GAME REVIEW: Bloodstained - Ritual Of The Night
(Mars - Hans Zimmer)
In the list of the great genres in video game history, one would be remiss if they left out Metroidvania games. Games in this genre have been some of the greatest, most enduring, and most well-received titles in the history of the industry, and for good reason.
They're a gaggle of fun.
Anyone who follows my blog or has listened to me rabbit on about video games has heard me talk about the Godfather and Godmother of Metroidvania: Super Metroid and Castlevania - Symphony Of The Night. For the Metroid piece, gamers have received regular, if not frequent enough for our taste, installments of excellent Metroid games. Even middle of the road Metroid games are usually better than a lot of other titles, and their sales figures prove it. On the Symphony side of things, picking have been rather more slim. Indeed, people have had to get their fix through other titles over the years, and while this isn't so much a problem, the demand for another SOTN-style game has been both loud and persistent.
Around four years ago, one of the lead minds behind SOTN gave proof that he was listening. Koji Igarashi, SOTN's co-director, ran up a Kickstarter asking for enough money to give fans what they'd been screaming for. The fans responded. In the millions.
At long last, 'Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night' is upon us. Was it worth the wait?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Yep. If you enjoy Metroidvania, get it. If you enjoyed SOTN, get it.
THE LONG VERSION:
Let's establish now that I am a HUGE fanboy of Symphony Of The Night. I owe all of that to a high school buddy of mine named Justin Whitney. Justin loved vampires before it was cool to do so. He was interested in Vampire: The Masquerade before Wizards Of The Coast got its claws into it and it was still a White Wolf game. Naturally, he loved Castlevania games. Now, up until SOTN came out, I wasn't really that much of a fan. Castlevania 1 and 2 were renowned for their brutal difficulty and punishing gameplay. I'd grown up on PC gaming as opposed to console gaming, so smoother controls were something I was sort of stuck up about. One fateful day, however, Justin demanded that I come over to his place to see this new title he'd picked up.
The rest is history.
I won't bore you with details about why SOTN is so good, why I loved it so much, or why it remains THE pinnacle of the genre after more than 20 YEARS. Go Google that shit. What I can tell you is that if you're a fan of the genre and you haven't played this game, it holds up so very, very well, even after all this time. Go grab a copy on the cheap through XBox Live. And stay the hell away from the Shield Rod and the Crissaegrim. That's cheating. Real men kill Galamoth without either of them.
Ritual Of The Night was designed to be a love letter to its predecessor, and before I say anything else about the game, I will suggest that it fills this role admirably. You won't get 5 minutes into the game before you find yourself smiling and instantly comfortable. This game is a homecoming, and after 22 years, it is damn good to be home.
For an 'Indie' title, the price tag of $40 might seem a little steep. Indeed, this and 'The Witness' tie for the most expensive indie title I've ever bought. If you're not a huge SOTN fanboy like I am, that might seem like a steep price. When you see the production values, however, you may rethink that stance. Like the excellent 'Hollow Knight', this game is a bargain for the price, especially if you're drinking deeply from the cup of nostalgia. (Though, for the record, Team Cherry is insane for selling HK as cheaply as they do. $15 for the game and all of its DLC is stupid cheap.)
This is really all of the information I think you should need to make a decision on purchase. If you're not a giant SOTN nerd that longs for the days of yore, you'll want to watch gameplay videos and decide for yourself. Maybe borrow a copy from a friend. If you're like me, you'll plop down the cash without hesitation.
ROTN is not perfect, but that's not what Igarashi promised us. He promised us a way back home, and in my humble opinion, he delivered in spades.
No, of course that's not all I have to say. Everything else beyond this point is a more objective look at the game's successes and failures beyond the initial nostalgia factor. If you don't care about the warts, stop reading. If all you wanted was a way back to Alucard's coffin, stop reading.
Okay. You were warned.
The problem with coming home after 22 years is that stuff has changed, and not always for the better. Is ROTN a romp down memory lane? Sure. But a lot has happened in 22 years and playing Ritual reminds you that the gaming industry moved on from this sort of thing. It evolved, and in a great many ways, that's a -good- thing. The original SOTN was, and still is, an amazing title, but there are a great many limiting things about both of these games that really start to stand out if you've played any modern Metroidvania or 2D platformer titles. Take, for instance, the combat and movement from these two titles. Symphony and Ritual, have almost agonizingly slow combat. There's very little twitchy, reaction-based gameplay in either of these titles, and I'm not sure how I feel about this. I miss the razor-sharp, turn-on-a-dime controls and combat from newer games like The Shadow Complex and Hollow Knight, or even newer Metroid games. I miss being able to do little things like AIM UP.
