KickStarter Bloodstained - Koji Igarashi's new metroidvania game

[Ventidius]

I finished this back on Tuesday and I have to say, this is probably the best of the Kickstarter games and probably the only one that actually lived up to the hype. Unlike Pillars of Eternity, this game delivers exactly what was advertised: it is a classic-style Metroidvania through and through. Unlike Wasteland 2, it is not a mediocrity, it is a very good game in its own right regardless of everything else (including how one ranks it in the Castlevania catalogue).

Unlike Divinity: Original Sin, it is not unfinished. Yes, the game runs a bit out of steam during the late mid-game and late game, but the dip in quality was not as bad as I expected, and there are plenty of elements that keep things interesting, such as the bosses which, if anything, only get better. There are also more environmentally interactive mechanics that are introduced (invert, underwater movement, Reflector Ray, etc.) that make it fun to go back to previous areas and see what new pathways can be unlocked. Level design does get weaker, but even then you have not only the Oriental Sorcery Lab (one of the best levels in the game), but you get to explore the true extent of previously visited areas such as Livre Ex Machina and the Forbidden Underground Waterway, which is pretty cool.

Despite the fluctuations in quality, I can't say that the later parts of the game felt overall half-baked. To be sure, a couple of areas could perhaps have been more fleshed out, like the Secret Sorcery Lab, or the post-Gebel areas. The latter, in particular, were rather uninspired and felt pointless. In fact, I think they could have easily been cut out altogether, as the game already has a respectably large world with an amount of content that is impressive in the context of an indie game. I only wish that the teleport Shard had been introduced earlier to have more of a chance to mess around with it. A wasted opportunity.

Anyway, this was a pleasant surprise, as I had been skeptical of Kickstarter for some time. In fact, until I played Bloodstained, I thought KS was for the most part an abject failure that didn't directly produce anything of much worth (leaving aside hypotheses of how it may have indirectly influenced the industry at large). Bloodstained really shows the difference that dedicated craftsmanship can make even in the context of limited resources.

 

[Ash]

Regarding SOTN:

My favourite because:

Best Art style is the series
Best soundtrack in the series
Most gameplay depth. Yes. You heard right. For example, you can carry two weapons, one in each hand. No other in the series allows this. Then instead of lumping all offense under the universal regenerating resource of mana, you get classic hearts for sub weapons, mana, AND offensive item counts. This results in more attack/combo variety at any given time, in addition to the wolf and mist.
Not that this counts in the game's favor here, but it was the one that started it all.

Mist is OP. Katana is OP. Soul steal is OP. Shield rod is OP. Carry capacity is fucked (everything is 99 rather than context specific), but thankfully these imbalances only rear their ugly heads late game. Inventory is also unintuitive (items should be categorised). It wouldn't take much to fix these problems and turn it into a genuine masterpiece. I can't see the same happening for the other games in the series. Including bloodstained.

 

[RoSoDude]

Depth isn't the raw number of options at the player's disposal; it's the number of distinct and relevant options. Symphony of the Night is incredibly broad, but many of its options are redundant to each other or are made irrelevant by lackluster challenge design. If you can stunlock a boss into a corner with your sword or simply wreck everything with some overpowered attack combo, the game is not pushing you to experiment with its large variety of options. There is something to be said for the ability to attack with weapons, subweapons, spells, transformations, familiars, and equippable items at any given moment, but the unfortunate fact is that most of them can be safely ignored. The Sorrow games, Portrait of Ruin, and yes, Bloodstained all have much more meaningful variety in weapons with distinct attack timings, hitboxes, and cancels as compared with SotN's mostly samey selection of horizontally slashing swords, and the various spells and combos approach if not overtake Alucard's arsenal in creative utility, while the tedium of managing them in the pause menu can be alleviated by real-time loadout swapping, albeit at some cost to potential synergies. They also have better balance of options and tuning of difficulty except for maybe Bloodstained, which approaches the same level of OP cheese at the end but at least has solid bosses the whole way through. I still prefer Symphony to Bloodstained at the end of the day because it's better holistically (level design and exploration, enemy variety, aesthetics and charm). But I'd also probably take Order of Ecclesia over Symphony, despite having the most gutted RPG depth and straightforward level design in the series, because the action mechanics and challenge design are that much better. Symphony would benefit from a balance/difficulty mod to be sure (and I intend to play HardType to evaluate it on that level), but it also needs more distinguished weapon types that benefit from deeper mechanical interaction (combos, jump/dash cancels, even blocking/parrying) and bosses with more elaborate patterns that are less vulnerable to cheese (but in some cases, are more open to attack as well).

