Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Just picked this up on steam. Huge fan of SOTN and all of the hand held Castelvanias that came after. I would say SOTN and Order of Ecclesia are my favorite. There are 3 difficulties, normal, hard nightmare.  But you can only select normal from the start.... unless you name your save file NIGHTMARE all caps, then you can pick hard and nightmare. I started on nightmare and it feels like the way to go if you have any experience with the series. When I first played SOTN every save point I found was such a relief. The combat doesn't feel quite as tight as IGA's previous games. The jump attack canceling is a little finicky. The dash is nowhere near as strong as SOTN but hopefully there are a lot of upgrades to find that change combat mechanics. Order of Ecclesia had an item that gave the backdash I-frames, hoping to see items like that. If you are familiar with the handheld castlevanias, this game also has the powers you collect from enemies. They are random drops so there will be grinding if you want them all. So far so good, it feels like exactly what you would expect.

I've never been able to really 'get' into these games, though I'm a huge fan of the NES styled Bloodstained and the classical Castlevania games (the pre-metroid ones). Would this one be a good one to start with, or would that still be SOTN?

I went in order from SOTN to each of the handheld ones so it is hard to say. I think SOTN is one of the best action adventure titles of all time. Dark Souls would be nothing without that game. I think you would be good either way you went. SOTN is on ps4 I believe and half the price of Bloodstained, and if you have no problem getting into older titles, it is still one of the bests. Bloodstained is much more modern so it would probably be easier to get into, but it just doesn't have that magic for me so far as SOTN. I prefer beautiful sprites over 3d models in a game like this anyday. The handheld ones are also all fantastic as well, if you have a way to play them. The games really get good when you understand the jump and dash attack canceling. You can jump attack, land which cancels the recovery, attack, then dash back which also cancels and get a third attack in. Much faster than just pressing attack.

I gave SOTN a go a long, long time ago, under very dumb circumstances. And I didn't like it since I didn't gave it a chance. I remember hating how long it took to get past the game-over screen (I tend to derp). What you note sounds cool though.

So apparently Nightmare mode in Bloodstained disables lvl ups haha. No wonder this has been so brutal. Gonna restart on hard, not a fan of challenge runs the first time through. But that is a really cool modifier for that difficulty. I believe one of the DS games had a LVL 1 mode as well.

SOTN really isn't that hard at all once you get the swing of things and find some good items, you will only see the game over screen on bosses. Also SOTN has a second dungeon if you fulfill a certain ending requirement, look into it if you play. The second dungeon is one of the reasons I love that game. Mind blowing to see it at the time.

I've been thinking about this game recently. Was just about to ask you about it in the buying topic.

I like these games though I've only played a few of them.

Was there any pre order only DLC of backer only stuff?
I know about the 13 free ones because Iga said so while torturing some guy. That was so funny.

There is a IGA backpack dlc which backers get for free. They still let you buy it though. It has a weapon and a boss fight against IGA I believe. It sucks it isn't included, but I guess it lets backers feel special. The game was only $36 so not a big deal.

It's $90 here.

I read of some huge progression bug due to an update and people are having to start over.

It sounds like if you played the game before the newest patch, and patch your game, your save is done. But if you started playing now with the latest patches, you are fine. Really lame, think it only effects console.

>Should I start with Sotn or this.
I'd rec playing Sotn then the other IGA titles like AoS, DoS, PoR and OoE to see the all the inspirations this game took from them, Bloodstained is basically a package filled with everything Igavanias have to offer from the good parts(lots of gear, shards/souls farming, L1 challenges, Bossrush, etc) to the bad parts(food cancer, crafting cancer, subquests and other annoying stuff). However if you're not interested in getting into the franchise like that it's better to just pick the complete package Igavania package that is Bloodstained to see what it's really about.

Sotn is really great but the game is lacking in a lot of places like lacking difficulties, challenges and overall thought into the usefulness of gear, you'll realize that the game is filled with garbage items and some godly items that are useful in every single place while most recent games like the ds ones are more balanced and offer a better variety of useful items and tools for different situations. Sotn is mostly interesting for the first experience with it since the game is beatiful and for speedrunning, the ds games and Bloodstained on the other hand(since it draws so much from them) are better games for actual challenge and for those wanting to put in time to find all the uses in the tools present in the game.

>though I'm a huge fan of the NES styled Bloodstained and the classical Castlevania games
You'd probably better get this then https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Castlevania:_The_Dracula_X_Chronicles if you haven't already, the base game would probably be of your liking and it has Sotn included in the game as secret freebie.