Another area where Ritual falters is Igarashi's desire to both throw a game back and also try to move it forward at the same time. Ritual is way, WAY too busy with RPG elements that were never present in Symphony. There's a crafting system now, as well as an easily accessible shop. (No, the Library from Symphony does not count.) This sounds like a good idea in principle, but it's also a needless complication. There is SO MUCH STUFF you can find and craft from in this game that it's hard to know where you should be working towards, or what precious materials you need to save for better items in the End Game. You could spend hours and hours playing and no go in any kind of meaningful direction. Thankfully, there are guides all over the internet to point you in the right direction, but that sort of ...takes the fun out of it. If you need a guide to tell you how to use a game mechanic, it's possible that you're doing it wrong.
There's also a quest system in Ritual, but it's such an afterthought that it's bordering on pointless. The number of quests is really small and the quests themselves are poorly thought out, random in objective, and murky with regard to their instructions. I have no idea what Igarashi was thinking here, or if he was even thinking at all.
These certainly aren't all of the game's problems, but they're certainly some of the bigger ones. And in the grand scheme of things, if these are the bigger problems, that's saying something about the overall quality of the game. It's there. It's not perfect, but what is these days?
For those of you who are thinking you'll pick the game up, let me offer a few pieces of advice:
- Rarely did I use healing items in Symphony. This is -not- the case with Ritual. As soon as you have the cash for it, be sure to keep at least 10 potions on you at all times. You will need them.
- Save Points in Ritual feel a bit more spread out than the ones in Symphony, and especially in the beginning parts of the game, that's a huge problem. If you find a Save Point, USE IT. Critters in the game drop higher value items with more frequency than they did in Symphony, and with the Save Points being so far apart, you can find a boatload of new things, explore a lot of new areas, and suddenly a-foul of something that kills you faster than you know how to handle. Save often.
- Shards are a major play mechanic in Ritual. They give you some awesome offensive and defensive powers, and two of the game's best Shards are hiding right out in plain sight during the first few hours of gameplay. If you find a new Shard, GO SAVE. Stop what you're doing, find the nearest Save Room, and get there. This is less important when you find copies of Shards you already have, but there are a LOT of Shards to find in the game and I lost the single most powerful Shard to a fluke death when I had the opportunity to save and didn't. And while we're talking about fluke deaths...
- There are enemies in ROTN that will kill you instantly if they get a hand on you. Running is always an option.
- The Back Dash is there for a reason. It was sort of pointless in Symphony, but it's very, very important to critical combat in Ritual. Don't ignore it.
- Like Symphony, just about everything in Ritual from vanilla enemies to bosses has a pattern. The quicker you learn it, the less frustrated you'll be. Symphony starts off nice and slow with cannon fodder enemies. Ritual does not.
- Ritual Of The Night is a love letter to Symphony Of The Night in a lot of ways. Including its ending.
In the list of the great genres in video game history, one would be remiss if they left out Metroidvania games. Games in this genre have been some of the greatest, most enduring, and most well-received titles in the history of the industry, and for good reason.
They're a gaggle of fun.
Anyone who follows my blog or has listened to me rabbit on about video games has heard me talk about the Godfather and Godmother of Metroidvania: Super Metroid and Castlevania - Symphony Of The Night. For the Metroid piece, gamers have received regular, if not frequent enough for our taste, installments of excellent Metroid games. Even middle of the road Metroid games are usually better than a lot of other titles, and their sales figures prove it. On the Symphony side of things, picking have been rather more slim. Indeed, people have had to get their fix through other titles over the years, and while this isn't so much a problem, the demand for another SOTN-style game has been both loud and persistent.
Around four years ago, one of the lead minds behind SOTN gave proof that he was listening. Koji Igarashi, SOTN's co-director, ran up a Kickstarter asking for enough money to give fans what they'd been screaming for. The fans responded. In the millions.
At long last, 'Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night' is upon us. Was it worth the wait?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Yep. If you enjoy Metroidvania, get it. If you enjoyed SOTN, get it.
THE LONG VERSION:
Let's establish now that I am a HUGE fanboy of Symphony Of The Night. I owe all of that to a high school buddy of mine named Justin Whitney. Justin loved vampires before it was cool to do so. He was interested in Vampire: The Masquerade before Wizards Of The Coast got its claws into it and it was still a White Wolf game. Naturally, he loved Castlevania games. Now, up until SOTN came out, I wasn't really that much of a fan. Castlevania 1 and 2 were renowned for their brutal difficulty and punishing gameplay. I'd grown up on PC gaming as opposed to console gaming, so smoother controls were something I was sort of stuck up about. One fateful day, however, Justin demanded that I come over to his place to see this new title he'd picked up.
The rest is history.
I won't bore you with details about why SOTN is so good, why I loved it so much, or why it remains THE pinnacle of the genre after more than 20 YEARS. Go Google that shit. What I can tell you is that if you're a fan of the genre and you haven't played this game, it holds up so very, very well, even after all this time. Go grab a copy on the cheap through XBox Live. And stay the hell away from the Shield Rod and the Crissaegrim. That's cheating. Real men kill Galamoth without either of them.
Ritual Of The Night was designed to be a love letter to its predecessor, and before I say anything else about the game, I will suggest that it fills this role admirably. You won't get 5 minutes into the game before you find yourself smiling and instantly comfortable. This game is a homecoming, and after 22 years, it is damn good to be home.
