Topic: bloodstained: ritual of the night

@PCkid I suspect that means I'll like Bloodstained then I haven't played LoS1 and 2 but thought MoF was a blast Simple, short, but fun regardless. Like a Kirby game. With blood. And emo.

Metal Gear Survive otoh.....oof.

@NEStalgia

Not like Bloodstained !

To make it short :

MOF and LOS are crap but with a certain visual quality.
Bloodstained is crap but with a certain gameplay quality.

@PCkid I'm not the one here with wrong information or erroneous comparisons to past games 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

@NEStalgia Did you play Bloodlines? It's on the Castlevania collection so no better time than the present. Has a lot of neat level design and bosses that goes toe-to-toe with the Classicvanias on Nintendo consoles. Still not as good as Rondo of Blood but then again, nothing is.

@EvilLucario I started in on it now that I have the collection. Never played it back in the day.

Though I admit Kid Dracula is stealing my attention at the moment. What a charming re-imagining of the original game in an Anti-Matter approved format....

I ordered this game on my brother's behalf (it's due to arrive on Friday), but he's caught wind of the performance issues. I've just taken a peek at the kickstarter comments though, and someone is claiming that as they were performing the initial game update, the version shipped on the carts appeared to be ver 0.1.

They theorise the publishers dumped the alpha build onto the cartridge instead of the stable build, and that this could create problems, even after patching it.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

@EvilLucario "I'm not the one here with wrong information or erroneous comparisons to past games"

Or maybe, you are the one here with not enough experience to understand things with hindsight and clairvoyance ?

@PCkid You're one to talk about hindsight when you talk about BS like NG+ or enemy variety, of which past games had those same things you brought up but somehow only put on Bloodstained.

You gonna respond or no? 👀

@EvilLucario

Are you limited ? I'm serious dude.

WE TALK ABOUT GAMES MADE ON 20 YEARS OLD SYSTEMS COMPARE TO A GAME OF 2019 MADE FOR SYSTEMS 1000 TIMES MORE POWERFUL...

Don't you think that games evolved after 2 decades ?
Don't you think that developpers had no choice to duplicate some stuffs on basic devices ?
Why do you think there weren't any Breath of the Wild on a GBA or a DS and now we have it running on Switch ?

@Ralizah

No joke, Curse of the Moon is better than Ritual of the Night. I mean COTM succeed on what it's trying to do at least.

@Ralizah i laughed real hard, like a little too much.

Wouldn't surprise me one bit. CotM is the version of Castlevania III I always wanted, and I tend to prefer Classicvania design anyway.

Man, playing without the other characters is kinda hard, though. But I need to to unlock the third campaign option. :/

@NintendoByNature Well, then my stupid joke wasn't a complete waste, at least.

@Ralizah I got a good kick out of it.

@PCkid That's not what you argued at all lmao. Stop moving the goalposts from weird subjective complaints that don't add up to a 5/10 to "this game is worse than Aria/OoE because it has these exact same things Aria/OoE has and nebulous generic descriptions of XYZ" to whatever. Things like NG+ being cakewalks isn't even a bad thing because the original implementation of NG+ was in Chrono Trigger going on a powertrip while hunting down new endings. You don't have to like it, but it's not "unacceptable. Enemy diversity is by far stronger than previous games now that they don't have to keep reusing the same assets from Rondo of Blood. Ever noticed that some games like Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia kept reusing enemies like the Werewolf from Rondo of Blood? Bloodstained doesn't have that issue anywhere near that degree.

So what if this design is old? It's beloved for a damn good reason. Why do you think games like Shovel Knight (which is a melting pot of multiple NES games) and both Bloodstained games (one channeling Classicvania and the second a melting pot of all the Igavanias) get praised? It's not because they bring anything extremely new to the table, it's because they're just fun while channeling old school stuff that is tried and true good solid fundamentals while ignoring some pitfalls like pointing out vague directions if players get lost or something.

Make no mistake, Ritual of the Night has problems, like the really bad Switch version, a handful moments of questionable backtracking, and balancing regarding making the most out of crafting. But pretty much all of your listed problems don't exactly hold up under scrutiny.

