Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

 PC
User Score
8.3

Generally favorable reviews- based on 379 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 298 out of 379
  2. Mixed: 46 out of 379
  3. Negative: 35 out of 379

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  1. CzarSquid
    Feb 27, 2022
    0
    Capturing that lighting in the bottle really only happens once. Leans too hard into copying Symphony of the Night
  2. Yeliazar
    Jul 10, 2019
    2
    I can't believe they spent $5.5m on this! The game looks like crap. The control is unresponsive, there are micro-pause between each actions and sometimes the character just doesn't do what you want. It's especially noticable during the boss fights. It doesn't feel like your skills were put on test, it feels like you're fighting with awful control. The game is lacking in phase. It's simplyI can't believe they spent $5.5m on this! The game looks like crap. The control is unresponsive, there are micro-pause between each actions and sometimes the character just doesn't do what you want. It's especially noticable during the boss fights. It doesn't feel like your skills were put on test, it feels like you're fighting with awful control. The game is lacking in phase. It's simply too slow and awkward. There's no pleasure and satisfaction like in Hollow Knight when you avoid enemies attacks in the last nano-second and punish them with your sword. It's painfully unresponsive and clumsy.

    The enemies are just mishmash of random polygons and sometimes it's hard to say what you are fighting.
    The dialogs and the store are not impressive. And the background is just simply ugly.

    I am very VERY disappointed. This is NOT $5.5 budget game from creator of SotN!
    This is even worse than some indie low-budget metroidvanias.    … Expand
  3. AceAscendus
    Jun 18, 2019
    0
    Extremely bad game, full of bugs and glitches. This is unacceptable even for an indie product. Even if they fix all these bugs and glitches, they won't be able to fix the terrible art style, 2.5D graphics style, animations and aesthetics. This is just an abomination and an overpriced one at that! Do not waste your money on this garbage, Iga has proven to be hack and a conman. There areExtremely bad game, full of bugs and glitches. This is unacceptable even for an indie product. Even if they fix all these bugs and glitches, they won't be able to fix the terrible art style, 2.5D graphics style, animations and aesthetics. This is just an abomination and an overpriced one at that! Do not waste your money on this garbage, Iga has proven to be hack and a conman. There are much better Metroidvania games out there that are cheaper, such as Hollow Knight and the upcoming Blasphemous and Hollow Knight: Silksong! Avoid Bloodstained or you will regret wasting your money, thank GOD I could refund this piece of trash.… Expand
  4. Figaro79
    Jun 19, 2019
    0
    Бледная и карявая пародия на Symphony of the Night. Ни стиля, ни вкуса, ни графики, ни музыки, ни сюжета не завезли - всё на низком уровне качества.
  5. deuxdoom
    Jun 18, 2019
    1
    Although w8ing for 4years, Very disappointed things that Poor 3D Graphics & Acting Motions.
  6. niallaptz
    Apr 10, 2021
    4
    This game isn't as great as people say it is. It isn't even that good. It's ugly, clunky and feels paper thin. I don't understand how the developer asks a whopping $40.00, what a joke. Once again I'm duped by the "gamers" stating that this is a great game and best of the "Castlevania" -type games, but if it is then these games are truly going down the gutter. It isn't new, refreshing,This game isn't as great as people say it is. It isn't even that good. It's ugly, clunky and feels paper thin. I don't understand how the developer asks a whopping $40.00, what a joke. Once again I'm duped by the "gamers" stating that this is a great game and best of the "Castlevania" -type games, but if it is then these games are truly going down the gutter. It isn't new, refreshing, inventive. So if you want to play an average side scrolling game that is similar to Castlevania, here you go. That's all it is.… Expand
  7. eugeneel
    Dec 5, 2019
    2
    Created an account just to review this terrible gaming experience.

    + Great start to a game, first few hours are enjoyable. + HUGE variety of moves, both spells and weapons and a great system for leveling them all up. + Better graphics than most metroidvania games - GAMES BECOMES INSANELY EASY after the first boss. Even when playing the game on hard difficulty for the first time, I    Created an account just to review this terrible gaming experience.

    + Great start to a game, first few hours are enjoyable.
    + HUGE variety of moves, both spells and weapons and a great system for leveling them all up.
    + Better graphics than most metroidvania games

    - GAMES BECOMES INSANELY EASY after the first boss. Even when playing the game on hard difficulty for the first time, I would beat every boss (besides the first one) on the first time. With all the moves available, it is possible to tank through every boss losing less than half HP by mashing the attack button. I just can't believe people who give this game favorable reviews don't have a problem with this. It must me a younger generational thing...

