Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - In Need of a Bloodletting

Time to Beat:

12.4 Hours to achieve the worst ending, Just A Flicker

In the world of video games, everyone has reviewers they follow. For the last ten years, I've always read/listened to Shamus Young of Twenty Sided and Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation. Sadly, Shamus passed away in June. List your favorite reviews in the comments if you like.

In 2010 Yahtzee Croshaw began writing his summary episodes, where he chose his five best and worst games of the year. Of his top sixty games, I've played twenty. Of those, four were Awkward Mixture's Best of the Year, nine I strongly recommended, four were recommended with reservations, and two I wouldn't play again.

In 2019 Yahtzee Croshaw chose Disco Elysium and Bloodstained as his top two games of the year. In 2020, I criticized Disco Elysium when the game soft-locks if the player hasn't filled an obscure condition twenty hours in. This frustration reduced it from strongly recommended to recommended with reservations. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, developed by indie ArtPlay, and published by 505 Games, is an homage to Castlevania games. The producer, Koji Igarashi, wrote, developed, and produced thirteen Castlevania games, including Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night. I, on the other hand, have never played a Castlevania game. And if Bloodstained resembles previous Castlevania games, and I assume it does, because Igarashi must know what he's doing after producing the most famous games in the series, I never want to again.

The player chooses from one of three characters and three difficulties. It is highly recommended the player play the game first as Miriam.

Bloodstained opens with a three minute introduction. It's an exposition dump that is supposed to introduce the setting, but speaks in vague terms, eschewing details. The game then takes place ten years later, and I wondered; how did we get from here to there? It seems an extraordinary leap. The writer refused to flesh out the course of the previous decade.In summary, the industrial revolution made Alchemists fear they would be obsolete. So they created Shardbinders, binding mystical shards to the skin of innocent people. Shardbinders access demonic energy. The Alchemists sacrificed the Shardbinders to open a portal between Earth and the demonic realm. They were stopped by the Church. The Alchemists were temporarily defeated, but two of the Shardbinders survived; Gebel and Miriam. Miriam slept for ten years and awakens at the start of the Bloodstained. During the past decade Gebel established a castle, and started a war against England. Miriam interacts with a collection of other characters as she explores the castle, seeking to redeem Gebel. She meets Johannes, Alfred, Dominique, and Zangetsu, to name a few.

This isn't a spoiler. Nearly all that information is available in the initial ten minutes of the game. At the same time, it is almost the entire story. There's a bit at the final ending, which I didn't understand. The story feels hollow, like a strawberry crepe, without the filling. It feels like there was a previous game, and Bloodstained is a sequel. But there wasn't, and it isn't.  Miriam explores the demon infested castle. Like any Metroidvania game, the castle is divided into dozens of rooms. Allied NPCs, acting as shops and quest givers set themselves up in the entrance. Beyond this safe haven, the player encounters hordes of demons. Demons are numerous, respawning the instant the player leaves a room. Rooms contain enemies, chests with loot, and sometimes “puzzles.” It's unfair to call them that. Some puzzles are as easy as pushing a box to access a higher location. Many areas are out of reach until Miriam acquires specific abilities. This is a classic gate mechanic in Metroidvania games (like Hollow Knight), and it has the usual repetitive solutions. Double jump allows her to cross expansive pits. She obtains shards which allow her to interact with a limited number of environmental objects. A giant fist lets her move objects, or she can turn into a beam of energy to pass through tight spaces.

Exploration can be confusing. Only a few shards are necessary to pass through the gates, but they are not labeled. The first shard to advance was a manipulative shard. I, incorrectly, assumed only manipulation shards were used to progress. Not long after I was stuck. Frustrated, I looked online and realized I already had the shard I needed, but it was a directional shard.The map shows the castle. It depicts a simplified version of the rooms, with their rough shape, size, walls, and doorways. The regions explored by the player are indicated. Most of the rooms are blue. Red rooms let the player heal and save. Miriam can teleport from any green room to any other green room. The map needs a better key for additional details. Or, my favorite pet peeve. Players on the PC should be able to take notes or mark the map. An abnormally large number of rooms are empty of threats, and most with enemies pose no danger. Few, if any, enemies, except for bosses, imperil the player. Even with teleportation rooms, travel drags. It's a grind to travel from one area to the next, but the protagonist is never in any danger. There is no tension and no menace. I only died against bosses. Most bosses aren't introduced. They don't have a story. They are simply extra-dangerous enemies who appear with a brief cinematic. They are spaced haphazardly. It's possible to fight one boss, then not see another for three hours. Or brawl with one boss, and duel another fifteen minutes later.

