomes useful in one way or another, or if you feel like it you can sell those shards to buy stuff that suits you better. And as someone who played SotN back then and some of the other Igarashi's Castlevanias after that as well I say that everything in this game is what the next Castlevania could've been if Konami never fired the man and wasn't so obsessed with pachinko machines and mobile games instead...
@@javaghoul6302 Absolutely my friend, the sequel to this game would be awesome (the 8 bit style prequels were fun too and hinted more to the story., Zangetsu is the main protagonist in those games and at the end of RotN they hinted something more about him, some unfinished business and a he died but no corpse was foud. Classical 😁). But they're still working on free dlc' right now though, and after that they will throw some paid dlc (if the free dlc are fun, I can just imagine how good those dlc could be). This is not just a spiritual sequel to one of my favorite games (SotN), they delivered exactly what they promised, listened to criticism and improved based on those opinions, and they're being very generous with the people who bought it giving extra characters and powers, giving a nice replay value to the game for free. Best crowdfunding game ever if you ask me. 🙂
Thank you for this analysis. It prevented me from a could be dissapointment. And you said it: there are too much games to play in just a little time! Have a nice one.
I don't think you're arguments are invalid, but I think you would have a different perspective if you had played previous Castlevania games. The abundance of shards and weapons is so the player has a choice on what to use. You can use certain shards or weapons to make things easier, but you have the freedom to use whatever you want. The other bugs are a problem, but I didn't have anything make the game unplayable for me; And I played recently. So they might've patched stuff out. The bug I would encounter is candles not breaking sometimes; Usually when I hit a candle and enemy at the same time. I'm pretty sure I still got the item though each time.
I got this launch day and tried my best to get into it (switch) in fact I got alot of hours into it and fought with the dragon but put it down because of the nasty slowdown ( I'm not a snob or a frame counter honest) & over the years I've bought game after game, I'm going to fire it up again I think. Hopefully the slowdown has been looked at now maybe
As someone who’s 100% completed this game and collected all the items, weapons, shards, recipes, etc. I wholeheartedly agree with this review. Bloodstained isn’t a bad game, but it’s nowhere near as good as it should’ve been with all the money that was put towards it. Definitely not a masterpiece like I’ve seen some people say. Symphony of the Night is still the better game. Hell, Order of Ecclesia is an underrated masterpiece that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, but to each is own at the end of the day.
I get the grief with the platform that seems like it should be at the height to be reached with the double jump, but if it were any lower it would be unusable for accessing the room transition to the right without the double jump. That said, the clever way to handle it in game would be to put a destructible lamp at a position below the platform where you can double jump dive kick into it to regain your double jump and pop onto the platform. There are a couple places at other points in the game where it's considered an intended method of traversal, it would have been easy to implement here.
The complaint you have about the shortcut platform being unreachable through double jump gets invalid once you unlock the reflector ray ability. It is what it is: some abilities open up for some shortcuts, other abilities open up other shortcuts.
Also about the abundance of weapons and stuff, just see it as collectibles not different from collecting stars in Super Mario or whatever collectathon you wanna use as a reference. Not everything needs a deeper purpose than being just another box to check off.
It's even invalid when you get double jump. Once you have double jump you can craft high jump. From that point you can jump infinitely. Plus yeah, when you play the game you unlock Reflector Ray, Invert and Dimension Shift.
Exactly. If double jump solved all platforming issues, the later abilities like you mentioned and invert would become redundant
You played the game for 5 to 8 hours determined to find negative things about the game, it's just impossible to grasp the depth of this game with such a superficial review. And for someone who says that love Metroidvanias and never played Symphony of the Night is like saying that I love fighting games but I missed out on the Street Fighter series... Bloodstained is a full reimagining of SotN, there's nothing on Symphony that can't be found on Bloodstained in a more polished way. And SotN coined the genre that you said you liked, so... your critics didn't make any sense to me.
