E3 Demo Feedback for the developer's team

Something that bothers me is the tutorials. I dislike handholding in games. I understand that this for the demo and all but i just hope there's an option to turn them off in the full game or a menu. Maybe an option when you start up the first time to turn them on or off. No other complaints so far though, looks amazing.

Well, it's clear this forum has complete faith and devotion to Romscout, but I gotta say, I definitely understand where kupomogli is coming from regarding the back dash being broken.

I'm not sure "Broken" is the right word, and definitely it's impossible to really say at this point seeing as we haven't played the demo ourselves yet. Maybe it feels entirely natural and there's no issue.

THAT SAID...

The thing about it all is this: In Symphony of the Night, the back dash cancel and the double attack that you could pull off by attacking just before landing... those things we GLITCHES. That is to say, they were an accident of the way the game was designed. They were not intended to be part of the way the game worked (or at least the back dash definitely was). These were things discovered by people who loved the game and played it so much they were able to discover quirky little accidents that helped change the way you played the game.

That is, quite honestly, one of the major reasons as to WHY Symphony was such a good game: because there was more to the game than what was on the surface.

In Bloodstained, however, they are intentionally designing the game to work in this way. They could fix it, they could develop a unique mechanic for this game, but instead they're opting to make the game work EXACTLY how it did in SotN, down to the glitches.

I worry that this will make the gameplay too "familir" (sorry, couldn't resist), too reminiscent of Symphony, to the point that it will make this game feel more like it's treading old ground rather than breaking new.

Not that I entirely want it removed from the game. But I feel like they should develop a unique system for Bloodstained that definitely stands out as saying "This is Bloodstained," and not just "This is Castlevania re-skinned." Obviously I want it to feel like A Castlevania, otherwise I wouldn't have backed it, but I don't want it to just feel exactly like a particular Castlevania, but actually able to stand out as definitely a unique entry in the series. So I feel they really should try to develop a unique system and feel for this entry. Then these gameplay elements we know and love from Symphony can be part of the Speed Run mode, where the game is supposed to be optimized for this sort of thing anyway.

Of course, as far as I know this could already be the plan, but I just wanted to point out my thoughts on the matter.

A) I don't want to belabor upon the individual in question much more but I will briefly say my disagreement with them had nothing to do with a reverence for romscout and everything to do with the use of loaded terminology ("broken" actually means something), what I saw as an inability to substantiate their argument and poor tone in multiple respects. You don't have to agree with that assessment however

B) I'm not sure what difference it makes if back-dash canceling and jump canceling were glitches. The question is do they improve gameplay? Are they fun? I feel the consensus is yes? Combos were glitches in the original Street Fighter but became incorporated in earnest into the series and now they have been an integral part of almost every fighting game for decades. From what I can observe from videos of the demo, Miriam's backstep is quick and has low cooldown but I can't say much more than that. However, taking what was once a glitch and making it an actual feature has been a common aspect of video game design for years. I don't think the origins of a gameplay mechanic matter as long as its good design (or rather the game is designed with it in mind well) and if its fun.

C) If your general sentiment is "I don't want this to be a complete retread - I want it to do some new things and surprise me in some ways" then yes I agree. I don't think movement mechanics are a bad place to look to try something new either. We saw the evolution of the Mega Man series to the X/Zero series and how the addition of the dash and wall cling mechanics drastically changed level design and combat (and made those series more fun to play IMO).  I'm not sure the backdash or complaining about move-canceling is the right place to look however. Stagnation and innovation for the sake of innovation are opposite sides of a coin you have to balance wherever you make a new game in a popular genre. That is even more difficult when you are doing a spiritual successor - pressures will be high to deliver familiar experiences especially since its been almost a decade since we've had a game like this and if you stray too off the beaten path and don't hit onto some fun/good, unexplored design than the backlash is likely to be strong. You still have to deliver on the basics though and you have to deliver a game that feels fun to move about. I'm a casual level player but as someone who primarily likes to play action games, platformers, fighting games, etc. I consider nailing the movement down very important and the flexibility of easy move cancels is appealing to me. Speaking of the backdash, I think player expectations are such that if you don't deliver a backdash, there are going to be a lot of very upset backers/players. Like making a Mega Man game where you have no character that can shoot

