Another game that I have been messing around with a bit this week is Bloodstained Ritual of the Night Backer E3 Demo. I am assuming this will be the version of the game shown on the E3 floor starting in two weeks. I only know about this existing because I got curious because I could not quite remember which version of the game I had pre-ordered as part of the Kickstarter. When I got to the key redemption page it informed me that I had a yet to be redeemed steam key, which turned out to be for what appears to be a largely finished version of the game.
If you have read this blog for very long you will likely know that possibly my favorite game of all time is Castlevania Symphony of the Night. The very similarly named Bloodstained Ritual of the Night is effectively a spiritual successor designed by the same person, Koji Igarashi. Konami losing their mind ended up stranding a bunch of really excellent properties and we have already seen several of the creators going out and creating new intellectual property. So far I am super on board with the path that Koji has taken in resurrecting the spiritual core of Castlevania in a brand new universe… that quite frankly has a way better story.
In Bloodstained you play as Miriam a Shardbinder, or a human being who has been experimented on with Alchemy to allow them to infuse into themselves the abilities of the enemies that they defeat. Warning this may contain spoilers to Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon the 8 bit honorific title that released before Ritual of the Night as a kickstarter stretch goal. The setting is one of magic blended with burgeoning technology, and one where up until the industrial age the alchemists were treated with almost god like reverence. However with the influx of technology, the common people started relying less and less on Alchemy and more on machinery.
In an act of desperation the Alchemist flung wide the gates of hell letting loose demons and all manner of other creatures. The reasoning here is a little thin but at the same time there was a hunting down of the Shardbinders so that you as Miriam represent one of the last ones. Which makes it super convenient that you now have to kill all of these demons that will ultimately allow you to steal their powers. If you have played Casltevania Circle of the Moon this entire process will feel really familiar. At some point while killing a monster a shard of their energy will infuse itself rather violently with Miriam and from that point on you get a new ability to play with in the menu system. These serve as both attacks and ways to grant new abilities that will help you traverse new areas metroidvania style.
Your character also has a wide variety of weapons available to them, which give you a slew of different ways you can tweak the gameplay to fit your desired style. I’m personally playing a lot with the “katana” style family of blades which have a wide blade flourish and are pretty hard hitting… but also very slow give the extra flourish animation. These are great for taking down bigger monsters, but pure hell for chains of bats or any of the other tiny annoying enemies. Something like the Rapier which hits extremely rapidly would be far better suited for the modern equivalent of the medusa heads. If you want to just feel like a Martial Arts bad ass, you can always stick with the Kung Fu shoes family of weapons which are essentially just boots that you equip and then kick literal ass with.
I am not certain I could be more on board with this game. Sure there is some weirdness at times with it effectively being a 2D parallax side-scroller built in a 3D engine… but this also lets the game do some really nifty things. There is a point I encountered in the third area where you are effectively walking along the base of the castle… and then to denote that you are turning a corner the scenery in the background begins to rotate as your character shifts heading slightly still following what is a 2D path. I have a feeling as I get deeper into the game they are going to do more interesting things with this same sort of mechanic.
The fidelity of the gameplay experience so far feels perfect. It is immediately comfortable and recognizable to someone who has played a lot of Symphony of the Night and it feels like they have taken all of those RPG element aspects that I loved so much and cranked them up to eleven. In SOTN it takes awhile before you reach the library… the area that effectively allows you to manipulate a lot of things about your character. In Bloodstained you are introduced to this aspect after the very first intro level on the ship. Everything about the game feels deeply familiar but also new at the same time.
My backer copy of the game is on Steam, but I fully expect to pick this up for every platform it is available on if for no reason other than supporting the team. I mean I do own a copy of Symphony of the Night for pretty much every platform it was available on. I think this is going to be awesome on the switch, as I think it will be another excellent pick and play intermittently experience given the game has scattered a generous number of save points throughout the game. If you were a fan of Symphony of the Night or any of the modern GBA and DS tittles that were in that same metroidvania style… then I highly suggest you check out Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night when it releases in June.
Another game that I have been messing around with a bit this week is Bloodstained Ritual of the Night Backer E3 Demo. I am assuming this will be the version of the game shown on the E3 floor starting in two weeks. I only know about this existing because I got curious because I could not quite remember which version of the game I had pre-ordered as part of the Kickstarter. When I got to the key redemption page it informed me that I had a yet to be redeemed steam key, which turned out to be for what appears to be a largely finished version of the game.
If you have read this blog for very long you will likely know that possibly my favorite game of all time is Castlevania Symphony of the Night. The very similarly named Bloodstained Ritual of the Night is effectively a spiritual successor designed by the same person, Koji Igarashi. Konami losing their mind ended up stranding a bunch of really excellent properties and we have already seen several of the creators going out and creating new intellectual property. So far I am super on board with the path that Koji has taken in resurrecting the spiritual core of Castlevania in a brand new universe… that quite frankly has a way better story.
In Bloodstained you play as Miriam a Shardbinder, or a human being who has been experimented on with Alchemy to allow them to infuse into themselves the abilities of the enemies that they defeat. Warning this may contain spoilers to Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon the 8 bit honorific title that released before Ritual of the Night as a kickstarter stretch goal. The setting is one of magic blended with burgeoning technology, and one where up until the industrial age the alchemists were treated with almost god like reverence. However with the influx of technology, the common people started relying less and less on Alchemy and more on machinery.