 

[Damned Registrations]

I can remember a lot of details about pretty much every single area in SotN; which areas it connects to, special items in it, enemies, secrets, etc.

I can't remember jack shit about the handheld games except an OP sword called Claim Solais in one of them and some bullshit laser in Ecclesia. I certainly don't recall any of them having meaningful challenge. All the variety in weapon timings and such is pretty much irrelevant because you just take the biggest hitbox you can get and do the jump-slash-land-slash-backdash combo that cancels all the delay and eliminates all the risk. At least SotN also made really fast shit like daggers or punching a decent option sometimes. Oh, or they just put in a version of the crissy but with like 300x the droprate of the original so everyone can find it as fanservice, even though it utterly destroys the game.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

When was the last time he worked on a castlevania like project?

 

[deuxhero]

For example, you can carry two weapons, one in each hand. No other in the series allows this.

?

It was in OoE.

 

[Ash]

It was, but I think that's kinda moot when that's ALL you get to attack with at any given time (slight exaggeration), and they both drain mana.

SOTN you get:

Magic (8 spells available to use at any given time)
Weapons (Left and Right hand). Doesn't drain mana.
Weapon combos
Consumable items (like Javelins or magic arrows). Goes in one of the hand lots tho.
Sub-weapons with their own independent ammo pool.
Automated familiar attacks if that counts
Flying kick
Poison mist
Wolf and bat (these two are together cause they're pretty shit when it comes to actual combat)

All this shit is available to attack with at any given time without switching anything out, once you obtain each.

And for all OoE's streamlining, shit is stiill unbalanced once you get the laser sword. Don't get me wrong I love OoE (it's my second or third fav), but every game after SotN is streamlined to no real benefit, instead of keeping the same complexity but making shit balanced.
Then there's Bloodstained, which brings back most of the complexity but loses all the soul and nuance, and is just as unbalanced. And features the all/most attacks are tied to mana bullshit.

Depth isn't the raw number of options at the player's disposal; it's the number of distinct and relevant options. Symphony of the Night is incredibly broad, but many of its options are redundant to each other or are made irrelevant by lackluster challenge design.

Of course I'm aware of this, but you're saying it as if options in SoTN are not distinct and relevant. I found the majority to be. Yes, all goes to shit once you get the OP stuff, but when do you actually get that stuff? Most of it is right near the end of the game. Soul steal is available from the start but requires high levels to spam. Masamune and alucard sword are found late game. Poison mist late game. Wrecking bosses with 99 javelins requires a lot of money only really feasible late game...

I didn't find the handheld vanias streamlined setup to have more meaningful variety even comparing weapons alone. It's the same shit. Daggers, swords, throwing axe, morning stars, knuckle dusters, all that is found in Symphony, where they have different hitboxes, are independent of mana, have weapon combos, can be assigned to left or right hand....no vania after Symphony did it right, even if they are slightly more challenging/less OP shit. That's one of few aspects of design they actually did better. Difficulty is very important yet marginal improvements there doesn't override 5 or so other tenets of design that SotN did better. And it's not like SotN is brainless easy. Up to a point it provides a challenge in its own right.

