Fans of Castlevania have been patiently waiting for the release of it’s spiritual successor, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for quite a while. The successful Kickstarter, led by Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi has finally arrived in a playable form at NYCC 2017 and ComicAttack.net was on hand to try it out.
I apologize in advance for the comparisons I’ll inevitably make to Castlevania.
The developers on hand to talk to us insisted that what was playable was only a fraction of what fans will find in the finished game. Even at a fraction, Bloodstained showed incredible polish at it’s current development state. The graphics were crisp in a slightly cell shaded style as the bright colors of the on screen characters stood out boldly against the muted colors of the background.
As protagonist Miriam, players have access to various weapons and spells that are visually stunning and seem to pack some serious punch. Players will have access to an inventory system familiar to anyone who’s played a Castlevania game in the last 10 years making it instantly accessible. The various weapons and magic dramatically changed the flow of combat as I fought my way through what I would describe as an old cathedral. However, I felt that Bloodstained wasn’t as fluid in combat as it’s famous cousin Symphony of the Night. There were times that I felt my attacks left me unnecessarily open to retaliation as I would be locked into an animation much like using whip in the original Castlevania games on the NES. Hopefully there are tweaks to the combat before release to fix that.
Ultimately, there isn’t much I can say beyond the aesthetics of the demo and the team on hand were very silent when I probed for story details. I
can say that if the development team continues to polish and not detract from what I already played I’ll be first in line to get my copy of Bloodstained on it’s official release.
Eric Snell
esnell@comicattack.net
