Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

 Switch
User Score
8.2

Generally favorable reviews- based on 167 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 136 out of 167
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 167
  3. Negative: 13 out of 167

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  1. nusco
    Nov 18, 2019
    6
    Bloodstained is like the worst movie from your favorite director: it feels thrown together, unpolished, and in general a bit of a mess–but you can discern the familiar hand of a real author behind every sequence, so you cannot lend yourself to hate the result.

    Before I tackle the game's shortcoming, let me specify one thing: as I played it, in November 2019, the infamous technical    Bloodstained is like the worst movie from your favorite director: it feels thrown together, unpolished, and in general a bit of a mess–but you can discern the familiar hand of a real author behind every sequence, so you cannot lend yourself to hate the result.

    Before I tackle the game's shortcoming, let me specify one thing: as I played it, in November 2019, the infamous technical issues of the Switch version have been ameliorated. Loading times are acceptable, the controls are fairly responsive, and the game only crashed three or four times as I played all the way to the "good" ending. Bloodstained is not a technical marvel by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not the disaster that it apparently was on release.

    That been said, the problems with the game run deeper than its implementation, right into its much-lauded design. Metroidvanias are often better when they're bigger, and Bloodstained seems eager to please the player with hundreds of items, weapons, and creatures. This plentiful content, however, left me cold. Yes, there are multiple interacting mechanics to find, buy, sell, create, upgrade, grow, donate, combine and dismantle items, including food, power-ups, and weapons. However, those mechanics feel too annoyingly complicated for their own good. Unlocking recipes and concocting potions and food items never feels like joyful discovery–it feels like work, and a lot of pointless browsing through long lists. The same goes for the boring side missions. All in all, the systems in Bloodstained feel like they came out of a desire to have more stuff than previous similar games, not from the need to make the game's design tighter or more fun.

    The same goes for the overabundant weapons and "shards" (the game's stand-in for movement upgrades, power-ups, and magic). They're plentiful, but the game never gives you a compelling reason to explore them. On the contrary, some mechanics actively discourage you from doing that. For example, there are not one, but two different ways to upgrade a shard–which means that once you have a powerful shard that you invested time and resources in, it feels like a waste to switch to a less powerful, non-upgraded shard, even just to give it a try. Ironically, I ended up ignoring almost all those items and using mostly the same handful of weapon types and shards throughout the game.

    Another example of the game's maximalist approach is in the enemy design. You'll find hundreds of enemies across the many biomes of the game's sprawling map, sporting wildly divergent styles (and sometimes shaky animations)–from giant doggy heads to Universal classic monsters to horned kittens to literal sea horses galloping underwater. By comparison with this weird and cheesy kitchen sink of a bestiary, Dungeons & Dragons' Monster Manual looks like a damn zoology treatise. You've got to wonder whether any creature idea was ever scrapped from the game for feeling inconsistent or too silly.

    All of those issues come together into what I believe is the most disappointing and flawed part of the game: the boss fights. The designers clearly spent a huge amount of time building a dozen of challenging bosses with interesting movesets, plus a bunch of optional bosses to boot–but the game's other systems nullify all that work and encourage you to deal with all bosses exactly the same way. Literally all bosses can be cheesed by just facetanking them with powerful magic until they go down. The only bosses that gave me any kind of challenge where the first two, before I had powerful magic at my disposal. All the rest, including the bullet-spongy final boss, were a walk in the park: I just stayed close to them and deployed the exact same, wildly overpowered shard magic until they went down. A few bosses did drain my health faster than I could drain theirs, and in that case I brought a few potions and food to get a refill as I pummeled them. I don't think I ever noticed most bosses' attack patterns.

    I'm pretty sure that if you choose to, you can turn every boss fight into an interesting exercise in tactics and pattern recognition–but why do that, when the game gives you plentiful non-cheating means to turn even the baddest boss into a pushover? It pains me to say this, but combat in Bloodstained is, plain and simple, broken.