 

[RoSoDude]

I can't remember jack shit about the handheld games except an OP sword called Claim Solais in one of them and some bullshit laser in Ecclesia. I certainly don't recall any of them having meaningful challenge. All the variety in weapon timings and such is pretty much irrelevant because you just take the biggest hitbox you can get and do the jump-slash-land-slash-backdash combo that cancels all the delay and eliminates all the risk. At least SotN also made really fast shit like daggers or punching a decent option sometimes. Oh, or they just put in a version of the crissy but with like 300x the droprate of the original so everyone can find it as fanservice, even though it utterly destroys the game.

Symphony of the Night is far easier by default, and the other games have Hard modes which often tweak enemy behavior and placement and boss patterns in addition to statistics, and the challenge on offer is much less amenable to cheesing. The "biggest hitbox" point is bogus because you can't actually land cancel with great swords and it's only efficient to dash cancel after you've already done most of the slow swing from vertical. Weapons that benefit more from canceling like spears have less coverage but higher DPS, so I always prefer them. Daggers and fists aren't pointless on average any more than they were in Symphony -- that is, they are relevant for some portions of the early to midgame and outclassed later. You're actually just making stuff up with Crissaegrim/Valmanway, as that was a Boss Rush reward in Aria and a final upgrade in Dawn, and never a random drop like in Symphony.

Of course I'm aware of this, but you're saying it as if options in SoTN are not distinct and relevant. I found the majority to be. Yes, all goes to shit once you get the OP stuff, but when do you actually get that stuff? Most of it is right near the end of the game. Soul steal is available from the start but requires high levels to spam. Masamune and alucard sword are found late game. Poison mist late game. Wrecking bosses with 99 javelins requires a lot of money only really feasible late game...

I didn't find the handheld vanias streamlined setup to have more meaningful variety even comparing weapons alone. It's the same shit. Daggers, swords, throwing axe, morning stars, knuckle dusters, all that is found in Symphony, where they have different hitboxes, are independent of mana, have weapon combos, can be assigned to left or right hand....no vania after Symphony did it right, even if they are slightly more challenging/less OP shit. That's one of few aspects of design they actually did better.

I just went through all of the weapons I amassed on my last playthrough. You basically have minor variations in speed and hitbox size on the following:

• Sword: horizontal slash with moderate startup/ending delay, can aim diagonally downwards. Good with landing cancel
• Club/Rod: horizontal slash with variable startup/ending delay, can aim diagonally downwards. These are basically just slower or faster swords
  
• Dagger/fist: horizontal slash with minimal startup/ending delay. Allows for quick attacks while moving/dashing
• Thrusting sword: horizontal thrust with almost no startup delay, long ending delay and forward movement. Landing cancel is effective.
• Some weird ones like the combat knife combining dagger/sword slash on subsequent attacks, or nunchucks attacking twice, or the Crissaegrim letting you walk and slash rapidly

Obviously you have some additional complexity with damage types and one of two possible input combos (quarter circle forward or back forward), but most weapons are just various flavors of horizontal slashing sword. No great swords/axes with wide coverage but a slow arc, no polearms with long range but narrow hitbox and long ending delay, no whips with long range but slow startup, no katanas with an instant diagonal slash but extreme ending delay. Dash canceling isn't even possible, so we just have landing cancel which is decent on a few weapon types. It's fine for what it is (mostly RPG statistical variation and progression) but it is super bare-bones compared the Sorrow games and Portrait of Ruin. Bloodstained's techniques add a sizeable layer of depth to the weapon archetypes established there, where weapon choice allows for a lot more expression in combat. In Symphony I just used whatever had the best DPS.