>I believe one of the DS games had a LVL 1 mode as well.
PoR and OoE both did though they were just modifiers to the difficulties instead of being an actual difficulty(I wonder what else is changed on nightmare).

>But I guess it lets backers feel special.
They paid extra for that bossfight which was supposed to be a Kekstarter exclusive milestone, a while back before the game launched they held a backer only survey about keeping it exclusive to backers or making it avaiable to everyone and most people voted yes. Their decision was to make it dlc content and charge the actual difference in price that backers paid for it(10$ iirc).

>Bloodstained impressions overall
Movement is pretty similar to the 2d games despite the 3d sprites, backdashing got nerfed and jump cancelling is utter garbage(takes too long), the most interesting thing so far is that mobs are affected by status ailments making it possible to work your way around mobs with stuff like petrification for instant kill. Weapon special attacks got their generic commands replaced from 66a and 236a to specific commands(like the secret attacks Alucard has but tied to specific weapons rather than the character), not a fan of having to find the specific commands or google them over having simpler standardized movesets but to compensate for that they're way more unique than SotN special attacks and offer a lot of variety such as katanas having parries that offer you long invulnerable states and react differently to attacks(countering melee and just defending projectiles).

Everything else feels what you'd expect from IGA, I've been progressing slow due to me doing my 1st playthrough with friends, will probably try to finish the game on the weekend and farm all the gear to see everything the game has to offer.

What was the original patch for hedfone?

It seems like nightmare is LVL1, and more damage from enemies. In the first area they do 50 damage vs the 30 from hard. Bosses and enemy attacks change on hard, but I believe they are the same on nightmare. The first boss seems identical on hard/nightmare other than more damage, but it is an entirely different fight on normal. It's hilarious seeing people had trouble with it on normal, they didn't even see the unavoidable spray attack.

The changes to the jump canceling are baffling me. It just seems inconsistent. Like you can do it with the katana, but sometimes it just drops. As opposed to all of the handheld games where it worked flawlessly every time. Most weapons attack so fast you don't need to cancel though, so not a big deal.

If you didn't know, you can cancel dodge with crouch. Sort of replicating the Alucard dash spam through the castle. The most interesting thing about this is that you can do some crazy shit with the gun, pretty much infinites if your back is against a wall it seems.

From what I have seen the fun will be in shard builds, I have already seen some crazy gifs floating around.

Holy hell is the voice acting bad, and not in a fun cheesy SOTN way. David Hayter sounded pilled out in the intro. I would change to Japanese, but I saw that Alucards voice actor is in this and he is a beast.


>original patch
I have no idea. I have been looking for patch notes. It sounds like there were 2 patches, a day one, and a 1.02 patch that broke the game. From what I read it adjusted all of the chests and changed item layouts in them, as well as some enemy variables(someone mentioned it is easier post patch). Very strange that they would do that right as the game launched, how was that not set in stone months prior?

Yeah it's odd. With all the delays you'd expect stuff to be figured out.

Starting to wonder if it's safe to buy this at the moment.

>Shards
Super interested in this aspect.

Have you played the handheld castlevania games? The shard mechanic is ripped straight out of those games.

Played about 6 hours, I’m kinda bored honestly. I don’t think this style of game is for me, I played SotN recently and wasn’t feeling it, either.

I have fought 2 bosses so far and I would say they compare to Order of Ecclesia. Difficult and fun on hard. You can cheese them with cheap shards, but I prefer to keep it melee to learn them up front. Bosses were my favorite part of castlevania games and so far the same is true here.

Few bosses in on hard and as expected Ailments are insanely strong, poison applies dot do lots of bosses since most of them have no resists to it. Duration is pretty long and it offers a good source of damage while you can sit at safety. It doesn't go away if you swap gear on shortcut so you can have a poison dedicated setup(unsure if luck makes it proc more often) so you can proc and swap to something that either deals more damage or offers you safe ranged options against bosses.

The shoes that can be bought with the 8bit coin from below the bridge can be picked up BEFORE entering the castle and is by far the best early source of poison early on, since it's a leg weapon it also means that poison can be applied with slides and divekicks(wowzer) so you can proc safely from above mobs.

I can see lots of players abusing ailments for early game progress on nightmare until fucking stupid casuals chime in asking for nerfs(they're already doing it so with the cannon shard that can be upgraded to level 7 at early game) and devs comply(as seen with the 1.1 patch already nerfing numbers across the board on gear and killing the alchemy gold exploit).

