Koji Igarashi Didn't Expect The Switch Version Of Bloodstained To Be "As Bad" As It Was At Launch

Yeah don't blame hardware for this bud you just can't optimize for crap.

Well, glad I never opened it and was able to return my Switch version.

PC Game Pass just added it to the library. A better version and $5 to play it - ill just stick with that.

There are games that are far more demanding than this game that run buttery smooth or close to it on Switch. You are not gonna claim this game is more demanding than things like Mario Odyssey, BotW or others. I just don't believe that.

i beat the game, stop crapping on him guys, not a good look for you

Lazy optimization, period. There are far more graphically impressive games on Switch that run wonderfully, this doesn’t deserve a free pass.

Could we just get a propper castlevania please? One that's actually called Castlevania. Not a mobile game either. Make the one about Julius belmont where he defeats dracula in 1999.

Is this game more demanding than Doom, Wolfenstein, Warframe, Botw, Mario Odyssey etc. Hardware limitations have
absolutely nothing to do with this just poor optimization. At least they're working on the issues though.

My question would be how or who would look at this and say "it's fine release it as is".

I love the game but its issues kept me from fully playing it. Especially since it doesn't have autosave.

They have lost my future support. Shame they did this to switch owners

I've been waiting for the Switch version to be fixed. I'll pick it up if they accomplish this goal. Loved curse of the Moon.

Poor optimization. The fact that game like Doom and Wolfenstein can run pretty well on the Switch make this all the more evident. There is no excuse for this game to be so badly optimized.

Im still waiting to pick this up. Curse of the Moon was absolutely fantastic, so im hoping they can make this just as good.

Doom: playable on Switch
Bloodstained: unplayable on Switch

Something isn't right here...

When they can get the witcher 3 running on switch but not this something is messed up here.

Didn't he play the game before the release???
Come on...

OK... I'll just go back and play Grid. Now that is a nice port.

I understand that game development and optimization as skill sets that require certain know-how and resources are completely different aspects of game design. I can forgive these issues; we've all had technical problems in the games we've played, and we still play them. The game could crash on execution repeatedly and it would still be better than most titles from EA. His attitude is forthcoming and honest, which I appreciate. Keep up the good work on bringing a fix to these issues and you've got yourself another sale — we can always use more Castlevania-esque titles on Nintendo platforms.

Hardware limitation? I say programmers limitation... Iga & company never saw the switch library... Many game a lot more complex run perfectly... Ridocoulus

They must've hired testers, right? SE didn't hire testers for the Secret of Mana remake, and those familiar with it know how that turned out at launch.

Hi didn't expect? Who the heck would believe that? Unless 505 and Wayforward's QA deliberately didn't say anything to him then what he's saying is BS. They should've caught that.

Wayforward is a good developer. I primarily blame the Switch's technical direction from either 505 or Iga himself. I could say the same with Mighty No. 9 with Deep Silver and Inafune when Inti Creates were developing the game.

And blaming the hardware? Looks at other graphic intensive games
Stable 30/60 FPS? Check.
Few to none bugs? Check.
Input lag? Miniscule? Check.

Damn..they sure dropped the ball. I also refuse to fully support them by buying the game on other platforms. I'll [unfortunately] wait for the big patch since I already backed the Switch version. I know the game has promise. Reviews can back that up. But letting this happen at launch is IMO just pure ignorance and irresponsible.

@Majora101 honest? They Published screens from ps4 instead of switch, Launch a game with all that problems, doesn't correct none of that in more than 3 month, and you say "honest"??? The only thing Iga is able to say is "I didn't realize that MY game, payed by you, is a f*cking mess"

Or, you know, they could have COMPLETED the game instead of manufacturing crap on a cartridge and releasing a glorified beta on the eShop with no guarantee that the game will ever be completed or any technical issues fixed.

At this point, even if they eventually fix it, these clowns do not deserve our money or our loyalty.

They were happy to take people's money without giving customers their due. Stop making excuses for contemptible business practices that disadvantage the consumer.

@Heavyarms55 but those titles are from Nintendo themself. They know their own hardware better and lets be honest besides BOW all other aren't really next gen either. Of course it's easier to get some of them 1080p although with 30fps... look at Zelda awakening remake? That games his frames issues as well. Switch is simply not strong enough to make a game smooth. 4gb ram on that system is a joke. They really should've gone with at least 6gb and i'm sure cpu would have a tad some help to maintain better fps. Yes with ram you can get a few more rams so your system is more stable. Nntendo went once again cheapmode and yet dares to ask same price like xbox or ps4 (basic ones) with 1tb or 500gb space and 10x stronger. Just saying

It's not just the Switch version either, I'm playing it on Xbox One X and in certain areas the framerate drops are very noticeable and the HDR simply doesn't work, then on Pro it doesn't get above 1080p. It's just not a very well optimised game anywhere you play it which is a shame as the game is great overall. I've read about the fixes coming to Switch and it sounds like they are rebuilding a good chunk of the effects and such specifically for the system and hopefully that'll bring that version up to par

@Alucard83 I'm sorry, but you seem to be painfully misinformed. Insultingly so. Nintendo doesn't have some secret game developing magic that allows their own games to run better. A competent developer would have had no difficulty making a game like Bloodstained run perfectly on Switch. The game is little more than an HD coat of paint on games that ran on Gamecube and PS2.

