Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (1 Viewer)

[Bryan^H]

I'm looking forward to playing this. The Kickstarter was 4 years ago? Sometimes time can be very sobering, and frightening. I remember when it launched and it feels to me like that was a year/year and a half ago at most. I guess the old saying that time speeds up as you get older is true.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Playing it now. This is Symphony of the Night style Castlevania at it's finest. It's fantastic.

 

[Steve Y]

I'm impressed by this game. I got it for PS4. It has some things in common with the mobile Castlevania games that came out after Symphony of the Night too, DS games like Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia.

There are a few minor bugs here and there, and some of the backgrounds are a little janky, but overall it's nice to see a Kickstarter project that appears to have delivered on its promise. If you like the classic "Metroidvania" style of game, it delivers.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Just finished this last night. Only need all items and 500,000 gold for the platinum.

The game was absolutely fantastic all around, and the true sequel to Sympohny of the Night. Loled at all the Konami/Castlevania digs in the game.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I bought this yesterday on my way home from work. That’s what my wife gets for sending me to walmart.

I popped in the disc this morning but can’t comment on the game yet since it’s still downloading on my insanely slow internet connection. Maybe I’ll get to play it tomorrow morning.

 

[Edwin-S]

It is a ridiculous practice to require a person, who has paid for a physical copy of a game, to download the game from the internet. The whole point of a physical copy is to download or play from the media. Otherwise, what is the point other than to create plastic landfill?

 

[Morgan Jolley]

It's probably downloading updates/patches. From what I've seen, they're pretty critical at this point for Bloodstained.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Yeah, a physical game installs from the disc and doesn't download anything. Anything being downloaded would be post release patches, (which is pretty much every single game nowadays.)

 

[Edwin-S]

I've bought PS4 games on physical discs and the downloads have been 50Gs. Are you guys seriously suggesting that a game requires 50G of patches and updates to make it playable from the supposedly disc based installation?

In any case, I don't know if that applies to this game but it has applied to others I have purchased. It is why I basically stopped buying discs. If I have to do a 50G download before I can play then it is worthless to buy physical discs and generate mounds of plastic landfill.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

First, are you sure those are patches and not the base game install? Second, specifically how many and which games required that? The only ones I can think of are GTAV and RDR2. Almost every single other game doesn't have that.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Depends on what's on the disc and what's in the patches, but yeah, welcome to 201x patches.

Fucking LEGO Dimensions got a 11GB patch EVERY WEEK for a while there. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 shipped with just a demo on the disc, and required the rest of the game to be downloaded because they couldn't get the game finished in time for disc pressing.

Many games have multiple patches that equal or easily exceed the base game size.

I can't guarantee you that the entire game will or won't be on the disc you actually purchase (especially for episodic games like TellTale games) but I can absolutely promise you that what IS on the disc installs from the disc and doesn't require any download.

The biggest difference between physical and digital is the physical version number is set in the disc and once installation begins it will downloand any updates, whereas when you download a digital version, it is always the latest version, so it doesn't have to download any updates along with it.

 

[Steve Y]

Fucking LEGO Dimensions got a 11GB patch EVERY WEEK for a while there.

Yes, that was painful. I was a Lego Dimensions fan, but the lack of optimization on the game was ridiculous, especially because all those downloads really ate into my data cap.

Bloodstained: ROTN continues to impress me. I hope they keep fixing bugs, because with more polish this could really stand up against Symphony of the Night. Still, SOTN was the first of its class so it will always be more revered.

I've been replaying all six Castlevania games for the GBA and DS, and you can track the little changes and advancements that were made on the portable platform since the PS1 original. It's a shame you still have to track down physical copies to play them.

Those of you enjoying ROTN might like Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, available on most current platforms. It's a quasi-prequel to ROTN, and part of its original Kickstarter stretch goals. I say "quasi" because the events of the two games seem to exist on separate timelines, depending on your choices. It's a different kind of game, short and linear, but with quite a lot of depth in terms of branching paths and playable characters (and extreme difficulty). If you liked Castlevania 3, you'll probably like this one.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Yes, Curse of the Moon is amazing as well. Just as Ritual of the Night is the spiritual sequel to Symphony of the Night, Curse of the Moon is the same for Castlevania 3. If they had made Castlevania 4 on the NES, it would be Curse of the Moon.

I still am bewildered when I hear people mention bugs. I don't think I ran into a single one in my play-through. I had one random crash in the 30 hours I played it, and that was it. I know there was the whole 1.01 to 1.02 debacle, but thankfully I didn't get the chance to start until 1.02 was out.

 

[LeoA]

First, are you sure those are patches and not the base game install? Second, specifically how many and which games required that? The only ones I can think of are GTAV and RDR2. Almost every single other game doesn't have that.

Might be different if I were to select multiplayer, but I don't think I had to download a ton to play GTA V recently on the PS4. Perhaps 6 or 7 gigs?

And it gave me the option to just play and skip updating if I wanted (I didn't), so I assume the game is playable as-is off the disc if one doesn't mind playing without all the latest bug fixes and such.

 

[Edwin-S]

Well, nonetheless, I hope you guys are enjoying the game. I have never been a big fan of side-scrolling platform games. The only series of those that I have liked was the Sonic the Hedgehog series and that probably had more to do with the look of the series and the characters than the actual gameplay.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I finally got to play a little last Sunday, July 4th, and this morning. So far I’m liking it, although there is too much backtracking for my taste. I’ll finish it but I don’t think I’m going to bother trying to 100% it.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Is anyone else having blue screen crashes while playing on PS4 / PS4 Pro? I’ve had two in two days.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I finally got to play a little last Sunday, July 4th, and this morning. So far I’m liking it, although there is too much backtracking for my taste. I’ll finish it but I don’t think I’m going to bother trying to 100% it.

It's a metroidvania game. Backtracking is an integral part of the game.

Is anyone else having blue screen crashes while playing on PS4 / PS4 Pro? I’ve had two in two days.

No issues at all for me when I played it.

 

[Clinton McClure]

It's a metroidvania game. Backtracking is an integral part of the game.



No issues at all for me when I played it.

I know backtracking is an integral part of Metroidvania games but this one seems a bit excessive. I decided to go ahead and 100% the game and it has become hours upon hours of fetch quests and grinding one certain enemy for a single item or shard. The RNG can be quite ridiculous. I’ve fought

Spoiler

the Carpenter

in the neighborhood of 30 times and still haven’t gotten his item drop, even though I allow him to build chests before I finish him off. Thankfully, I’ve only had two crashes and haven’t really lost anything because I’ve made it a habit to save every few minutes or when I get an item or shard I needed. I would give it four stars out of five.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Damn, that's bad rng luck for sure. I think I got it in 4-5 tries. There is an item that increases the rate of shard drops, and always make sure to increase your luck stat whenever you are going for things like these.