Damn. I haven't even found an aliment weapon, I wondered how procing worked. I really wish the status aliment icons were more prominent on gear. I wish a lot of things were changed that are so much more important than "balance" The map being zoomed out every time you open it. When you get an new compendium entry it has 0 indication of what it was, it just says "new compendium".



On steam people are calling for nerfs and buffs, this isn't counter strike. We don't need balance, if something is too op you can choose not to use it. A lot of people have a lot of fun going for the most broken build, especially in a game like this. It leads to some really cool speedruns. I live for finding my own exploits in a game like this, they already got my money who cares.. I guess they are going to have "versus" at some point, and I am sure people will totally play that long term and get serious about it

> I wondered how procing worked
It seems to deal a fixed amount of damage based on the mob hp for poison, petrify just instakills anything, not sure about curse, haven't found a good weapon to test it out.
Damage doesn't seem to matter when proccing poison so you'd want just something fast hitting to proc it as fast as possible, even using Oleanders which is one of the first weapons you get in the game you can still proc poison on 2nd fight Zangetsu and deal consistent damage(73 damage per tick) to him despite all of your kicks doing 1 damage to him overall.

As for if there's stuff to make the damage scale up, increase proc chance or other stuff I've no idea, I'm almost reaching the end of the game(only 2 story bosses and uber bosses left) and so far I didn't really need anything else than Poison procs and Flame Cannon to melt everything down. I'll get to collecting and testing items probably after I'm done with most bosses save for uber ones or after I grab the black panther soul equivalent on this game on the last dungeon.

>I wish a lot of things were changed
There's a few things that I'd personally want it changed but I'd settle for them being forever in the game if it meant the game not getting the Nioh balance cancer.

>On steam people are calling for nerfs and buffs
It's kind of amazing that in less than one week there's already "pros" appearing and speaking up on the behalf of the community about what's broken and what needs buffs, it's funny because most of these idiots probably haven't finished their compendiums or maxed out shards yet or even touched hard but they feel like they're already good enough to dictate the way people play the game simply because they've seen someone crushing the game with something they wish they could think of.

> A lot of people have a lot of fun going for the most broken build, especially in a game like this
Yeah Igavania games have always been about busted setups, abusing glitches and finding op weapons, I'm kind on the fence about stuff like Alucard's shield, but every other broken setup is usually welcome such as dual death ring armageddon spam or Axe armor + heal spam on PoR L1 runs.

>I guess they are going to have "versus" at some point
Which will just end up creating more whining to the point no one is left satisfied I bet. I wonder why they're even trying to catter to multiplayer casuals when this game has a story of being single player focused for god knows so many years.

Great. More nerfs removing options in a single player game.

How do builds work?
How many shards can be equipped?
Is there much replay value outside of 100% exploration and items/equips?

>How do builds work?
It's just your gear and shard loadout. You get weapon, armor, hat, 2 accessory slots and scarf. The game allows you to create shortcuts to change your gear and shard setup by pressing one button and then using your analogic control to switch between a max of 8 registered "builds".

>How many shards can be equipped?
5. One acts as a skill by pressing triangle, 2nd does something as long you keep holding r1. 3rd one can be thrown by aiming with your right analogic(or your left analogic or dpad if you're not aiming with your right analogic) in all 8 directions and then pressing r2 to throw it at the desired location, 4th one gives a passive skill(that can be turned into a passive that doesn't take the shard slot if you upgrade it to max level) and 5th one is just a familiar that floats around and does stuff automatically for you.

>Is there much replay value out side 100% exploration and items/equips?
The game is built around mainly for speed running so there's that, it even has a inbuilt speedrun mode where you have a clock in the game to record your time, and a boss rush mode to see how fast you can melt a sequence of bosses.

Aside from that there's hard mode and nightmare mode, hard changes enemies placement, density, behavior, attacks and etc. Bosses get all these changes as well and some play really differently than they do on normal. Nightmare is just Hard mode but higher numbers + permanent Level 1 cap, you can Newgame+ into both of these modes if you want.

There's also a lot content that was cut from release to be released freely along I believe 13 or so updates. IIrc there's two more playable characters, versus mode, co-op, a roguelike/chaos/classic modes(unsure of how these will work) and a mode where you're supposed to play as bosses.

It works the exact same way that the handheld castlevanias work.

You have items IE armor, weapons, useables, all with stats. This came from SOTN.

