Whips (Requesting LOTS of Tweaking)

Except for the sexy animation, whips are pretty awful as they stand, which is a shame, because whether you call it "Castlevania" or not, it's one of the signature marks of this franchise and one I was looking very forward to sharing with my wife so she can finally understand my love of whips (keep it PG, homies!).

Now sure, you're always going to have your fringe oddball claim that, "X is fine, it's simply that you have to use it under A, B, and C circumstances, when the stars align and fairydust snows down from the sky!" Okay, fine, but that's not really a winning argument. No weapon in game should be SO insanely circumstantial that you can't enjoy it 90% of the time. That guarantees it's relegated to a novelty, like many of the Diablo joke weapons, because it's outclassed in pretty much every meaningful way by a more standard, better-performing choice.

This makes me sad, because whips have so much style, and they are rarely featured successfully in games. NO, I don't want a clone of the Castlevania whips, because it would look absolutely silly in 2.5D. What I want is for the dev team to make a couple of minor tweaks to make this weapon competitive. Any combination of the following: better range, a useful "special" input, and (most importantly) faster speed would go a great way to actually using whips, as opposed to where they stand now, which is, "That looks cool, okay, back to using sword."

If the devs need some inspiration as to how versatile and exciting a whip can be, please consult this clip (plucked from one of my favorite movies of all time). Proceed cautiously **VIOLENT CONTENT** Good stuff starts around 30 seconds in:

Whips are fine if you know how to use them. They cover a wide area in front of and below Miriam, sort of like the opposite of CotM Gebel. The recovery animations being long are punishment for missing.

That's not how it works in igavania games. The recovery animation is long whether you miss or not.

And the hitbox is obviously not fine if we go by this post:

The whips aren't like Castlevania due to reasons.

But I guess there could be greater hitbox registration from the whip at least if needed.

Whip is only good for ground based enemies. Hit box is too low. Move it up half Miriam's height and it would be perfect. You could then still duck attack to hit small ground enemies, and jump to hit flying enemies. Otherwise everything else is fine, in my opinion.

I don’t know why people are bothering to argue what’s realistic. This is a game where you hunt demons. I don’t care if it’s the tip or not, the weapon should feel effective.

As it stands, people can enjoy the whip or not, but it is simply not up to the standard of other weapons. At the very least, they should remove the dead zone in the attack arc and increase the speed.

The fact is whips are a big part of Castlevania lore and this game is taking huge amounts of inspiration from past Castlevania games. I love the whips in ALL past 2D Castlevania games + Ritual of the Moon and wouldn’t change anything about them.  Heck even the old school Castlevania 1 NES whip feels much better than this.......I hate the whip in Bloodstained. I trust that Iga will fix this and do whips justice in the final release of Bloodstained. Hell Iga made the whip in the 2.5D PSP release (psp castlevania dracula x chronicles) ten times better than the whip in Bloodstained. I’m very disappointed right now but I’m hoping Iga takes this feedback to heart.

I like the swing of the whip being unique to give it different uses than other weapons
I like how the animation for the whip looks
I like the sound effects for the whip
but I can't see me using the whip much because of the very annoying scream Miriam makes when she uses it. I like all the other weapon screams she makes, but there's something about the whip scream I just can't stand
also missing special combos like the katana and boots have, personally would like all weapon types to have two of. maybe one that attacks in both front and back for when you're surrounded and another that could disarm any enemy for a short period that uses a weapon, or maybe an interrupt.