Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night Review - preview/review
(hx) 09:22 PM CEST - Jun,23 2019
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It's hard to believe, but we've been waiting for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ($40; PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) for more than four years. Back in May 2015, classic Castlevania dev Koji Igarashi requested $500,000 for the game on Kickstarter, betting that there were a few diehard fans who still wanted an old-school Metroidvania/horror/RPG experience.
The Kickstarter earned more than $1.5 million in its first day, and ended up with more than $5.5 million. The game was supposed to come out in March 2017, but with more money came more features, and with more features came more development time. Fans started to wonder: Would Bloodstained be a nostalgic throwback, or an overstuffed mess? Based on the first few hours, it's definitely the former. Bloodstained is almost defiantly old-school: a straightforward action/exploration experience that pretty much just sets you free to explore as soon as the first level is over. There's no tutorial, there are few concessions to modern Metroidvania design and there is a lot of expository dialogue. If Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had much better graphics and a full voice cast, it would play a lot like Bloodstained. I'm not yet sure whether Bloodstained is a great game — but it's at the very least a good game, and that's more than enough for Castlevania fans who haven't had a traditional installment in that series since 2008.
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Updated:10:44 AM CEST Sep,20
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