Shards are dropped from enemies, random chance. They each have just one. They can be active powers, directional ranged shots, passive stat boosts, or familiars. Each have their own slot, you mix and match from there.

As far as build depth, hard to say so far, there are a lot of powerful setups, the old games had this too though. The fun for me is usually becoming a walking god with a weird power, by equipping gear to enhance it.

I would highly recommend trying Aria of Sorrow for the GBA, if at all possible, very easy to emulate even on a phone.
Maybe a review of that or a walkthrough would help on YT.
That game introduced the enemy power drop mechanic, and IMO is one of the best post SOTN castlevanias.

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As long as I can get some mileage out of builds I'm good. And it sounds like I can.

Hearing a lot of bad stuff about the Switch version right now, apparently it is really badly optimized, a shame. Otherwise, hearing nothing but great things about it from all places. Surprised I haven't hear Bemo talk about it yet considering his lust for female protagonists in the genre.

Good to hear you guys are enjoying it too :)

>Beme
I don't get that guy's angle. He seems to want our attention, like ours personally.

>Bloodstained
Will most likely get it next week.

>Switch
Huge disappointment, would be a perfect switch title. All Metroidvanias would be. I hope they patch it.

My sister bought this for me. Will probably play it this weekend.

Heard something about a hidden area in the game, pretty sweet that they went that far! Really shows passion.

> Nioh balance cancer incoming
Never again. Please. The Sigma changes were bad enough in retrospect, but nothing prepared us for how bad that would be.

Playing it now. Got a gun that doesn't do shit for damage. Watch my ranged obsession make it work.

Fire rate is slow as hell but can be sped up by doing small jumps repeatedly. I hope those 8 bit coins aren't rare or used for something later because I just used one on this new gun and it isn't that great.

You can cancel the gun by alternating back dash and crouch. I heard guns get very powerful later, but you have to craft appropriate ammo. The normal shot sucks.

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I got the early equips Cowboy Hat and Gunslinger scarf which slightly up damage and fire rate.

Are you referring to the speed running backdash trick?

Normal infinite shot is much weaker but I'm hoping to find a build around it just for fun. Been saving my good ammo for bosses.

So far I'm just farming every monster I come across until I get its shard. This True Arrow is really fantastic.

Raeng:
>hidden area
I'm guessing you're talking about the 8 bit area? It's pretty neat yeah.

>Really shows passion.
There's some really interesting easter eggs in the game like Miriam being able to play the theme on the game on a piano in the background, if you equip your fairy familiar she'll sing along both in japanese and english.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZpmLawrTlc

>but nothing prepared us for how bad that would be.
I've heard stories from SBK.

Birdman:
>Got a gun that doesn't do shit for damage
Guns are OP later on but as mentioned you'll need to rely on specific ammunition(which requires some light crafting cancer), and finding capacity upgrades so you can upgrade your ammo cap.

>8 bit coins aren't rare
I think there's only one in the whole game, the remaining ones have to be bought from the shop.

>I just used one on this new gun and it isn't that great.
I like Orleans better for the 8bit pick, it's a early source of poison and most of the bosses in the game don't resist it.

>I'm hoping to find a build around it just for fun
I think if you pump all in it, it eventually gets pretty strong. Have seen people hit over 100 damage on Nightmare per shot.

>farming every monster I come across until I get its shard.
There's a endgame accessory that increases the shard droprate if you ever feel like it's taking too long, I usually enjoy grabbing the minimum to get by and then farm all the stuff when I got drop modifier rings and more mobility for completion. But if you're having fun that's great.

>This True Arrow is really fantastic.
Yeah it is, Collected Company(drops from books) is pretty good as well. And the 1st shard you get in the game(Fire Cannon) can be upgraded to level 7 with GunPowder(at lvl 7 it deals x4 times the damage).

>Drop rate
I find it's not too bad for getting your first one. You can upgrade by getting the same one too right?

You can upgrade it's Grade by getting more "copies" of the shard and raise its rank by upgrading it by Alchemy on Jonathan.

As for the difference between them, gonna just copypasta the post that I read about it.

"Grade always raises the damage potential of the skill, or if it's passive, the number that impacts whatever the gain is.

Rank has a specific impact (usually unrelated to damage) that is specified when you are looking at the shard to rank up.

As an example, the first spell you get (the water ball thing).

Every grade increase will increase the damage potential of the spell while every rank increase will increase the duration that the projectile bounces around.

A "maxed shard" is 9 rank 9 grade. "

FFS

So I'm exploring this underground cavern and come across...Shovel Knight? Ok.