    This review might feel extremely negative, but I actually had decent fun playing through Bloodstained. It's a game made with passion by experienced people with a lot of heart. It's far from perfect, but you've got to respect the people who built it, and wish them a long career and many future games. In the end, however, it also feels like a missing opportunity. As I finished Bloodstained, I regretted the fact that it wasn't a smaller, more focused, more tightly designed game, instead of this "more is better" display of unnecessary authorial grandiosity.    … Expand
  2. Areinu
    Jun 26, 2019
    6
    In general I agree with the 9-10/10 crowd BUT the technical nightmare that this port is cannot be rated to more than 6. I suggest buying this awesome game on any other platform unless Switch is your only choice. The convenience of portable playing is not enough to justify this.
    The game has already crashed on me 5 times since I've started playing(5 hours). It's almost guaranteed I'll get    In general I agree with the 9-10/10 crowd BUT the technical nightmare that this port is cannot be rated to more than 6. I suggest buying this awesome game on any other platform unless Switch is your only choice. The convenience of portable playing is not enough to justify this.
    The game has already crashed on me 5 times since I've started playing(5 hours). It's almost guaranteed I'll get a crash after switching from docked to portable or other way around. I've even experienced crash when I just wanted to decrease volume a bit in portable mode, since one are was too loud. There goes 30 minutes of progress. The biggest enemy in this port is optimization, crashes and bugs.
    And bugs. The bugs are not some bug type enemy you find (although those are irritating with their poison). In one time limited area I was accompanied by an NPC and the NPC decided to get stuck mid-jump glitching by few pixels to left and right until the time ran out. The NPC was necessary to move to the end of stage. That's game over due to a bug. The drops very often won't open when touching them, meaning you just lost a rare drop, probably. I've had all kinds of glitches with enemies, many harmless, but some required me to reload save.
    After dying it's very possible that pretty much everything will break. I've died on first boss, and when I was back after reloading the scene had glitches everywhere, with background broken, and then game proceed to crash.
    And optimization is terrible on switch. I knew it was locked to 30 FPS and had bad resolution when I bought it. But it's not like it can keep the 30 FPS. While in docked it's still bearable (but if I play docked I can just play on PS4, right?) but in portable mode it stutters all the time. Especially 3D rotating areas are a pain. It goes to around 10-15 frames per second, making the game barely playable. Also, this is the area that is most likely to crash in portable (2 crashes so far). In both modes the scenes with talking characters barely work, with constant glitches, slowdowns, things teleport around. You can just feel that it's barely working and that switch is about to fall apart. I had a crash when I started talking with an NPC. It doesn't help that dialogues look just wrong. The models have terrible lighting, or something. They look very pixelated and as if they lacked enough colors. I've seen screenshots from PS4 and they look alright there.
    I had a situation where after dying the menu took about 30 seconds to open, I though the game would crash. I think there's some memory leak after dying. Or just when playing, because with every 30 minutes of game-play the game starts to run worse.
    Also, sometimes transitions between rooms take too long. There's usually no loading indicator, just black screen. The longest I've encountered was SEVENTEEN seconds, and it was when jumping up from one room to another so I had to hold jump button all this time, otherwise I would fall down back to previous map. I went to the same room after crash and transition was faster, that's why I think there's memory leak.
    Wait till it's patched(a lot) and optimized(A LOT) before buying on Switch. By the way, the game looks around as sophisticated graphically as Bayonetta, which runs on Switch in 60 FPS and better resolution. I'm sure this can run better on Switch.