Streamlining secondary attacks to a single (slowly) recharging mana pool without separately collecting hearts is an improvement if you ask me. It adds a functional limit on how much you can spam but still encourages use during exploration. I was typically stingy on my subweapon usage during Symphony's levels so I could spam holy water or axes on bosses, even moreso in Order of Ecclesia where dumping on boss health bars with glyph unions was so valuable. On the other end of the scale you get Harmony of Dissonance, which has the best integration of classic subweapons through its spell system but makes it far too easy to spam through everything with a combination of stocked up hearts and your mana bar. You could find a sweet spot in balance to be sure, and subweapons, spells, weapon techniques, etc. needn't necessarily be on the same playing field to accomplish these goals, but I like this as a factor of strategy and expression -- I'm not necessarily being "punished" in Bloodstained for avoiding shards altogether in favor of spending all of my mana on weapon techniques, I'm making a playstyle choice that comes with its own limitations. I'd preempt any comparisons to universal ammo in an shooter by noting that the goal here is to support the limited use of supplementary abilities rather than to enforce efficient weapon switching and selection. I don't necessarily want to feel incentivized to exhaust my available options during a fight, I prefer having to choose between them.

For example, you can carry two weapons, one in each hand. No other in the series allows this.

It was in OoE.

And it mostly sucked there anyway. Almost no reason to have a different glyph in each hand other than specific glyph unions, which you just save for spamming on the area boss. If you try to have a weapon glyph with a spell glyph you're either gimping your DPS up close or your utility at range.

Symphony is a little better with short swords, daggers, rods, shields, and two-handed weapons, but as I've said these mostly only differ in attack speed and horizontal distance.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Such difficulty.

Such weapon variety. What a WEIRD coincidence that the first videos I find past the early game are using the exact same weapons I was.

Even if landing doesn't cancel the afterswing jumping lets you start the attack from an entire screen away away or cover more area with a single swing than most spells. Considering enemies hit you for kittens it doesn't really matter anyways. At least SotN had nova skeletons.

 

[RoSoDude]

Claimh Solais is too easy to get for how busted it is in Aria, while in Dawn it at least requires some soul grinding (more than any other final weapon), and it isn't quite as dominant. In Portrait the Royal Sword and Holy Claymore are highly overrated, I don't use them. Alucard's Spear does more base damage and comes out faster with better cancel potential, and Vampire Killer is respectable in range and DPS as well. The Golden Axe, Damascus Sword, and Cinquedia (dagger) are all respectable choices as well. So yes, more meaningful variety than Symphony's pile of horizontally slashing swords.

As for the difficulty, the guys in those videos each lose half of their health over the course of two rooms. In Portrait's Hard mode, the player's damage is reduced, everything else gets bonus damage that scales with your level and enemies and bosses have more aggressive attack patterns. Nova skeletons were troublesome in Symphony, as were the rooms in the center of the Inverted Castle filled with rolling spike traps and Jack O' Bones, but I spent so much of the second half of the game bat flying and mist floating enemies that it wasn't a big deal. This is also the point where the player starts to acquire lategame cheese items which quickly outpace any challenge in their way. I don't know anyone who finds it consistently harder than the later games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

They were losing health because they gave no fucks. He would literally just stand in front of an enemy trading blows. And SotN had plenty of interesting weapons. Werebane, rune swords and sword of dawn, various rods, muramasa's weird blood drinking gimmick, swords that could curse or petrify. Oh, and it's spear was way better:

SotN wasn't consistently hard but you'd probably find at least a few nasty enemies and bosses no matter which route you took. Again, I literally can't remember anything from the handheld games. None of the enemies or bosses were memorable at all. They just went down to generically swinging at them with whatever OP shit I had at the time. Which was probably a holy element greatsword because that shit does double damage to everything and covers half the screen.

