Video Game Review: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

If you're a fan of horror video games, you know the name Koji Igarashi. If you don't go find a way to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, then come back to read this review. Widely regarded as the best Castlevania game ever made, it really set the stage for the Metroidvania style of games that are crosses between side-scrolling action and exploration-RPG games. Despite Symphony of the Night's popularity, it became increasingly difficult for Koji to convince the major company he worked for to put actual effort into similar games. So, like most creatives with a vision, he took it to Kickstarter. In 2015, Koji launched a Kickstarter campaign for the game what would become Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, looking for a modest sum of just $500,000.

In July of 2019, after having raised a final tally of over 5 MILLION dollars, Bloodstained released.

From initial screenshots, I was actually concerned this would just be a re-skin of Symphony of the Night. I was wrong.

Now, to be fair, Bloodstained is more than just the spiritual successor to Symphony. The controls, the game-play, the enemies, the music; all are reminiscent of Symphony, but Bloodstained is its own game. The story and world-building are fairly unique, bosses are challenging in different ways and memorable, and abilities are varied and give a wide range of customization for playing styles. It also has multiple endings if you manage to fully explore the castle and are adept at figuring out how to use the myriad abilities you can gain throughout the game.

The story follows Miriam, a shardbinder, in the 1800's. Alchemists have raised demons to ravage the world, in order to prove their abilities have merit in the face of the industrial revolution. Shardbinders are people with the ability to basically absorb demonic abilities, though if they absorb too much, they turn into crystals themselves, with no way to turn back.

Miriam is looking for her friend, Gebel, a fellow shardbinder that seems to have used his powers to summon a huge castle full of demons and is poised to set them loose on the world once again. She has to find and stop him, while wondering what happened to make him change to wanting to destroy the world. Fortunately, Miriam isn't alone. She has an alchemist partner who can create items and food, as well as enhance the shards she collects. You also come across a town that's been ravaged, but still has survivors that can sell you items, buy things you have extras of, and give you side quests. You'll also come across others looking for Gebel to destroy him.

The castle isn't simple and straightforward either. There are bosses that guard abilities you'll need to reach different areas to progress through the game, so expect a lot of back and forth as you explore the castle looking for Gebel. You can even reach him without having explored all of the castle.

(FYI, this is ONE boss.)

The game is excellent, even though it had some issues with the version available for the Nintendo Switch. I haven't sat down and binged a video game for quite some time, and I kept coming back to Bloodstained, even after I finished it, just to go back for monster/item farming, as well as to track down the optional bosses. Not only that, I highly anticipate this being a game I come back to further down the line. It's just that much fun to play. I only wish other games came with this level of quality, and companies wouldn't hurry out bug-ridden, paywall-locked games.

Definitely pick this up and play it if you can. PS4, PC, I'm not sure if the Switch has been patched yet, but it seems the bug isn't consistent, so you may want to give it a try anyway. 

~ Shaun