I think his opinion is fair but i disagree with it. I also like to remember this is the first in a series so what it did do, it did VERY well. I love this game so much myself. I found the whole thing enjoyable start to finish. I also love the tome the developers put into variety of weapons. Its quite a simple game really i dont think its meant to be complex gameplay as much as its just meant to be hack and slash fun! I think theres always room for improvement so a sequel would be amazing to see! 😄
This is one of the best games I've played in years. Not a lot of games make me excited to get home from work and play anymore but this game did along with RE7 and Monster Sanctuary.
It was an ok analysis, but something you didn't mention is that the shards can be upgraded to be more powerful, the game itself has a crafting system, where you can improve your shards, armor and weapons too, that's one of the ways to improve your equipment efficiency, also the thing about that platform that you couldn't reach with the double jump, you can get there thanks to the chandellars, and also there's an upgrade to the double jump to craft a High jump, which helps a lot to reach to platforms out of reach for the jump or double jump, so isn't bad design, is just lack of progress and exploration from your part, which is understandable cause in 1 or 2 hours you won't discover any of that, and if you don't like crafting or if you don't like metroidvanias where you can level up abilities or stats like an action RPG, then sadly this game or many of the Castlevania Metroidvanias/Igavania games won't click for you.
Someone didn’t play the Sorrow games from Castlevania series, Portrait of Ruin, or Symphony of Night. I may not have played the last one, but they are similar. Also, someone didn’t play RPGs either. Weapon varieties *isn’t* meant for trying each kind out, but sticking to a play style, same with shards in Bloodstained, or souls in Sorrow games. Most weapons, shards/souls *aren’t* meant to be essential for progress, but to fit a person’s play style, which differs from person to person.
This game and blasphemous are masterpieces😃
Everyone has their opinions, likes and dislikes my man but honestly most of your points come down to nitpicking plus the fact you strated reviewing this game after 1 hour of playtime. 1 of the few things I agree with you on that was a bad mechanic is the shard not being collected unless you waited for the animation to finish before going into another room but aside from that the game is really good considering it was a kickstarter and puts most AA and some AAA metroidvanias to shame.
I am not a Castlevania fan and have only dabbled in some GBA and DS titles apart from finishing 1 on NES so I went into ROTN with no bias or nostalgia. I only remember really grinding it out for one of the demon hearts in the underground ice cave endgame since it's drop rate was so low and the demon so tough on your first normal playthrough as well as the Bovine Plume to unlock High jump that grants infinite jumps.
The grind for shards and materials to craft new recipes and weapons was the most fun I've had in years. RPGs have lost my interest due to this very reason but Bloodstained made grinding fun for me again.
I platinumed this game, and have played through it at least 5 times now. It delivered exactly what it promised: an Igavania. I'm an old fart that played the crap out of all the old CV games, including the IGAs. So I got exactly what I wanted. I'm glad he included all the things that modern gamers would complain about in the old games.
Until this game came out, all people like me could do is just play the old IGAvanias over and over, believing that we would never get another one. If you can't relate to that, then Bloodstained would be nothing special for you. This was pure nostalgia for me and I loved it, but I get why some people don't like it.
Why bother reviewing a game that's meant to be played longer, when you only dip your toes in it. You don't even grasp the shard and item progression. Just don't bother reviewing man. What waste of time this video was.
I feel the overabundance of shards and weapons is precisely to find ones you *enjoy* using. It was never about needing to scrape around to find a way to win, but one where the feel of the game is where you want it to be. Though so many of the weapons are samey, even if they tend to carry unique, learnable move sin that class to add to the options the weapons you've enjoying using has.
This is such a good analysis. I was very annoyed with all the issues you talked about during my playthrough and it was frustrating because online everyone seemed to be acting like the game was perfect aside from some graphical and performance issues. I was starting to wonder if anyone was even analyzing the game, because it has so many glaring issues.