Look at games like Skyrim, Doom, Xenoblade 2, Dragon Quest 11, Astral Chain, Monster Hunter, even the upcoming Witcher 3 port. Games FAR more demanding are on the Switch and not limited to Nintendo produced content.

There is nothing about Bloodstained that should be demanding so much of the hardware.

Bloodstained posts are always a salt mine. I hope the switch patch is coming soon.

We can see here how much attention he paid to that version of the game.

Too bad, Igarashi. You should've done it better. I might buy it when on sale someday, but while waiting I bought Blasphemous, and I don't regret it. Such a great game.

Didn’t someone actually play test the game on switch before release? If so they should be fired and thrown into the sea to never be able to let this type of thing happening again.
I have it in my backlog waiting to play it once the patches come out to fix it.

Still waiting for that supposed patch...

Just apologize and say you are working on patches and hope Switch owners will give you one more chance.

I don't understand when he says that he was surprised by how bad it was. They didn't test it at all? How would that even work?

More graphically demanding games run better than this game. The game doesn't even look that good! I was hoping it wouldn't run so...poorly. At this point apologies aren't what we need, we just want the game to be run good. I'm afraid of playing it again because it crashed multiple times at a bookshelf...

@Alucard83 I think you also forget that Switch, even if touted as a Hybrid, in the end has everything housed in PORTABLE which always bump prices up. (Just compare laptop and PC and see how much the prices differ) I feel that Switch's prices are more than fair, remembering that GPD Win2 is around $800 or so and it's not that stronger...

The fact that Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance plays better....

Secondly, the game should of been fully developed by
Atooi
Vanillaware
WayForward
Yacht Club

Any of these four could of done something with this game.

Switch is the best home for Bloodstained, so I hope they optimize it well and keep new games coming to Switch in the future.

Reads as, “It sold much better than we expected it to on Switch and now we regret half assing it and putting it out to a large market of people”.

Yeah I was burnt by the Switch version - been holding off for more patches but a little salty now it is on XB Gamepass.

I was hoping for it to be fixed to buy it, but since it is now one Gamepass I’m just playing it there!

This is a case where they should have just said "Sorry, the switch version isn't ready yet. We're going to have to work on it for another six months and release it when it's up to snuff." Such a shame, but I'm over this game now, so much else to play.

So was it better when he played in on Switch before release? And hence the surprise? Or is he merely making excuses for a game that shouldn’t have been released in such a shoddy state?

Patch it up and drop the price to 20$ like the budget title that it is, and maybe I’ll bite in a few years time. It just never looked good enough to me, not 55$CAD good, on any platform.

Igarashi is a clown and only a fool would trust anything he says. He absolutely knew what a poor state the Switch version was in and tried his best to deflect.

And more Switch fixes are incoming? Right. We've had how many now? Oh yeah. One. What incentive is there to even patch it at this point? They've made their money off the Switch port and Kickstarter.

What a shame, they should have delayed the switch port longer if they needed to. Comes to show the amount of damage control that needs to be done now that it's out.

If you have a great producer on it, you should make sure everything runs great, too. Before release. 'cos every bug and framerate issue will be looked upon twice as sharp when you have a big name behind it.

Also, don't make multiplatform titles if your team is too small for proper playtesting and quality assurance or your reputation will sink. After this, he's not such a great producer anymore.

Huh... what's wrong with y'all's Switches? Everybody claiming that the game is "unplayable", and yet my New Game + save file begs to disagree...

Was it 100% optimal? No. I even had the game crash once. But, honestly, hearing about them using a 3rd party ngine to build the game on was all the info one nedd to know that it would be a lesser port on Switch; complain any way you want, but Switch is a lesser hardware platform and 3rd party "universal" engines contain all kinds of bloat and inefficiencies and the like.

@Zeldafan79 Be careful what you wish for. Look at the new Contra on the Switch.

Konami isn't the dev it used to be. I'd much sooner we got the likes of Blazing Chrome and Bloodstained (the latter on PS4/XO/PC) than the type of dreck Konami put out now.