 

[Tigranes]

YES OH YES OH YES

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/2827912

Zangetsu and Randomizer will launch on PC, PS4, Xbox One on May 7th

and Nintendo Switch by the end of May or the beginning of June.

iga my man how many times must i pay for my bad life decisions

 

[Ash]

most weapons are just various flavors of horizontal slashing sword. No great swords/axes with wide coverage but a slow arc

Good. Actually have to aim and time attacks. In the DSvanias and Bloodstained I always found myself using great swords and axes for the raw damage output being the highest + the size of the damn things allowing for massive damage potential (hitting multiple things at once), as well as increasing chances of actually hitting your target because massive wide arc, as well as killing through walls/ceilings potential, as well as not having to get too close to your target cause simply grazing pixels with them often does high damage. That's a shit ton of pros. And what are the cons? It's slightly slower than most weapons and is less cancel-friendly. Barely a problem. This resulted in zero depth of weapon choices for me. Why the hell would I want a slightly faster polearm that has a very narrow hitbox, less damage, and about the same reach? I've not done in-depth analysis of the game's weapons but I found great weapons to be the superior class in most circumstances. It's partly why OoE's laser sword special is so op too. Massive arc, high damage, all the same benefits above.

Well, I used the Katanas a fair bit in Bloodstained too cause so many combo moves, very high damage, moderate speed and reach, cancel-friendly. Needed all that to rival great weapons.

 

[RoSoDude]

Great swords and axes have good utility and are the easiest to master. This does not mean they are the best. Aside from Aria (in which Claimh Solais is clearly the best weapon and is not all too difficult to find, though there are other unique and strong endgame weapons before you do) I haven't used them at all since my first playthroughs. They're too slow to come out and have only middling DPS potential, and the skill ceiling of other weapons is simply more fun to play around with. Skimming through some Hard Mode No Damage playthroughs of Dawn and Portrait on YouTube, high level players only pull out great swords and axes for aerial enemies and bosses, otherwise frequently preferring the more precise weapons you praise SotN for. I could see an argument to make great weapons even slower to further distinguish their use case, but I don't buy the claim that they're the only relevant weapon type. I would further argue that weapon diversity is probably at its all-time best among Igavanias in Bloodstained with all of the distinct types and their associated techniques, though balance problems rear their ugly head once more -- with skill shards that increase your attack speed, great swords probably are the best class, and that's lame.

Dawn of Sorrow

Portrait of Ruin

Also, Alucard's Spear is only in the Sega Saturn version of Symphony

 

[Damned Registrations]

Is there actually a need to use weapons in Bloodstained? As soon as you get a directional spell you've basically crushed all opposition. Though I used bunnygirl morph for justice. And I did bother to learn the weapon techniques to see what was on offer, but it was honestly all pretty trash compared to magic.

Also, I actually started watching the portrait of ruin playthrough you linked out of curiosity. Randomly clicked on a later video... and he's using a 200lbs mace. ROFL. To be fair he switched to a spear to deal with the spear skeletons, who've always been cunts. Checked a speedrun too for good measure- greatsword. No damage runs against specific enemies seems like a pretty niche case for not using the greatswords. If you held SotN to the same standard you'd be using a lot of different shit too.

 

[Perkel]

Randomizer and Zangetsu are apparently out already.

Unless you play chair build you will run out of mana. Especially on higher def.

 

[pocketroid]

I didn't have a console and missed the Castlevania DS games, so this was my first game from Koji Igarashi.
….
Itemization was easily the strongest point of the game

Wow man, you really ought to at least try Dawn of Sorrow.

I thought itemization was one of the drawbacks. It feels like they wanted to jump on a temporary trend which is parroted in hundreds of games trying to cash in on this trend, but is used successfully in very few. Nintendo even tried crafting, but that attempt was also misplaced and shoehorned. The crafting is basically 75% of Bloodstained and 10% of people will really use it. There is an overwhelming amount of possible items in this game. It feels like they went for quantity over quality, adding 10 new swords sword every week of development but they are all very similar, instead of polishing 1 meaningful sword. It doesn't feel special to have Sword #151, it just feels like a drop in the bucket and without meaning. Imagine if they spent all that time and resources into developing the rest of the game.

10 or 20 years down the line, I think crafting helped rail this game into generic or skippable status rather than legendary and recommendable.

