bloodstained. Ritual of the Night
Today I decided to move a little away from the regular column “Nostalgic Games” and launch a new one – “In Search of Treasures”, where I will talk about good modern or relatively modern games that you might have missed.
I’ll start with a project called Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
The first thing that will catch your eye is the external similarity with the Castlevania series, and deciding that this is another clone, you will pass by. But wait, don’t jump to conclusions!
You are right, this is indeed a clone, but it was made by the creator of the iconic Symphony of the Night, Koji Igarashi. Believe me, this person knows what he is doing, so let’s take a closer look at the project!
Who
Koji Igarashi started at Konami as a programmer. At the time of the development of the Symphony of the Night, he also participated in its creation as a screenwriter and assistant director. After its success, he became the producer of the Castlevania series.
After leaving Konami in 2014, he tried to find a publisher on his own to fund his new game, but failed. Troubles did not break him, immediately after that Koji founded his studio Artplay and 8 months later launched a new project on Kickstarter – Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. The initial goal was to raise 500 thousand dollars, but by the end of the first day more than a million were received, which means that further development will be! In total, they managed to raise 5.5 million dollars, which at that time was a record for games on crowdfunding sites.
Plot
The game takes place in England in the late 18th century. The Order of Alchemists, beginning to lose its influence, summoned demons to Earth and tried to show its usefulness in the fight against the summoned offspring.
To carry out the ritual, they used the girl Miriam, endowed with magic crystals that attract demons, but she can not stand it and falls into a coma for a long ten years.
After waking up, Miriam discovers that a demonic castle has appeared on the site of the Alchemists Guild, and because of the curse that has befallen the girl, she has become able to absorb soul fragments that give her new powers, in return losing her human essence.
Gameplay
As I said above, Bloodstained is a clone of Symphony of the Night, but in my opinion, it is a clone that takes into account the mistakes of its parent. The game very carefully takes all the best and transfers to a new world and setting.
For those unfamiliar with the Metroidvania genre (named after the two most famous Metroid+Castlevania games in the genre) and the Castlevania series in particular, I’ll briefly cover the basics.
The game is a 2.5D side-scrolling platform game in which your hero will have to travel through a huge castle full of monsters, weapons, secrets and simple puzzles. In theory, the entire castle is available for exploration, but many places you won’t be able to get to for various reasons. This may be the absence of any ability, key, or due to the need to defeat the boss. But the further you progress through the story, discovering new abilities, the more new secret or hard-to-reach places in the castle will be available.
The bosses of the game deserve special attention. There are a lot of them, and each is unique both from a gameplay point of view and from an artistic point of view. The designers did their best to make the battles with them memorable, because each of the bosses needs its own tactics and approach. Personally, my favorite boss of the game is a huge two-headed dragon chasing you from different sides of the arena, gradually destroying it. If you are already familiar with this game, share, and who is your favorite?
In addition, the game has a fairly typical pumping system. It consists in increasing your characteristics at the time of obtaining a new level for killing monsters. It should be borne in mind that after you leave the room and return to it, the enemies come to life again. This allows you to become a little stronger by gaining experience or knocking out new fragments (abilities). Each item and ability has a certain drop rate, which can increase when the Luck stat increases, or after putting on items that increase the drop chance. To knock out certain abilities or other loot, you will have to try very hard and spend a lot of time. Speaking of abilities…
Chip
As a result of the experiments of alchemists, Miriam is able to absorb fragments, finding them on the territory of the castle, or pulling them out of defeated enemies. In this way, she gains new powers that expand both her attacking potential and her ability to explore the castle. This mechanic is very similar to the one from Castlevania Aria of Sorrow/Dawn of Sorrow. After defeating a monster, there is a certain chance to knock out a fragment and items from it. Each monster/boss has its own unique shard and its own list of available items (this can be either weapons and armor, or various ingredients used in crafting).
It seems to me that this is the basis of the gameplay, which conceptually repeats the Pokemon motto “Catch them all!”. There are hundreds of different shards in the game that can greatly expand the gameplay. Some allow you to shoot fireballs, while others allow you to create a shield from demonic books (almost like a necromancer’s bone shield from the Diablo series). There are both healing spells and the ability to summon various assistants that can attack enemies, heal you, or impose various buffs. Fans of the progenitor series will undoubtedly remember the demonic sword that flies after the heroine and independently attacks enemies. But don’t forget about shards that passively improve your skill with a certain weapon or some particular stat (increasing luck is my favorite). The icing on the cake of this munchkinism is the ability to upgrade these shards!
In fact, this game is everyone’s dream. zadrota an enthusiastic player, because it has a lot of opportunities for optional grinding and pumping.
In addition to everything that I have listed above, you can find and donate books to the library in order to receive buffs of characteristics of your choice. You can become a real “Head Hunter” by accepting contracts to kill certain demons (of course, for a corresponding reward), prepare food and drinks in order to improve performance or complete a task.
But last, but not least, is crafting. By finding various ingredients and soul shards on locations, buying or knocking out enemies, you can not only sell them, but improve existing armor, weapons or shards. If you have the desire and the necessary resources, then you can create almost any item.
Minuses
Many abilities are really useless. Sometimes it makes no sense to use this or that skill, since there are obvious favorites. In defense, I can say that you are unlikely to find a skill for all occasions. Certain skills will be useful at different moments and situations.
The second negative is the combat system, which has not changed much since 1997. In my opinion, it could have been made a little more diverse, to fill the battles with dynamics and drive.
Why play
There can be several reasons to try this creation. Someone will want to return to the setting, reminiscent of the spirit and game mechanics of their favorite series (Castlevania). Others will be hooked by “munchkinism”: the desire to find and pump all the abilities, discover all the secrets, find all the weapons and pump the character as hard as possible. Well, for sure there are many players who just want to plunge into this gothic atmosphere with bewitching locations, into a game that you can “stick” into after a hard day without much strain.
Outcome
An excellent game, which hardly went unnoticed, but certainly did not make a big splash. Yes, it has its drawbacks, but the positives clearly outweigh. The good news is that the text of the game is fully translated into Russian, which means that there will be no difficulties with immersion. I definitely recommend it if you like games of this genre, since it is available on almost any modern platform.
Such games are usually played not for the sake of the plot, but for the gameplay and mechanics. And if they can hook you, then most likely you will stay here for a long time!
I’ve been playing games for over 25 years and remember them exactly like that: heartfelt and addictive, with fun mechanics and interactivity, no in-game currency and no attempts to be anything but a game. In my Telegram channel you are waiting for not only reviews of games, but also current news, as well as discussions about game development. Subscribe, it will be interesting!