The problem I have is that they lied about the quality of the game at PAX ("the Switch overheated") and then delayed the release a week supposedly to patch the game (which didn't really do anything). If they had just been honest about the port to begin with and put it back in the oven for a few more months, that would have been better than releasing a half-assed product.

We should not excuse lazy developers.

I tried the Switch version of Bloodstained at launch (KS backer) and it was an unplayable mess. Terrible frame rate, mushy low res visuals, and masses upon masses of input latency. I haven't gone back to it since.

The PS4 version on the other hand is pretty good.

Too little to late... btw, you can't come here saying "you did't expected to be as bad", a simple playtest would've brought up all the problems I've been experiencing in my (luckily short) playthrough, such as FPS dips, graphic glitches, and so on... not really happy with his one, I should've played it as soon as I had the opportunity (I bought retail) so I could send it right back to Amazon

They should have finished working on this game before selling it to us. Had a game breaking bug after the patch and i’ll never go back to it or buy another product of theirs again.

Yeah this is just sitting on my wishlist until they've got it dialed in. I pre-purchased it through Amazon and returned it the day it was released after reading reviews. Never even opened it.

I was making the game but didn't realsie it was bad?

My save is still sitting at 48%. Anxiously awaiting this patch to continue. They should have held off releasing it until now or October. They probably felt another delay would be bad PR. But now look what they have.... Quality Assurance was severely lackong. At least the game itself is actually good. I will continue to support Iga and his teams. Been doing it for 20 years.

If they had actually tested the game internally before releasing it, wouldn't they have "foreseen" how bad it was?"

This is pretty much an open admission "we hit build and prayed" instead of actually spending a mere 5 hours for one person seeing how it was.

Love Wayforward. DDN RCG.

BS: RotN hit gamepass for any of those with access.
Side Note: Started playing Tower Hunter and getting huge BS: RotN vibes in a roguelite.

I am most annoyed with how long the game has been out and they still havent addressed the some of the most pressing concerns. This went from a must have, to a wait and see, to just not even caring anymore.

@liljmoore Don't the other versions have issues as well?

I still haven't gotten either Bloodstained game.

@Majora101 Also true

@hakjie11 They already did that.

That hardware limitations will run The Witcher 3, it's not about limitations it's about lazy port.

It crashed twice on me on the PS4 as well. Everytime I'd read a book at the bookshelf. They said they patched it. Great. I tried another bookshelf 30 min later, crash.
Completely done with this dumpster trash of a game.

Still in the plastic waiting on patch fix...

There is no shortage of these type of games right now, no reason to get one that was a disappointment.

I’d still buy the game if they fixed it someday. Might pick it up on PC or PS4 later, but I really wanted to play it on Switch.

I was on vacation for last week so I finally bit the bullet since I got sick of waiting on patches, and ended up putting in about 20 hours on the switch version. It definitely has several issues, but I felt like it ran better in handheld than when I tried to play it docked, which makes me sad. It's definitely a decent game, but just a terrible port with lots of problems. The biggest things I saw was just straight up game would freeze completely for about 2-3 seconds randomly in the middle of a screen at moments, poor visuals, long load times, some input lag. When I had it docked I had the game error and close, but didn't have any crashes in handheld. I'm about 80% done now, just in case anyone is curious how it's running now. Sad that I feel i might be better off finishing it in handheld over docked.

I sincerely appreciate IGA. It’s his first foray into leading a development team and he’s clearly learning from how messed up the process was. I look forward to Switch’s improvements and to future titles!

I finally bought the game when it dropped to $20. Hopefully the issues will get ironed out with the patch. Wish I could get an updated cartridge, but at that price I was willing to give it a go

I backed the project, but ended up unhappy with the result, as they cancelled my version six months before release, but claimed they were too poor to do refunds. Having seen the development updates, it is clear to me there was a lot of incompetence and greed involved in the project. 505 came off as extremely shady during the process changing plans and making decisions like putting a beta version of the game on the carts and discs rather than the final game, among other things. Iga doesn't get a free pass either. This was his game and he made poor decisions. I was lucky to get my money out of it through creative means. The 2D game, Curse of the Moon, ended up being really fun and I ended up getting it for free, so that's nice. That's where my experience with Bloodstained as a franchise will begin and end.

@Heavyarms55 Ya, or The Witcher 3 which runs on a custom engine and was able to be ported over amazingly puts them to shame.

Wait, what the hell does he mean by "I didn't expect it to be as bad". This is the man in charge of leading the entire project. How the hell does one end up surprised about the quality of one's own product?

@TravinoEXE
"It's his first foray into leading a development team.". Uh, what do you mean by that? He's been in the producer seat for almost 20 years now, so this is hardly new for him. It's the first time he's been in charge with assembling the team and finances from scratch I imagine, but nothing about the process of developing this title should have been new for him. It's what he's been doing for most of his career in fact.