Can't say Hard mode changed much beyond the initial difficulty spike. Once I got past the first Zangetsu fight the game slowly became even easier than before, for some reason. I wasn't grinding levels either. No need. And it's not like there is only "that one op shard combination" that trivializes the game. Many of them do. I guess, I could have restricted myself from using certain shards and equipment, which I consider to be too strong. Or I could play without shards altogether. Or I could play blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back.
There is a cool game underneath, but the more I play it the less I like it. The excessive crafting also doesn't help. 3 ranks per shard would have been enough, with each rank costing more resources and having a more noticeable (and more interesting) effect. Higher grades are often more useful than higher ranks, anyway. And the UI is really bad for quickly checking which monsters drop the required ingredients and in which area you can find them. Reminds me of CrossCode, except crafting isn't as prominent in that game.

I feel this for sure. Bloodstained has a lot of potential, but some decisions yielded an ultimately sloppy product rushed to market.

Nope, I rate it below Portrait of Ruin, Aria of Sorrow, and Order of Ecclesia for problems with its difficulty curve and mediocre boss design. It is definitely the one to start with, though.

Definitely. The DS games are my favourite 'vanias.

Cancelled $5M stretch goal: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/2772919

For all of my criticisms, I feel like Bloodstained was developed to _be_ a roguelike, with all of the variety in items. But I feel like it would have taken a few more years development with the crowdfunding campaign's lofty "stretch goals".

So... Barbievania game where she's hunting down clothes, accessories, apply make up, and hook up with her ho's and bros in Mattel Hotel? Get happy points and achievements. How many versions of barbie can you unlock? Dare you enter space or the lands of fantasy to find prince Ken? Will you unlock horse, pegasus, unicorn, pegacorn/unisus rides? Or Pink Barbie Ferrari Will you get a magic wand and become Pop Idol Star Barbie singing and dancing your way to fame and friendships?

its all up to you!

Castlevania: Other M

Most of the flaws that I have noticed and heard of in comments seem to be in the nature of the budget limitations that often come with indie projects rather than wrongheaded design philosophy.

For sure.
In general, you can tell Bloodstained is a crowdfunded game. Lots of promises and a rushed under-delivery. Developers and backers are too hasty.

Unlike Divinity: Original Sin, it is not unfinished.
….
I had been skeptical of Kickstarter for some time. In fact, until I played Bloodstained, I thought KS was for the most part an abject failure that didn't directly produce anything of much worth

I went into PoE blind, years after the crowdfunding campign and relase, and ended up really liking it. Now and then online I'll hear naysayers' impressions, but they don't give reasons. Maybe you could share what you were disappointed with?

Also, Kickstarter has yielded top video games like FTL, Undertale, Lisa, Hyper Light Drifter, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Darkest Dungeon, Factorio, A Hat in Time, Rogue Legacy, Superhot full game instead of just the free game jam version,

and others including lots of remakes or sequels:

Night in the Woods, Risk of Rain, Hand of Fate, Duelyst,, Prison Architect, Armello, Pier Solar HD, Sunless Sea, Frog Fractions 2, Read Only Memories, Citizens of Earth, Divekick, Freedom Planet, Kentucky Route Zero

Psychonauts 2, Shenmue III, La-Mulana 2, Armikrog, BattleTech 2018, Thimbleweed Park and Broken Age and Shadowgate and other adventure games, Shadowrun Returns, Obduction from Cyan, System Shock remake, Amplitude sequel, ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove, Divinity: Original Sin, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, River City Ransom: Underground

Not to mention things like Oculus Rift, 3Doodler, Rocketbook, Soylent, Indie Game: The Movie, Minds.com, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, plus, endless tabletop boardgames and roleplaying games and even Tabletop Simulator.

 

[Lutte]

rushed to market

Nah. Troubled development != rushing. They've done a lot of shitty visual assets and then went and remade a lot of them when people complained. Even today there's something arguably wrong about the animation. When you look at video footage it feels floaty as fuck (but when you actually play the game you realize it's not really floaty in terms of controls, it just 'looks' like it).
The kickstarter launched in 2015. Game released in 2019. That's way more than enough time to make a game like this if you don't fuck it up.

