Koji Igarashi's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

[gossi the dog]

I thought it was excellent. My game of the year. 

[Not Thread Owner]

Not my game of the year but the unpatched Switch version is still one of my favourite games from 2019.

[mogawoods]

Out of interest, what did you both think it did better than almost every other game last year?

[Not Thread Owner]

25 minutes ago, ann coulter said:

Out of interest, what did you both think it did better than almost every other game last year?

It played just like a Castlevania game. Nothing else has quite done that since 2012.

 

It was fun. It had the important map-colouring hook. It had awful voice acting. It had lovely graphics and weighty swords and music that’s almost as good as Bloody Tears. It had some great bosses. It had secrets and more secrets and secrets within secrets. It had all of these things and I could play it on my Switch.

[mogawoods]

Fair enough. I'd have preferred the kind of secret where you input a string of button presses to turn the 2.5D art into 2D, instead of the kind of secret where you strike a wall by accident and a hidden carrot falls out.

[Not Thread Owner]

6 minutes ago, ann coulter said:

Fair enough. I'd have preferred the kind of secret where you input a string of button presses to turn the 2.5D art into 2D, instead of the kind of secret where you strike a wall by accident and a hidden carrot falls out.

Then I wouldn’t have been playing Castlevania.

 

I agree that 2D probably would have been better but I’m not averse to what we got. Remember how awful the original footage was? Thank Christ they redid it all.

[dumpster]

I haven't played it on Switch and have read that it has issues, but on PS4 it is silky smooth, plays beautifully, has great locations, music, graphics.  it's the only game I ever platinumed on trophies.  I played through Dawn of Sorrow on an emulator last week and loved that too.  Bloodstained is pure Castlevania and I really enjoyed every minute, including the grind to complete that item list.  I can only assume the Switch version is really badly converted - on PS4 is was blowing me away, a game that ticked all the boxes.

[Not Thread Owner]

By all accounts the Switch version isn’t as nice looking as the PS4 version but I’ve only played the Switch version and it’s excellent anyway. It’s the same gameplay.

[Keyboard Koala]

19 hours ago, deKay said:

Not my game of the year but the unpatched Switch version is still one of my favourite games from 2019.

 

I thought patches was supposed to improve the game?

 

 

 

…It didn't cause you any trouble, by chance?

 

[Not Thread Owner]

No, just I completed it before any patches came out (bar the day-1 patch).

[Dig Dug]

The game is mostly fine but the tower is such a crime that I hope they never stop patching it until that one area is optimised.

[Not Thread Owner]

I didn’t notice any problems there (or anywhere). What happens for you?

[Dig Dug]

Slideshow frame rate.

[Not Thread Owner]

2 hours ago, Dig Dug said:

Slideshow frame rate.

Maybe they added that in a patch?

[El Spatula]

You're quite weird about this. 

[Not Thread Owner]

46 minutes ago, El Spatula said:

You're quite weird about this. 

 

I didn't get performance issues in the tower. I'm sorry.

[Soulstar]

 I can gladly say I don’t get performance issues with my tower either.

[Not Thread Owner]

Maybe it's to do with which weapons, clothes or powers you have equipped? Some are more graphically intense than others.

[wavey]

Or is it a handheld / docked difference?

[Not Thread Owner]

5 minutes ago, wavey said:

Or is it a handheld / docked difference?

 

Could be. Don't remember whether I was docked or not for the tower - I played both ways.

[Soulstar]

I'm very close to getting the platinum trophy on this, something I never do and haven't ever gone for in any game before aside from some shorter one's which don't have platinums. There's a bit of tedious crafting and searching about in menus for things at this point as there are so many items to get. I had an annoying bug which left me at 99% shard collection completion rate where the actual shard I needed, I'd already collected and had a shard sign against the enemy who dropped it. I even remember having it but it wasn't in my list and never counted. Gaining it a second time fixed the problem. Seemed to read up someone else had a very similar situation. Highly annoying. Must have spent about 51 hours or so on this now and just have about 4 weapons to craft and one other trophy to get. 

[TheShend]

There's a physical edition (£25) for the Switch in my local cex I'm eyeing up, but I just need some reassurance the port isn't a dogs breakfast? 

 

 

[Not Thread Owner]

2 hours ago, TheShend said:

There's a physical edition (£25) for the Switch in my local cex I'm eyeing up, but I just need some reassurance the port isn't a dogs breakfast? 

 

 

If you’ve played the other versions you’ll notice the downgrade, otherwise no, it’s still one of the best Castlevania games you’ll play.

 

Its been cheaper than £25 though, and it’s only a fiver more new in Game.

[Not Thread Owner]

£27 at Base

[Santas Boyfriend]

2 minutes ago, deKay said:

If you’ve played the other versions you’ll notice the downgrade, otherwise no, it’s still one of the best Castlevania games you’ll play.

 

Its been cheaper than £25 though, and it’s only a fiver more new in Game.

 

I bought it for £20.99 in Argos last weekend. I finished it on a PS4 Pro when it came out; the Switch version (based on 1 hour handheld) is totally fine. Lower framerate, a bit blurrier but so far it's the game I remember.

[Soulstar]

52 hours in and I finally got the platinum. 

[Soulstar]

I've just been reading the last 5 or 6 pages or so as I've not really wanted to spoil much until now and kind of agree with the way it sucks you in and has this effect of making you want to do everything. I'm not sure if it's the fact that it didn't feel too difficult for me to get 100% of the map and shows up lots of different %'s for various other stats. I think also having a false ending then going on to do the proper one makes you feel like you've already committed yourself a little followed by the 100% map completion. Then of course it's onto the shards and before you know it, you're thinking well I may as well. The bit that really became a chore though was trying to finish off all the remaining food crafting items and then finally for me, getting the last of the equipable items. 

 

It surprised me by just how high the % figures are on the trophies though as a whole. Like the Platinum itself is something like 17% which to me is crazy. It might be because I'm used to seeing a lot of PS+ games which lower the figures drastically, but generally for a game like this, I'd have expected it to be much lower considering the grind. I finished it on about 37 hours then spent another 15 or so mopping everything else up. I panicked a bit when trying to do the last trophy which involved drop kicking an enemy and the one I saw used as an example on a video (to get it done quickly because by this point I just wanted the platinum so bad) I realised my power was too high to involved 10 downward kicks in a row. Fortunately this is easily remedied messing with items and equipping a particular ring. 

 

 

 

 

[chris on the moon]

Ì got given this for Xmas, and I've just started this week. I'm really unhappy about how ugly this looks on the switch. Things look generally ok when they're still but as soon as they start moving it's a complete mess. Particularly the player character. The frame rate and resolution are just poor.

[Not Thread Owner]

It really isn’t a complete mess. Unless the update broke things.

[dumpster]

The trophies are a grind but you don't have to get them all in the same savefile.  If you intend to play it through more than once , or try out new game plus, including sticking it on easy and using the accelerator shard to dash around like a madman, or even the speedrun mode, it all counts. You get more crafting opportunities on sequential playthroughs because items start appearing in the shop once you craft them with the other guy.