@Jokerwolf If the Witcher 3 runs on a custom engine, that would only make porting it more impressive to me. It would demand a lot more work based on my understanding.

@TheGameSquid Actually, far as I can tell, it’s quite the opposite. Game producers tend to deal with the financial aspect, dealing with investors and whatnot, while directors have more of a role in actually running the team. As a producer, he’s probably more familiar with handling investors (like the Kickstarter of course), while this being his first time as a director is more likely the first time he’s actually run the team itself. Over the course of development he probably ran into a lot of issues he never had to deal with before, and I commend him for at least being transparent enough to say ‘hey, there’s a problem, we’re doing what we can to fix it’, you know?

@Old-Red

Exactly, all they had to do was delay the Switch version and a lot of these problems wouldn’t have happened. They new exactly what state the Switch version was in before release. Claiming otherwise just make them look like incompetent developers.

Gamers would complain about the delay, myself included, but it would have been for the best. Now, the game is basically delayed anyway since so many refuse to okay it until it’s fixed.

@TravinoEXE

I’m sure Iga does more than just produce, he is the mastermind behind it all. He is no doubt heavily involved in the creative process.

I guess I was not the only one. Such a big sales loss opportunity. Some games have sold more on Switch than PS4 and Xbox One. This could have potentially been another one.

it was fine when i played it even thought it was already patched, was digital and docked though. i heard the newer switches handle the game worse too but not sure on that.

@Kang81 Yeah, that’s what I was saying. I was comparing his leadership role as Directer on ROTN compared to his Producer credits in most of his other games

He should've watched quality control more closely.

@TravinoEXE

Ah, my mistake. 👍

@Heavyarms55 It is, they created it from the ground up so it is impressive to say the least.

Did they ever fix the game via patch as promised?

Jeez, this blew up freaking fast, but i would like to inform ya'll -uhh this is just my opinion with experience on the game itself. I actually had fun playing this game, there was no frame rate drop -it was kind of eh, it wasn't that bad to a point that i couldn't play this game, but it still shouldn't haven't been there to begin with. The fact that they legit tried to fix it really just -i love it. And i'm grateful that they tried to fix the errors the best way they could. -What else? The graphics aren't that bad -like relax ya'll this ain't the playstation 1 graphics here lol, just because it has some pixel grainy stuff it doesn't show as much -not unless your starring at it, instead of playing the game. I'm just happy the game runs on my switch, and it's fun.

I've been ready to GameFly this game, but I haven't because I've been trying to wait for them to patch it as best as they can. Fortunately I have plenty of other options at the moment. Really unfortunate. I'll just keep on playing through my backlog and get back around to this game eventually.

'What?? I put a bad port and it isn't selling well?! How dare these ungrateful Nintendo fans not buy my product! They should feel glad it is even on their weaker platform!'

This is what I got from what he said. It would have sold better if they tried more on the Switch version before releasing it. There's a lot more demanding games in terms of graphics and gameplay than his Bloodstained game. Sorry, but he has no excuse for this one.

I'll buy it when they are finished with everything. Which will prob take 2 years at this rate, lol.

@Alucard83 have you not played any of the other third party games on the Switch? Have you seen how Doom, Wolfenstien, The Witcher, and plenty more plays? They don’t look as good as the Xbox One X or PlayStation 4 but they play a lot more stable than this. There really was no excuse for this mess of a release.

This port really honks me off because I wanted it to be a decent version. Those trying to defend it, come on, it looks, plays and performs better on every other platform. Switch users are used to multiplatform games being degraded when coming to Switch, but many teams have shown it can be done right. Meanwhile I just played it on PC and its great.

@Morrow

The reason they have so much egg on their faces is the Switch version did not sell poorly, it actually outsold the other platforms. So they hype a CastleV successor, that they know is going to be hot for Nintendo fans (because all the best 2D CV's after SOTN were on Nintendo GBA/DS) and then you deliver a steaming pile of poo. So I think that's why people are so upset. They wanted a great CV follow up, they were told it was going to be great, its pretty great on other platforms, and then a big let down. It felt like a cash grab to many people.

@QuickSilver88 Agreed. Warframe is 60 fps and looks great! Paladins is 60 fps and looks almost exactly the same as the ps4 version. It CAN be done. Sure, it isn't going to look AS pretty as a Ps4 or PC version, but it should still look extremely similar, and play at a locked 60 fps. There's no excuse for this game.

Yeah, it sold better, but they were expecting game buster sales, which is ridiculous, for how little they tried with it. They think they can give us a trash port, and it will sell well. Smh. Exactly. They were just relying on the love of Castlevania fans on Nintendo, to carry the sales, without effort on making it a solid and finished game.