To make a comparison, Hollow Knight got a kickstarter campaign in 2014 and released in 2017. It is smaller in terms of the scope of extraneous misfeatures (like 'stain's itemization) but not in terms of world or boss encounters with unique design. Art style is simpler but animation flows far better.. and here's the kicker... it was made by a much smaller team of exactly four people. Four. And they're not large industry veterans like Iga.

Bonus point for the whole "artists can't make sprites in 201x" thing I've heard a few times during the development of this game as a justification for the horrendous 3d visuals :


Indie japanese devs still got it in their blood. Iga is just a has been. Bloodstained is alright, I've had fun with it, but I couldn't even find the motivation to even try to play it with the new character. The world just isn't that fun to explore, boss fights are great, too much of a kitchen sink design, serious misses in level quality and the visuals still feel just friggin off.
If it was the only good metroidvania released in the past years it would be a game I'd go back to but it isn't and ultimately is too much of a retread, banal, boring situation in a market that went far ahead of the man who contributed in building the genre itself.

 

[Ventidius]

I went into PoE blind, years after the crowdfunding campign and relase, and ended up really liking it. Now and then online I'll hear naysayers' impressions, but they don't give reasons. Maybe you could share what you were disappointed with?

I don't know about other sites, but there have been plenty of critiques of PoE around here, the most notorious one probably being this review. Since then, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the game in the Codex: in that review's thread, in the Pillars thread proper, in the Deadfire thread, in the respective threads of the positive reviews, and probably in scattered "Pillars sucks" and "Pillars isn't that bad" threads. As for me, I didn't hate Pillars, in fact I even tried to like it, but I ultimately found it so bland, mediocre, and unexciting that, while I don't usually waste an opportunity for a wall of text, I have zero interest in derailing this thread in order to beat this particular dead horse. I recommend you check out the aforementioned threads if you are that interested.

Also, Kickstarter has yielded top video games like FTL, Undertale, Lisa, Hyper Light Drifter, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Darkest Dungeon, Factorio, A Hat in Time, Rogue Legacy, Superhot full game instead of just the free game jam version,

and others including lots of remakes or sequels:

Night in the Woods, Risk of Rain, Hand of Fate, Duelyst,, Prison Architect, Armello, Pier Solar HD, Sunless Sea, Frog Fractions 2, Read Only Memories, Citizens of Earth, Divekick, Freedom Planet, Kentucky Route Zero

Psychonauts 2, Shenmue III, La-Mulana 2, Armikrog, BattleTech 2018, Thimbleweed Park and Broken Age and Shadowgate and other adventure games, Shadowrun Returns, Obduction from Cyan, System Shock remake, Amplitude sequel, ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove, Divinity: Original Sin, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, River City Ransom: Underground

Not to mention things like Oculus Rift, 3Doodler, Rocketbook, Soylent, Indie Game: The Movie, Minds.com, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, plus, endless tabletop boardgames and roleplaying games and even Tabletop Simulator.

Well, yes, there has been a sea of such games. The ones that I am familiar with from that bunch didn't really impress me that much though. In all fairness, I personally primarily focus on things like RPGs, Action RPGs, and Metroidvanias, so perhaps I should have specified that I found KS to be a failure mostly in that context.

All of that said, I have heard good things of both HK and Factorio, so those may indeed be very good. Haven't played them yet though.

 

[Lutte]

HK is the best thing to ever come out of KS. Be warned, though, that its pacing is really fucked in the beginning, and the game massively improves once you've got a few movement abilities under your belt. One thing that I expect the sequel to do a lot better.