He knocks me into the water and I get stuck somehow in this wading position. Couldn't jump out but could still use moves. Thank God I had a waystone or that would've been a ton of progress loss. Might stock up.

I can't pick up items sometimes. It just started happening in this machine tower. Every time I kill wolf man I can't pick up his item.

Some get stuck in walls if the enemy is killed too close and it looks like they're in that dropping animation. Can't collect these either so I guess it's the same issue.

The slow down on the outside of this tower is pretty gross probably due to how it's doing some 3D thing.

Still getting some drops I can't pick up but this time was able to get stuff from wolf man.

Got double jump but there are still places even that can't reach
I'm guessing you get the ability to fly, triple jump or something from a boss later. I just got an ID card and I'm about to take the train.

Losing interest for some reason.

Got a few tools for exploring like double jump and reflector ray but I get this feeling this is one of those games I won't play again.

List of patch notes incoming:

Chest Bug

Xbox One (Status: Fix Incoming)

Treasure chest issues have been fixed; after the patch, unique items will be obtainable even on existing playthroughs.
The patch for this should be submitted today (Wednesday), and we anticipate public release on Friday or Saturday.
The teams are also working on additional improvements and bug fixes.

Playstation 4 (Status—unchanged)

The problems causing the bug have been identified, teams are working to identify and implement solutions.
No new users affected by this bug, just like before all new games/playthroughs are safe to play.

Nintendo Switch (Status—fix being tested)

The fix is currently in test, the submission date we were working toward has been delayed due to a graphical bug that has reemerged.
We anticipate testing will be completed by next week, which would mean an ETA of public release during the week of July 15, 2019.

Improvements

Map Improvements

Map close button has been remapped to standard exit/close button
Marker button has been changed
Trail display button has been changed
Map scroll speed improved
Zoom in and zoom out improved
Zoom level retained when reopening the map
Auto-center when opening the map
Bug fix: No longer displaying enemies for completed quests
Fixed items getting stuck on walls/geometry

The functionality of waiting until the item is collected automatically has been left in, in case the issue persists.

Switch-specific Improvements

HD Rumble issues in certain areas of the game have been fixed
Enabled Traditional Chinese language option
Fixed instances where the game would crash while transitioning between rooms
Work has been done on the technical "non-visible" side of things to improve input delay, stability, and various optimizations. The teams are continuing to work on these items and we'll have future updates and plans to share soon.

"Iga's Back Pack" DLC

Xbox One (Status—DLC being tested)

Testing will happen next week, if completed successfully we will submit and have an updated ETA for release during the week of July 15, 2019.

Playstation 4 (Status—DLC submitted, pending approval and release)

We're currently working through some submissions with Sony, and plan to have an update, hopefully for release, next week.

Nintendo Switch (Status—DLC approved, release imminent)

The DLC has been approved by Nintendo, we're just taking the final steps to make it go live.

Does everything carry over to NG+? Read some conflicting information.

I'm about to throw this piece of shit out the window.
For the second time I'm stuck in the water!

I figured I'd go kill that fish in the underground caves because it must have the shard that let's me go underwater but now I can't jump out. At first I could then it's like the game just locked and I had to waystone out. Is this common?

Ok read up and seems if you enter the water with an attack you get stuck.

You can move up if there's a slope and that will fix it.
Looks like I have to beat this blood woman before I can learn swimming.

This game really didn’t have any staying power with me. The enemies are boring and most of the shards are “sends out X and damages enemy”, and it just makes experimentation unappealing. I also hate how this series(oh wait, different series...)has shyed away from environmental hazards and smart enemy placement.

And yeah, it’s glitchy and runs pretty poorly. I fell through the floor twice at the clock tower boss, and I have long stretches where there’s no music(not that the music is very good to begin with).

So I guess the PS4 version is the one to get?

Birdman:

>NG+
Iirc everything but progression shards.

>Stuck in water and a bugged drops
Yeah they're somewhat frequent(not that frequent, but happens enough to be a annoyance), gotta love the magic of 2019's gaming development of release first, patches will fix it later.

>Blood Woman
You can skip her,

Spoiler:

Nad:
>Ps4?
PC. PS4 is okay but if you can opt for the master race go for it.

Which icon is the spoiler one? I want to ask about some stuff.

5does: Thank you.

Birdman: The Spoiler is the third icon in the third bar.

I thought draining the blood fountain led to the area with the swim shard enemy?