@Ralizah Curse of the Moon is real good, but speaking as someone who enjoys both the classics and Igavanias in equal measure, I prefer Ritual of the Night, where it got me wondering if Order of Ecclesia was still my favorite Igavania/Castlevania game. On the other hand, Curse of the Moon still does not beat Rondo of Blood (my favorite Classicvania) for me. Curse of the Moon does make some very nice quality of life enhancements like easier party switching and purple candles (thank god), but I do prefer the level design and bosses of Rondo of Blood and even Castlevania III more, despite how aggravating the American version can be.

That said, Ultimate Zangetsu is a ton of fun. Hopefully in Ritual of the Night's upcoming DLCs, he plays somewhat similarly to his moveset in Curse of the Moon. Best case scenario is that he's a cross between that and Julius from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. Probably won't be as fun as Albus from Order of Ecclesia who is my favorite secondary character in Castlevania, but we'll see.

Just got a new backer update:

Hello everyone, today we have an update on our progress regarding the Switch version of the game and an update on localization.

Regarding the Switch version of the game; the amazing teams at WayForward and ArtPlay are already hard at work on improvements. Below is a list of what we’re working to fix ASAP via multiple updates over the next few weeks:

• HD Rumble fix (completed!)
• Crash stability
• Optimizing Miriam's jump

The teams are also at work on a variety of updates to the game and engine, including:

• Optimizing animation for certain enemies (WayForward is testing some techniques to accomplish big things here, but it may be risky and require lots of testing, may need to be pushed to a later update)
• Addressing input delay wherever it occurs
• Switch-specific loading optimizations (this requires a bit more work, and will probably be in the last "ASAP" patches)

Obviously the above plan will adapt as we identify priorities and new tasks and as we add development resources, but we’ll keep you updated as we go.

We’ll also have more to announce soon as we do more to improve the Switch version of Bloodstained. We are committed long-term to making sure the Switch version is just as great and enjoyable as the other platforms, and this is just a window into our immediate action plans.

We apologize again for the inconvenience of the Switch launch not going according to plan, but we really appreciate your understanding and support as we work to make things right.

My Thoughts
While I cannot respect releasing a game prematurely, I have to respect their swift response and long term commitment here. That’s far more than I’m used to seeing from most developers concerning Switch

To be honest, I've seen these kinds of "swift responsives" often enough to say that I'll believe it when I see it.

Yeah I'll believe it when I see it. Not gonna lie, the Switch version is a huge stain against the game. A big stain considering portable Castlevania is a huge staple of the series, and Curse of the Moon sold a HUGE majority on Switch of 56%. That's between PC, Xbox One, PS4, 3DS, and Vita! Having the main course be this bad on what's potentially the greatest audience for the game is very damning and will represent a pretty sizable loss in sales.

Hopefully if Iga makes a sequel, Switch can be the lead platform instead of PS4/Xbox One. They have to be looking at data from indies like Hollow Knight (another Metroidvania) selling like hotcakes.

I’m pretty sure they’re not going to list fixes and pledge long term support addressing issues only to disappear off the map and say too bad. If the bad publicity hadn’t damaged their reputation enough, that would certainly destroy the rest of it.

No Switch gamer would touch any future Iga game with a 10 foot pole, regardless of quality, just out of spite. They would kill off double digit percentages of potential future sales, not to mention the loss in sales from people who would never buy this game either because it never gets addressed.

The extent to which they fix it up is yet to be determined. But I’d bet my life on them doing what they’re saying they’ll do. I’ll eat my shorts if they tell people they are going to fix that stuff and then they just don’t do it.

This is what worried me back when we found out the switch version was delayed a week. Why 1 week is what I asked myself. Clearly they knew it would be released in this state and they were hoping reviews of ps4 and Xbox would drive switch sales. But after all that I do believe they will fix it. I just think they were trying to get the game out as close to the other releases as possible. I'm confident they'll do right though. And soon enough I'll be an owner of the game on switch.