For an 'Indie' title, the price tag of $40 might seem a little steep. Indeed, this and 'The Witness' tie for the most expensive indie title I've ever bought. If you're not a huge SOTN fanboy like I am, that might seem like a steep price. When you see the production values, however, you may rethink that stance. Like the excellent 'Hollow Knight', this game is a bargain for the price, especially if you're drinking deeply from the cup of nostalgia. (Though, for the record, Team Cherry is insane for selling HK as cheaply as they do. $15 for the game and all of its DLC is stupid cheap.)
This is really all of the information I think you should need to make a decision on purchase. If you're not a giant SOTN nerd that longs for the days of yore, you'll want to watch gameplay videos and decide for yourself. Maybe borrow a copy from a friend. If you're like me, you'll plop down the cash without hesitation.
ROTN is not perfect, but that's not what Igarashi promised us. He promised us a way back home, and in my humble opinion, he delivered in spades.
No, of course that's not all I have to say. Everything else beyond this point is a more objective look at the game's successes and failures beyond the initial nostalgia factor. If you don't care about the warts, stop reading. If all you wanted was a way back to Alucard's coffin, stop reading.
Okay. You were warned.
The problem with coming home after 22 years is that stuff has changed, and not always for the better. Is ROTN a romp down memory lane? Sure. But a lot has happened in 22 years and playing Ritual reminds you that the gaming industry moved on from this sort of thing. It evolved, and in a great many ways, that's a -good- thing. The original SOTN was, and still is, an amazing title, but there are a great many limiting things about both of these games that really start to stand out if you've played any modern Metroidvania or 2D platformer titles. Take, for instance, the combat and movement from these two titles. Symphony and Ritual, have almost agonizingly slow combat. There's very little twitchy, reaction-based gameplay in either of these titles, and I'm not sure how I feel about this. I miss the razor-sharp, turn-on-a-dime controls and combat from newer games like The Shadow Complex and Hollow Knight, or even newer Metroid games. I miss being able to do little things like AIM UP.
Another area where Ritual falters is Igarashi's desire to both throw a game back and also try to move it forward at the same time. Ritual is way, WAY too busy with RPG elements that were never present in Symphony. There's a crafting system now, as well as an easily accessible shop. (No, the Library from Symphony does not count.) This sounds like a good idea in principle, but it's also a needless complication. There is SO MUCH STUFF you can find and craft from in this game that it's hard to know where you should be working towards, or what precious materials you need to save for better items in the End Game. You could spend hours and hours playing and no go in any kind of meaningful direction. Thankfully, there are guides all over the internet to point you in the right direction, but that sort of ...takes the fun out of it. If you need a guide to tell you how to use a game mechanic, it's possible that you're doing it wrong.
There's also a quest system in Ritual, but it's such an afterthought that it's bordering on pointless. The number of quests is really small and the quests themselves are poorly thought out, random in objective, and murky with regard to their instructions. I have no idea what Igarashi was thinking here, or if he was even thinking at all.
These certainly aren't all of the game's problems, but they're certainly some of the bigger ones. And in the grand scheme of things, if these are the bigger problems, that's saying something about the overall quality of the game. It's there. It's not perfect, but what is these days?
For those of you who are thinking you'll pick the game up, let me offer a few pieces of advice:
- Rarely did I use healing items in Symphony. This is -not- the case with Ritual. As soon as you have the cash for it, be sure to keep at least 10 potions on you at all times. You will need them.
- Save Points in Ritual feel a bit more spread out than the ones in Symphony, and especially in the beginning parts of the game, that's a huge problem. If you find a Save Point, USE IT. Critters in the game drop higher value items with more frequency than they did in Symphony, and with the Save Points being so far apart, you can find a boatload of new things, explore a lot of new areas, and suddenly a-foul of something that kills you faster than you know how to handle. Save often.
- Shards are a major play mechanic in Ritual. They give you some awesome offensive and defensive powers, and two of the game's best Shards are hiding right out in plain sight during the first few hours of gameplay. If you find a new Shard, GO SAVE. Stop what you're doing, find the nearest Save Room, and get there. This is less important when you find copies of Shards you already have, but there are a LOT of Shards to find in the game and I lost the single most powerful Shard to a fluke death when I had the opportunity to save and didn't. And while we're talking about fluke deaths...
- There are enemies in ROTN that will kill you instantly if they get a hand on you. Running is always an option.
- The Back Dash is there for a reason. It was sort of pointless in Symphony, but it's very, very important to critical combat in Ritual. Don't ignore it.
- Like Symphony, just about everything in Ritual from vanilla enemies to bosses has a pattern. The quicker you learn it, the less frustrated you'll be. Symphony starts off nice and slow with cannon fodder enemies. Ritual does not.
- Ritual Of The Night is a love letter to Symphony Of The Night in a lot of ways. Including its ending.
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