    Now, you read all that and still would like Switch version? The games is amazing. The gameplay is addicting, castle design is cool. Some of first demons you meet look very uninspired with black gooey texture, but once you're out of village and get to castle proper the monsters are fine. It's first Castlevania where I actually use different types of magic, abilities etc. instead of focusing almost entirely on one OP weapon. There's one transformation spell that is a bit OP though.
    I like the ability to improve stats trough cooking, as it means I can go around gathering food instead of just blindly farming monsters when I have a problem with boss. There are many callbacks to Castlevania games. Characters are rather bland, but they are mostly there to be useful NPCs. Somehow even Medusa heads room is fun this time, although they are Dullahan heads in Bloodstained.
    Everything makes sense in this game and I fully suggest buying the game. Just not on Switch in it's current broken form.    … Expand
  3. Kosama
    Oct 3, 2019
    7
    Seria un 9 pero tuve que terminar jugando en PC porque me estreso las pantallas de carga.
    Muy Genial, muy buen castlevania clásico, recomendado!!
  4. StriderKiwi
    Aug 2, 2018
    5
    Overall a competent throwback that has more than most games from the time it's emulating but still feels lacking compared to contemporary games.

    Also, while I backed it on Kickstarter it took me weeks to get my code after non-backers were able to purchase.
  5. thryce3
    Sep 29, 2020
    7
    Short, fun 8-bit castlevania-like sidescroller. The different characters add a nice element, and switching between adds some strategy. It didn't wow me, but I enjoyed it and will pick up the second on sale.
  6. Neatqt
    Feb 25, 2019
    7
    Cast: 5/10
    Story: 5/10
    Fun: 8/10
    Gameplay: 7/10

    Not-Recommended
    ----------------------
  7. jsh710
    Aug 29, 2022
    5
    I hate this jump system. can't move during jumping. too much love for retro.
  8. iMustang
    Jul 15, 2019
    7
    If you have $10 and want to play a classic Castlevania experience (or are crazy like me and paid double for the physical copy), Bloodstained Curse of the Moon was a pretty fun game. Though it only takes a couple hours to beat the game once, with multiple endings and pathways along the way, the game is perfect for replay value. You can either let 3 other characters join you and SwitchIf you have $10 and want to play a classic Castlevania experience (or are crazy like me and paid double for the physical copy), Bloodstained Curse of the Moon was a pretty fun game. Though it only takes a couple hours to beat the game once, with multiple endings and pathways along the way, the game is perfect for replay value. You can either let 3 other characters join you and Switch between them at will, or choose to fight them as additional boss battles and make the game harder for yourself. You can also choose between Veteran or Casual mode to decide just how difficult you want the game to be for yourself, which was nice for me since I know I'm not the best at the super retro games. Overall this non-canon side game is a fun ride for a fair price.… Expand
  9. Cancery1987
    Jun 23, 2019
    6
    Story : 6/10
    Graphic: 7/10
    Music: 9/10
    Gameplay : 7/10 ( Control are bad)

    Nothing special
  10. INU4SH4
    Jan 17, 2021
    7
    Bloodstained is a very entertaining homage to Castlevania with great replayability. Sometimes I feel like it throws some cheap enemies and stages (something you'd not want to see from a modern platformer) but overall it felt like a very rewarding challenge.

    There wasn't much story or dialog but I managed to grow fond of the characters. The visuals could look better but I love the    Bloodstained is a very entertaining homage to Castlevania with great replayability. Sometimes I feel like it throws some cheap enemies and stages (something you'd not want to see from a modern platformer) but overall it felt like a very rewarding challenge.

    There wasn't much story or dialog but I managed to grow fond of the characters. The visuals could look better but I love the bosses' designs and the soundtrack wasn't the best but pretty memorable nonetheless.

    Wouldn't call it a must-play platformer but it's definitely a good investment. Especially if you plan on playing the sequels.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

66
#66 Best Switch Game of 2018
37
#37 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2018
95
#95 Most Shared Switch Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
82

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Sep 5, 2018
    90
    If Konami won't give us our Castlevania fix, at least we know its legacy is in bloody good hands! [Issue #34 – July/August 2018, p. 18]
  2. IGN Japan
    Jun 26, 2018
    80
    This 8-bit spin-off of Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is at the same time a nostalgic linear sidescroller and a modern game that manages to be accessible to new players.
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  3. Meristation
    Jun 20, 2018
    85
    Beautiful pixel art, good music, well designed levels and several endings to promote replay. Only a few more levels and maybe a more modern controls would have improved what's already a game no Castlevania fan should miss.
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