Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night E3 2017 Trailer & Gameplay

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True, I am after replay value, I am all for it. Adding bosses to play and playable "main" characters are so much fun. But I would rather see protagonists doing their part as heroes. In a different world, perhaps it would make a nice mode to have pickable characters to fight off in an arena, controling each one hero or enemy.

Bloodless is a cool concept, and very goth but with a innocent designstyle. I would enjoy to see her doing random things for each difficulty-setting along with any other bosses. Perhaps even speed up the attacks, add extra damage and health even. Things like that could make great replay value to the game as well.

About Bloodless as a playabe Character.

I think we all agree that Bloodlass is Badass (hah, i made a pun), she has a unique look and her attacks are creative. She is the size of Miriam and she could easily be adapted to be a playable character. What i want to say is, on MY opinion, what are the odds of her being a playabe character, based on what we know so far.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will have three playabe characters. That was a stretch goal. One is Miriam, of course, so, we have two slots. Considering discussions around the forum, most people tend to gravitate over three names to fill in the remaining slots: Zangetsu, Johannes and Dominique.

ZANGETSU:
I personally think that Zangetsu is given. IGA himself made it clear when people asked him about it and he said that he wasn't implying he was going to be one. That is the kind of answer you give when you want to conceal the inevitable truth. I may be wrong, but i really think Zangetsu will fill one of the slots and not only that, he was created for that specific purpose.

JOHANNES:
Now, about the remaining slot, i don't really believe Johannes will be the one, because his role at the game is still quite a mystery and, on top of that, he doesn't have a very interesting design for a playabe character (I remember someone from the forum saying that and i agree).

DOMINIQUE:
Dominique is a very high candidate. She has a very likable looks, she is a fighter from the church, and it was implied, (not confirmed) that Miriam and Dominque will fight together to free the village at one point. All that makes her a heavy candidate for the third slot.

BLOODLESS:
So, where Bloodless fits on all that? We know very little of her. And every information we know so far shows that Bloodless is nothing more than a boss to be defeated. But, a "simple boss to be defeated" turning into a playable character wouldn't be new for a Igavania. Joachim from Lamment of Innocence is a good reminder of when that happened. Not only that, but the way Bloodless moves, how her attacks are and such, really gives a good playable vibe. I was thinking, for instance, that, at all Igavanias, secondary playable characters didn't had acess to things like healing items. Bloodless has a healing ability. She can heal herself by absorbing blood. When you kill some enemies (like Giaramund) at the Demo, they spurt blood that actually paint the walls. Imagine that. If Bloodless was playable, the only way to heal would be at save rooms or by killing enemies, spurting their blood and absorbing it. It would be a really intersting mechanic. Blood Rain, one of her skills, is also dependant on blood around the scenario that you would need to find a way to create it. It is really interesting to think about that.

Even if she doesn't turn out to be playable, she could still fit at the Boss Revenge Mode, the mode were we will be able to play with some bosses at a special area, fightning against heroes. 

Based on the longer video posted I'm somewhat concerned that the sequence of Miriam getting impaled by the crystals is going to come up too often. It's a cool effect, but it also interrupts game play to a degree. I'm guessing that they're still tweaking drop rates and such, but I'm wondering if it would be good if they had an alternate animation for that for when you collect additional copies of shards that you already have that doesn't stop the flow of the game in the same way as the animation they're using now.

Actually, the animation only plays whenever Miriam gets a new shard, repeat shards have no animation. So if you kill an enemy, like a Seama and get a shard (cerulean splash), and then kill another of that same enemy and get the same shard (again: cerulean splash), the animation will only play the first time you got that shard.

I noticed that there's a Grey/Silver-colored Shard that Miriam collects at some point in the Gematsu gameplay videos, too.

I'm guessing that's a "Relic/Ability" Shard? Kind-of like the silver-colored "Ability" Souls that Soma can acquire in both Sorrow games.

I call them white. Easier that way. And yeah, seems to be relics / passives.

Pure Miriam Thanks for bringing that up. I only recently joined this beautiful discussion thread as of Page 4.

Enkeria Now I'm just wondering if there will be certain enemies that contain some of these Skill Shards (like one specific enemy in AoS, and two enemies in DoS).

I wanna take a bath with that boss.