Sometimes being allowed to fight the boss is the real challenge. One section required the player find a random item, to get a different random item, to give to a person, even though that person never asked for it, to open an area, to fight a boss with an ally who inflicted 90% of the damage. It was like being at Disney World but with no ability to see, hear, taste, or touch. And then being told you had the best time ever.

The few times the player interacts with a person the voice actor sounds bored. The dialogue is packed with cliches and redundancies. Bloodstained is ugly. The character/monster models stand out from the low quality background, as if the artist made a picture with crayons and markers. The only redeeming feature is Miriam's costume. Items worn by the protagonist are displayed on the character; except for the body armor which doesn't change.

Combat is simple, every weapon has an attack. Miriam only employs two tricks.One trick is techniques. Techniques are special attacks which can only be practiced with specific weapons. The player masters a technique by using it repeatedly against enemies. Mastered techniques can be used by any weapon of the same type. For example, the Lunging Serpent technique can only be practiced on the Sanjiegun, but once mastered, can be used by any spear.

There are two ways the player learns a technique. Techniques are a combo input, like ⬇ ↘ ➡ ☐, or ➡ ⬅ ➡ ☐. Bloodstained includes seven possible inputs for the twenty-three techniques. A player could discover a technique by trying different combos when they find a new item, in the hopes of discovering the technique by accident. The problem; most weapons don't start with a technique. Only thirty-seven of the one hundred and seven weapons begin with a technique. Two-thirds of the weapons won't react to any of the seven inputs. Trying all the inputs would be an absurd waste of time. Instead, techniques are learned from bookcases. These are scattered throughout the castle. A bookcase reveals one technique. There is a problem with this furniture. In the menus, under Player Info, the game records all the techniques the player has used at least once. But it doesn't record anything from a bookcase. Bookcases are only useful if the player writes down the information on a piece of paper, or already has one of the weapons in their inventory. Even with a technique, weapons are boring. Without a technique weapons are like having only the regular (weak) attack in Dark Souls. Learning a technique is like adding a strong attack. It's an improvement, but combat remains shallow.The other trick is shards. Miriam, a Shardbinder, accumulates the power of shards. Every time the player kills an enemy she has a chance to absorb their power. The six types of shards are conjure, manipulation, directional, passive, familiar, and skill. Conjuration, manipulation, and directional shards cast spells, while passive, familiar, and skill shards activate passive abilities. Every shard has a rank and grade, from 1 to 9. Rank upgrades the shard with additional abilities. Grade increases the damage. The player upgrades the rank of shards at a shop in the base. Every time the player kills the same enemy, there is a chance the grade increases. Using a technique or shard consumes mana. Mana recharges slowly. It can also be replenished with consumables. Even with these tricks combat is riddled with problems. The player can't aim ranged weapons. The hit boxes on enemies are imprecise. Attacks often miss an enemy, even when they appear to hit them. Weapons pass through the protagonist without inflicting any damage. When they do connect they inflict only a sliver of damage. These effects are true about friends and foes alike; the protagonist as well. The lack of accuracy, and the overabundance of health makes fighting drawn out and tedious. But it also makes it easy. I defeated the final boss (for the bad 1^st ending) on the first attempt (other bosses and foes lacked challenge).

Bloodstained is a silly game. Not a laughing along comedy of a game, but laughing at its pathetic attempts to take itself seriously. If it's trying to be so bad it's good tone, I missed its mocking sensibility. Also silly; the food mechanic. Despite an 18^th century English fantasy setting, the game includes a wide culture of foods like smoothies, pizza, apple pie, fish and chips, sea urchin pasta, and rice balls. The visual effects render them hilarious, as they seem especially cartoonish in a design that repeatedly clashes different qualities and styles against each other. Food heals the protagonist, but the first time the player eats a unique piece of food it gives a permanent stat boost. Eating food requires finding ingredients and combining them to make new vittles. In Conclusion,

I've never played a Castlevania game, so I can't compare Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night to its predecessors, but it lacks quality in every measure. It looks ugly, with a mismatch of visual design. The NPCs and enemies feature a similar lack in construction. The combat is simple and easy. The exploration is similarly simple, sometimes unexplained, and a waste of time. The story is a generic backstory that occurred ten years ago. But most of all, these elements combine (like milk, sugar, and a dragon egg can be combined in Bloodstained, to make a flan) to create an experience without an ounce of fun.

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