    Hollow knight is the game you want if you're looking for something similar which offers a challenge.    … Expand
  8. TitaniumDragon
    Jan 28, 2020
    1
    Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a 2.5D Metroidvania – or more accurately, Castlevania clone. Set in a demonic castle, the game centers around Miriam, a woman with the power to take the powers of demons for her own, who is fighting to defeat an old friend with the same powers who has been overwhelmed and possessed by them.

    The core gameplay consists of wandering around a large    Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a 2.5D Metroidvania – or more accurately, Castlevania clone. Set in a demonic castle, the game centers around Miriam, a woman with the power to take the powers of demons for her own, who is fighting to defeat an old friend with the same powers who has been overwhelmed and possessed by them.

    The core gameplay consists of wandering around a large castle, killing demons, and trying to find demon bosses who give you new abilities to access new areas. In the process, the player unlocks a number of powers from ordinary demons and finds a variety of materials which can be crafted into weapons, armor, and accessories to make them better at fighting.

    The game actually has a very large number of weapons, which fall into about half a dozen broad classes – swords, katanas, knives, great swords (which includes big axes and some polearms), whips, spears, and guns. Each of these weapon types has their own attack speed and damage arc, with a few special weapons having unique ones (like a sword that you throw at your enemies, which returns to you like a boomerang). Unfortunately, as I was playing, several things resulted in me almost always using the “great sword” type weapons. First off, they were the only weapons that struck above my own head, and they also swung in a wide arc in front of me, ensuring that short enemies would be hit. Secondly, because of the game’s skill system, I enhanced a passive skill which gave me a large bonus to using those weapons, including increasing their attack speed, and it would have taken a large investment to drag anything else up to the same level (and potentially quite a lot of grinding).

    As a result, the wide array of weapons ended up not really mattering at all, and while I tried out the others, I mostly found them kind of disappointing.

    And frankly, the game in general was disappointing, because the game screwed up on what a metroidvania is supposed to be at its core – a game where you gradually explore an area, uncovering secrets and new movement/attack abilities/immunities that open up new areas to you.

    Instead, the game ended up being a grindfest, as the game encourages you to kill enemies over and over to get “shards” from them, with each enemy having a new unique ability to give you, and also often having unique or near-unique drops that you use for crafting.

    This is not what a game like this wants to be. You should be rewarded for exploration, not for grinding, but the game does the opposite.

    Moreover, many of the abilities that you get are very narrowly tailored for very small areas, rather than being generally useful. In games like Hollow Knight, you get a bunch of neat abilities like the air dash, double jump, wall jump, ect. that make you more agile and fight in a new way.

    You don’t get that here, and as such, the gameplay feels like it evolves too little, and the enemies don’t end up feeling all that fun or interesting to fight in the long run. The boss fights try to mix things up a bit, but you often feel overpowered relative to the enemies later on in the game, making many of these fights a bit trivial. And the overall clunk of the core gameplay never really goes away, with a surge forward in a field of energy type dash appearing at the very end of the game being too little and too late.

    I was excited to play this game going into it, but in the end, I was left feeling like it was redious and unfun. I got the first (bad) ending after 18 hours or so (which you do just after 50% completion), and completed the whole game after about 34, but in the end, I looked back and it, and felt like I should have probably quit after my first evening playing it and not finding it fun. I kept on going because I was hoping it would become better as I unlocked more abilities, like many metroidvanias do, but it simply never happened.

    Don’t fall into the trap that I did; this game isn’t worth your time or your money.    … Expand
  9. blimpsgo180
    Mar 27, 2023
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Let me say clearly, this is a good game, but it loses a lot of points for lack of originality. In some ways , little has changed since Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (though it is an inferior title), which was released by Konami in 2001, and that game was just imitating the first ever “Igavania,” which is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. This is an “Igavania” in the sense that Koji Igarashi was at the helm of development efforts, but scratch the “vania,” because this game doesn’t bear the Castlevania name or license. Igarashi formed a new team and crowdfunded this one on Kickstarter. It is just so similar to the last six games in the Castlevania series, those on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, that this is just more of the same. If this is your first Igarashi game, maybe it’s great, but I would love to see some changes to the formula.

    If you’ve never played an Igavania, let me spell it out. You traverse a massive map on a 2D plain, fighting monsters and bosses. Some regions are blocked off, accessible only after acquiring a key item or ability, such as a double-jump. You level up and slowly become more powerful, similar to an RPG. It is very similar to the Metroid series, with more of an emphasis on combat. The combat is highly refined, requiring good timing and strategy for each unique monster. That about sums it up. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow had an excellent “Souls” system, where you collect enemy souls, and can summon the power of that enemy at any point after that. The souls drop at random, with higher likelihood of collecting one as your in-game “Luck” levels up.