In an act of desperation the Alchemist flung wide the gates of hell letting loose demons and all manner of other creatures. The reasoning here is a little thin but at the same time there was a hunting down of the Shardbinders so that you as Miriam represent one of the last ones. Which makes it super convenient that you now have to kill all of these demons that will ultimately allow you to steal their powers. If you have played Casltevania Circle of the Moon this entire process will feel really familiar. At some point while killing a monster a shard of their energy will infuse itself rather violently with Miriam and from that point on you get a new ability to play with in the menu system. These serve as both attacks and ways to grant new abilities that will help you traverse new areas metroidvania style.
Your character also has a wide variety of weapons available to them, which give you a slew of different ways you can tweak the gameplay to fit your desired style. I’m personally playing a lot with the “katana” style family of blades which have a wide blade flourish and are pretty hard hitting… but also very slow give the extra flourish animation. These are great for taking down bigger monsters, but pure hell for chains of bats or any of the other tiny annoying enemies. Something like the Rapier which hits extremely rapidly would be far better suited for the modern equivalent of the medusa heads. If you want to just feel like a Martial Arts bad ass, you can always stick with the Kung Fu shoes family of weapons which are essentially just boots that you equip and then kick literal ass with.
I am not certain I could be more on board with this game. Sure there is some weirdness at times with it effectively being a 2D parallax side-scroller built in a 3D engine… but this also lets the game do some really nifty things. There is a point I encountered in the third area where you are effectively walking along the base of the castle… and then to denote that you are turning a corner the scenery in the background begins to rotate as your character shifts heading slightly still following what is a 2D path. I have a feeling as I get deeper into the game they are going to do more interesting things with this same sort of mechanic.
The fidelity of the gameplay experience so far feels perfect. It is immediately comfortable and recognizable to someone who has played a lot of Symphony of the Night and it feels like they have taken all of those RPG element aspects that I loved so much and cranked them up to eleven. In SOTN it takes awhile before you reach the library… the area that effectively allows you to manipulate a lot of things about your character. In Bloodstained you are introduced to this aspect after the very first intro level on the ship. Everything about the game feels deeply familiar but also new at the same time.
My backer copy of the game is on Steam, but I fully expect to pick this up for every platform it is available on if for no reason other than supporting the team. I mean I do own a copy of Symphony of the Night for pretty much every platform it was available on. I think this is going to be awesome on the switch, as I think it will be another excellent pick and play intermittently experience given the game has scattered a generous number of save points throughout the game. If you were a fan of Symphony of the Night or any of the modern GBA and DS tittles that were in that same metroidvania style… then I highly suggest you check out Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night when it releases in June.
Things are in theory starting to go the right direction. The lake just up from Tulsa has reached a point where more water is going out than is coming in, which in truth means the beginning of the slow process to pull us back from the brink of disaster. The rain yesterday and last night caused localized flooding but did not fall in the river basin, so did not add to the long term woes. I worked a late shift last night getting home around midnight and as a result I am getting a bit of a slow start this morning. I am looking forward to reaching a point where my life is no longer built around what emergency shift I need to work next. All of that said… I am exceptionally lucky in that the flooding has only effected my schedule and has not decimated my life or livelihood in the process.
A good chunk of my downtime has still been spent working on Diablo 3 Season 17. At this point I am one achievement away from completing Champion rank in the seasons journey, and my home is tonight that I can have the presence of mind to be able to master the set dungeon. These are not exactly my jam and I always end up putting them off until I absolutely cannot progress without doing them. After that I only have gems to 45, one conquest and extracting a bunch more things with Kunai’s cube to be able to complete Destroyer. My goal is to ultimately go for finishing all of these this season and be able to claim the really spiffy wings. This is something that Grace has already managed to finish, but I have a feeling she is going to be willing to help me out with the things I end up getting stuck on.
Ultimately the conquest that I am planning on going for is going to involve running a ton of bounties and stockpiling the caches so that I can open them all at the same time and consume a ton of gold all at once. Once I knock out mastering a set dungeon this might be my next farm for the short term because I need a ton of materials to be able to extract stuff with the cube, so I might as well farm for the chests at the same time. I have no clue how Grace is finished so fast other than the fact that she has poured a significant chunk of hours into the game over the Memorial Day weekend. I am just happy at this point that I have a functional build that seems to be going smoothly.
Invoker is probably my favorite set in the game and I really like the play style of killing things with thorns. I am however going to have to swap out a bunch of abilities to master the set dungeon as I am not playing with a good number of the abilities that are required. I might end up looking up a guide again to see what is the suggested combination. I know I need to disable my Paladin follower because he will ultimately screw things up. When I do the run on the gold achievement I need to remember to disable my pet, because it will also ultimately screw things up. All of that said… I want to make my push to finish up this season so I can devote some time to running up a character on the Switch as well.
I'm back to give blogging another go and I've moved to the ol' dotcom for a fresh start.
I've decided I'm going to attempt to chronicle some of my adventures in Final Fantasy XIV, and probably other games and so on along the way. The coming of the Shadowbringers expansion is the perfect time to kick this off, so...
The benchmark.
I ran both of my characters through it, and my pc handled it well. As always, the benchmark is a nice teaser of things to come early on in the expac, and it was fun to see my characters as (high-level) dark knights.
I also played around briefly with Viera and Hrothgar creation. After watching a few vids on Hrothgar emotes, I'm a bit surprised .. they seem to be more expressive than I was expecting.
I'm currently taking in a bunch of info from the Media Tour today, and all of it sounds pretty amazing and fun. Just about one more month to go!