If you want new movement mechanics I'm not sure a demo of the first level is likely to reveal them. However, Castlevania has touched upon this before (see the Magnes glyph from Order of Ecclesia) and I think/hope there is room for similar surprises here. You could also subvert expectations with moves that are less dearly held and expected. Games where you can double jump but not high jump are very different from a level design perspective than those where you can high jump but not double jump. SOTN vs. Super Metroid and how they treat movement would be a clear dichotomy (both games have "fly" mechanics but large sections of the games are explored before you get them or you don't want to use them in many sections). All previous Igavanias have had a double jump but either no high jump or a useless one (a high jump is not the same as like the ability that lets you shoot up into the air). Also I think Circle of the Moon is the only Igavania with a Wall Jump whereas wall jumps are pretty common among the Metroidvania genre. So yes, I think there is room to try out new (new in general or new/rare to Igavanias) movement techniques but again a demo of the first level is unlikely where they would be and a backdash or movement-canceling is not where I would be making cuts or subverting expectations.

As an aside, I feel we should recognize the ways in which Bloodstained has already shown itself to be different to past Igavanias. Goobsausage kind of already pointed it out but the manner in which the boss interacts with the stage is not something you've seen in past Igavanias. The boss actually changes the stage at several points. We've also seen some basic background elements come into play and be interactive in a way that changes the terrain (note the cannons). You only got a little of that in previous Igavanias but I think Bloodstained is already set up to greatly expand on that (the 3D engine/assets probably help in this regard).

The backdash I saw on the video was probably around 5 - 6 frames fast and this is as fast as Alucard's backdash from Symphony of the night, I am quite happy that IGA has made the movement very similar to the one in SOTN and seeing how you can cancel the backdash with attack or by ducking is a mixture between sotn and the other Igavania titles.

- is it broken ? Nope, I don't think it will make you invincible or anything, every action game out there has a move that can be connected or canceled into another move and this is what makes you feel special when you master one of these techniques, I would rather call it a technique than a bug or glitch.

- The game has it's own identity already, having the same movement or similar at least does not effect the game identity at all! it is like when you say that all 3D fighting games are the same because the movement feels the same, Bloodstained seems familiar because it is meant to be that way.. but it is far from re-skinning and this is the main reason why IGA did not want put Dracula or vampires in it.

The only issue I have found on the demo video was that when Miriam was backdashing. I kinda saw her backdashing a little through the wall.. that is the only issue I have so far.

Yup, feel the exact same way. I think it's weird to call it glitched movements, it's nothing out of the ordinary many games you can find ways to quickly move in an environment, either way the movements being similar to SOTN are certainly not an issue. Alucard is one of the most wondefully designed characters in the series in terms of movement and animations, using that as a base is only a good thing for great movement. As you said Crocodile, the difficulty in terms of enemies is what's more important. 

I'm hopeful that the game takes at least SOME of the difficulty shown in OoE and applies it here. In a perfect world you'd have the variety and visual/sound design of SOTN, mixed with the difficulty of OoE and the soul type system for abilities of the sorrow series for the perfect Igavania.

Oh, no, I totally get that's what you meant. I was just throwing in that I thought it being there (backdashes period, let alone BDCing) doesn't really affect that much in the grand scheme of things. I haven't seen it/played the demo myself, but if the game's as much like SotN as I expect it to be, I imagine there's going to be a lot more in the way of things that are powerful beyond necessity in a fairly easy/normal-ish game to complete.

I consider myself a core gamer and I can do shield-dashing in SotN, but I just don't because it's tiring on the hands and silly. If people want to enjoy their game that way, why not let them? For them to intentionally have that placed in the game could be seen as weird, yeah...but maybe not? It's typical to the point of almost being a feature, I think. I may take all of this back once I get into the game and realize it's like, 3x speed/covers half the screen at the time or something haha.

I have an HTC Vive and Steam VR installed.

The demo was always trying to start in steam vr mode.   I finally made it stop by renaming \Bloodstained Ritual of the Night\Engine\Binaries\ThirdParty\OpenVR\OpenVRv0_9_12\Win64\openvr_api.dll so that it wouldn't be loaded.

I'm guessing this isn't intended to be played in VR and that dll probably shouldn't be included.  Not a huge deal as this is a free demo for backers, but I thought I should post about it.

So you CAN definitely take her scarf off. Her death animation twirls like Alucsrd which is cool.

I love everything about this to everyone involved making it. I will say the sound effects have a very muffled sound too then and the music is a little too hard to hear but other than that I love it all.