    This system makes a return, but you now collect “Shards.” It’s a new name, but the same concept, with one exception: the shards are highly categorized. Some enemy shards enable that enemy to assist you on-screen at all times–so-called “Familiar Shards”–and occasionally will damage other enemies or increase HP/MP periodically. Then there are “Directional Shards,” which generally let you attack in any direction, typically with a bit of range. There are a number of categories, and one shard from each category can be equipped. This is all handled in menus, and it’s worth pointing out here that the menus are really well done. I never felt overwhelmed or confused.

    The graphics are not the best. The characters, and enemies are mostly cel-shaded, but the backgrounds are not. I heard rumblings (source, Digital Foundry) that the reason this is typically done is it’s more cost-effective than cel-shading the entire game, but it makes things look inconsistent. Look at Jet Set Radio, a game running on much older hardware at half the frame rate. It’s pure eye candy, because they cel-shaded everything. On the topic of framerate, the game targets 60 frames-per-second, but there are dips below. The problem isn’t my hardware, but the game may have some slight shader compilation stutter. It’s an advanced topic, and I don’t fully understand it to be honest, but it will make your frame rate dip below the target. I suspect it is shader compilation stutter, because the engine this game was built on, Unreal Engine 4, is notorious for this problem. It would have been nice to play at unlocked frame rates.

    The combat is the real highlight, but with so many shards and shard combinations, I was able to break the game early on. [spoiler] The “Heretical Grinder” shard is a long sword that can point in any direction, and does a slight amount of damage, rapidly, which means that the little bit of damage it does starts to stack. The sword is so long that you can stay a healthy distance away from your enemies and not get hurt. This shard enabled me to defeat almost every boss with minimal effort. It broke the game. The supposed hardest enemies in the game could be defeated by pointing my sword and holding the R2 trigger for long enough. [/spoiler] It’s a bit like when a game gives you difficulty options (this one does) and you pick the absolute easiest, only to realize it’s now a cakewalk.

    The game ended rather abruptly. [spoiler] I opened a boss door not thinking much of it, and it was Gebel, the main villain of Bloodstained and final boss. I defeated him on the first try. That isn’t a flex, it’s just easy. The GBA and DS Castlevania titles have notoriously difficult final bosses, and I haven’t finished some of the games because of the final boss. [/spoiler] There is a “good” ending and a bad one, and I got the bad one. Oh well. I understand the real treasure of the Bloodstained Kickstarter is we got two Curse of the Moon games with retro NES style graphics that are a throwback to classic Castlevania. This is a good game. I mean it. But the formula isn’t new. There’s a sequel in the works, and that’s great, but let’s try something different in it, shall we?    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

30
#30 Best PC Game of 2019
44
#44 Most Discussed PC Game of 2019
42
#42 Most Shared PC Game of 2019

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 26
  3. Negative: 0 out of 26
  1. RPGamer
    Oct 1, 2019
    80
    Anyone who never liked the Metroidvania entries in the Castlevania series is extremely unlikely to be enthralled by Bloodstained. Koji Igarashi made no intimations of reinventing the wheel in Ritual of the Night, and the game is recognizably from the creator of Symphony of the Night. Playing this game nevertheless reminded me of how much fun a quality Metroidvania can be, and Konami is certainly in no mood to use its own intellectual property for anything other than Pachinko machines lately – plus if it had, something like paying money for additional save slots might have been introduced. Kickstarter-funded games have a decidedly mixed record, but Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is fortunately one of the success stories.
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  2. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Aug 2, 2019
    75
    Iga promised to make a spiritual successor to all but defunct Castlevania series – and that’s exactly what he did. Not only that, but he managed to successfully expand upon the familiar formula with nifty additions like skill shards. [Issue#239, p.74]
  3. Eurogamer Italy
    Jul 11, 2019
    90
    Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is the best love letter to Castlevania addicted. Created by the programmer, director and producer from titles like Simon’s Quest, Vampire’s Kiss and Symphony of the Night, Koji Igarashi, the game finally arrives to home consoles and PC after a successful crowdfunding campaign, but also a troubled development. Thankfully, the wait was definitely worth and we finally have a huge game, with deep combat and craft systems and loads of game modes. This is without any doubts one of the best Metroidvania of the year and a great Castlevania spiritual successor.
    Read full review
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