Someone didn’t play the Sorrow games from Castlevania series, Portrait of Ruin, or Symphony of Night. I may not have played the last one, but they are similar. Also, someone didn’t play RPGs either. Weapon varieties *isn’t* meant for trying each kind out, but sticking to a play style, same with shards in Bloodstained, or souls in Sorrow games. Most weapons, shards/souls *aren’t* meant to be essential for progress, but to fit a person’s play style, which differs from person to person.
yeah, same. I loved Bloodstained and still do. but honestly, I feel like the game catered too much to "playstyle" rather than necessity. I personally preferred swords and magic, idk how others faired.
but lol i gotta kill the final boss. too effin hard
The disposable aspect of pick-ups I think was to feel more SOTN-esque. Vania after SOTN fixed this w/less but more useful items. ROTN brings some of the small issues from SOTN back w/tons of mechanics from the later Vanias, which sure is disappointing but I think it solely comes from trying to please what it promised to be, and some Vania fans have pointed out this regression. I imagine since ROTN sold well and the 8bit spin offs have made Bloodstained a desirable IP that they'll feel more comfortable optimizing instead of pandering for ROTN's sequel. I do enjoy the game a ton but I'm not gonna say it's perfect.
I don't know man, I've put hundreds of hours in this game on Steam and I can say for certain that there's nothing disposable about any itens in this game, you literally use everything on alchemy/crafting to produce better gear and powers. Many shards are indeed generic but if you level up any power trough alchemy it becomes useful in one way or another, or if you feel like it you can sell those shards to buy stuff that suits you better. And as someone who played SotN back then and some of the other Igarashi's Castlevanias after that as well I say that everything in this game is what the next Castlevania could've been if Konami never fired the man and wasn't so obsessed with pachinko machines and mobile games instead...
@@nospoon3822 so great to see other fans of this game too! I think we will get an awesome sequel in the next couple years to look forward to 👌
@@javaghoul6302 Absolutely my friend, the sequel to this game would be awesome (the 8 bit style prequels were fun too and hinted more to the story., Zangetsu is the main protagonist in those games and at the end of RotN they hinted something more about him, some unfinished business and a he died but no corpse was foud. Classical 😁). But they're still working on free dlc' right now though, and after that they will throw some paid dlc (if the free dlc are fun, I can just imagine how good those dlc could be). This is not just a spiritual sequel to one of my favorite games (SotN), they delivered exactly what they promised, listened to criticism and improved based on those opinions, and they're being very generous with the people who bought it giving extra characters and powers, giving a nice replay value to the game for free. Best crowdfunding game ever if you ask me. 🙂
Thank you for this analysis. It prevented me from a could be dissapointment. And you said it: there are too much games to play in just a little time! Have a nice one.
I don't think you're arguments are invalid, but I think you would have a different perspective if you had played previous Castlevania games. The abundance of shards and weapons is so the player has a choice on what to use. You can use certain shards or weapons to make things easier, but you have the freedom to use whatever you want.
The other bugs are a problem, but I didn't have anything make the game unplayable for me; And I played recently. So they might've patched stuff out. The bug I would encounter is candles not breaking sometimes; Usually when I hit a candle and enemy at the same time. I'm pretty sure I still got the item though each time.
I got this launch day and tried my best to get into it (switch) in fact I got alot of hours into it and fought with the dragon but put it down because of the nasty slowdown ( I'm not a snob or a frame counter honest) & over the years I've bought game after game, I'm going to fire it up again I think. Hopefully the slowdown has been looked at now maybe
As someone who’s 100% completed this game and collected all the items, weapons, shards, recipes, etc. I wholeheartedly agree with this review. Bloodstained isn’t a bad game, but it’s nowhere near as good as it should’ve been with all the money that was put towards it. Definitely not a masterpiece like I’ve seen some people say. Symphony of the Night is still the better game. Hell, Order of Ecclesia is an underrated masterpiece that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, but to each is own at the end of the day.
I get the grief with the platform that seems like it should be at the height to be reached with the double jump, but if it were any lower it would be unusable for accessing the room transition to the right without the double jump.
That said, the clever way to handle it in game would be to put a destructible lamp at a position below the platform where you can double jump dive kick into it to regain your double jump and pop onto the platform. There are a couple places at other points in the game where it's considered an intended method of traversal, it would have been easy to implement here.
Amazing analysis, great video man!
I enjoyed this one, but I wasn't as drawn to replay it as SotN.
is Zelda (NES) a Metroidvania?
This video explains why you only have 1k subscriber 😂