 

[Alphard]

HK is the best thing to ever come out of KS. Be warned, though, that its pacing is really fucked in the beginning, and the game massively improves once you've got a few movement abilities under your belt. One thing that I expect the sequel to do a lot better.

exactly. i bought the game at release and got bored and quit in greenwalk ( second area of the game). enormous map and slow mobility made it a chore to play, not to mention lack of pins ( later introduced). picked up the game almost 1 year ago again and 112% it + true ending. became one of my favorite games of all times. best metroidvania i have played

 

[deuxhero]

http://archive.vn/wip/kO4VH

Konami wants to publish your game – from indie to AA – with new third-party publishing unit launched

For the most part that's just Konami admitting they have no internal dev capacity at all beyond power pro and PES are going to outsource shit, but remember this?
http://archive.vn/wip/fi2NS

In the future, if the opportunity to make another Castlevania came up, would you do it - or has that ship sailed?
Koji Igarashi: If I had the opportunity, I'd do it. Castlevania is one of those games - when my game came out in 1999, that game still has staying power, it's still interesting, it's still very popular.

Konami hiring the Bloodstained team to externally develop a new Castlevania game would be the smartest thing they've done in a while.

 

[flyingjohn]

I finally finished the game after 15 hours.It is,quite disappointing after the nice intro.I only played sotn so my opinion is probably limited.
There are two major problems,itemization and locations.

There is too much shit in this game to collect and farm.And then there is the food and shard upgrading/crafting.Why?
You will never use even 1/3 of what you can craft because you will either find better stuff or get better stuff in quest rewards.They could have easily cut 30 to 50 percent of generic weapons to give you more unique stuff.
And then there is the gimmicky shit like glasses that give you zoom and squeaky shoes.Why waste time on making those?

Food is just broken.It already makes a easy game easier and just adds another shit to farm for.
Shards suffer the same fate.So many yet so little actually interesting choices.Just look at summon rat,the ai completely kills that shard.It is quantity over quality to the extreme.And what is the point in some boss shards having grade when you can't collect them past level 1?

Locations start nice and after the library just fizzle out.Minus the beginning/library/twin towers, everything else feels like a giant waste of space or too much copy pasted stuff.I really loved the library in terms of how much stuff they packed in and the various spikes and constant flying enemies. It felt like castlevania.
The labs/caves are atrocious.Stuff like hall of termination and den of behemoth just feel like bad copies of previous stuff.
The water levels is just puzzling.It feels like thy chopped it up in various pieces and there isn't even a boss.Also the underwater movement is just terrible.

I wouldn't call the game bad but,it certainly is nothing special compared to sotn and Ecclesia that i am currently playing.

edit:forgot about a couple of recommended mods.

Jiggle physics:
https://www.nexusmods.com/bloodstainedritualofthenight/mods/73

Drop rate mod when you just want to farm stuff quicker:
https://www.nexusmods.com/bloodstainedritualofthenight/mods/108

Better descriptions:
https://www.nexusmods.com/bloodstainedritualofthenight/mods/68?tab=files&file_id=173

 

[Perkel]

You should try on higher difficulty normal difficulty is basically easy mode, it is on higher ones that that stuff starts to matter and you are encouraged to try different builds. Also i don't understand the "complaint about a lot of content". It is great that they added so much fun stuff. Yes some is dumb but details like that add a lot to the game feel.

I wonder when they will release Bloodstained 2. Obviously they should be working on it now because i somehow don't believe it takes a full year with experienced team to add that extra stuff that was already in game.

 

[flyingjohn]

You should try on higher difficulty normal difficulty is basically easy mode, it is on higher ones that that stuff starts to matter and you are encouraged to try different builds. Also i don't understand the "complaint about a lot of content". It is great that they added so much fun stuff. Yes some is dumb but details like that add a lot to the game feel.

I wonder when they will release Bloodstained 2. Obviously they should be working on it now because i somehow don't believe it takes a full year with experienced team to add that extra stuff that was already in game.

Bloodstained 2 ain't coming for along time.
They only cancelled the rouglike dungeon stretch goal,not the other modes they promised.
They still need to add a new character,co op,boss revenge mode,the substitute for the roguelike mode and other stuff they promised.