Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Release Date Announce

@autumn

Like some others here, despite being curious about it, I largely missed out on Castlevania Bloodlines as a kid. I've only gotten to play it a handful of times over the years, because I have never owned it or a Genesis. The last time I got a chance to play it was probably fifteen years ago. I generally have more of a feel for "Classicvanias," but coming into it fairly blindly on its normal mode, I was able to get deep into the game with both John and Eric; and with one of them (I forget which), I made it to the rather kooky/disorienting last level (though not the last boss) after losing all my lives 2-4 times. But yeah, I never beat it during those few times I played it because I would eventually run out of lives. But I was getting close to beating it, and I feel, like any Castlevania, it's definitely beatable with practice. Plus, as has been said, you could be strategic with the passwords to save your good runs and conserve your lives for the last level. I've hesitated to rank it in past attempts to rank Castlevania games due to not having had as much time with it as I'd have liked, but from my time with it, I could tell that it's very high up the chain. Easily a top-10 game. It is so jam-packed with material and set pieces. If one might say Super Castlevania IV is kind of the series equivalent of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Classicvanias, then Bloodlines is sort of the quirkier Zelda: Link's Awakening. (When IGA announced Portrait of Ruin would be its sequel, I had high hopes...but the two were only tangentially related.) EDIT: @autumn , I forgot to mention, like has been said previously in this thread, the sound effects are a little "off" and tinny/crunchy in Bloodlines--it was a hardware limitation--but they're not awful and even have a certain charm to them overall. It doesn't ruin the experience, by any means.

purifyweirdshard

Oh man, the passwords of the old days were so stressful. Some were easier, but even those you could mess up. I know I've messed up Mega Man and Castlevania passwords with the grids, especially Mega Man III with the wrinkle of blue and red dots. But two of the ones I know I've messed up more than others are Simon's Quest and Strider, and it always felt so tragic! The numbers versus letters thing with the blocky fonts was one of the most common mistakes. Or sometimes you'd somehow press a button before writing down all of the password, too, and the screen would just disappear.

I think the older games give the whole series context, and maybe it's just me, but I always felt the classic titles have more replay value. They don't take as much time, don't have as much fat on them, and the way the action and platforming links to things like set pieces and subweapons result in a lot of combinations of experiences. The later games put a premium on exploration, but once you've explored the castle enough, there's not as much reason to return for me. Yes, you can equip different things, but the way your stats change, and the way the levels and respawning are more locked in place, it doesn't provide as much randomized, consequential variety, I think. I believe I've replayed the IGA games no more than a 1/3 the amount of times I replayed games like Castlevania III, Super Castlevania IV, or Dracula X SNES. With the exception of maybe DoS, the extra modes in IGA's games often feel more like curiosities than genuine reasons to replay the adventures. (Though I feel this will change with Bloodstained's more robust extras that have been promised.)

Anyway, absolutely nothing wrong with stating your opinion. It's natural that fans will lean one way or the other; it happens with every longstanding franchise, from Zelda to Star Wars to James Bond. But some people are going to like the classic games as much or better--though I imagine that number is naturally dwindling as time goes on and tastes change with early gaming experiences. Even though I'm sort of forced to do it at times for the sake of clarity, I kind of dislike the whole Classicvania and Metroidvania terms, especially considering Metroidvanias were once equally or more called Castleroids, which I don't hear these days. (That shows the transience of this whole conundrum.) The whole thing should be seen as a continuum that can recombine or divide in various combinations at various times, but I think the dominance of the latter format sort of forced the split identity, especially in media coverage. The classic games by themselves would have likely been a dead end, don't get me wrong, but I kind of feel that the later games by IGA both helped save and kill Castlevania with a slow death through a different kind of stagnation of expectations. As you said, you enjoyed Simon's Quest (a favorite of mine, as well), and that was more of a blended-elements title than what we ended up with over time. (Castlevania 64, on the 3D spectrum, was another title that mixed the gamut of Castlevania action and exploration experiences, but was thrust aside rather than explored and refined, because it didn't neatly fit into a box.) The irony there is that IGA has admitted that SotN couldn't have fully happened without Simon's Quest, and Simon's Quest is often considered as bizarre and rough around the edges as Castlevania 64. So, if SotN could come out of Simon's Quest, it stands to reason that there could have been as big of a jump from someone genuinely picking up the pieces of Castlevania 64.

On the topic of Rondo...What's strange is that I just never fell head over heels with Rondo of Blood. I like a lot of its elements, and it's better than stuff like the X68000 game, but I like its ideas more than I like their execution. While a different (and unpopular) animal, my favorite Richter entry remains Dracula X SNES. I've tried to change my mind about that various times, because I know how dominant Rondo is in the Castlevania fandom, but it just never clicked with me; it feels indecisive in its design. With Dracula X SNES, the more visceral sense of impact the whip strikes give, the way the levels linger a bit more and fight back, the painterly (and at times special effects-enhanced) backgrounds, the adjusted Item Crashes, the atmospheric map screen, and the high-stakes consequences for your actions/path in a single playthrough just resonate with me more.

Back in 2017, I remember members here listed their favorite Castlevanias. Like others in that thread, I did my best with that, giving explanations for each; I unfortunately couldn't list Bloodlines and a few others there I felt I hadn't played enough of to speak about in that context, but only Symphony of the Night and Circle of the Moon made my top ten in terms of the IGA or IGA-influenced games. (Though among the games I haven't beaten or played enough of included Vampire Killer MSX, Haunted Castle, Mirror of Fate, Lords of Shadow 2, Order of Ecclesia, Order of Shadows, and Harmony of Despair, so Order of Ecclesia might sneak up in there, perhaps in the 7-10 area based on what I've seen/read. Last time I checked, it was getting harder to find an official copy for a decent price, and I started to wonder if another collection down the line will include it.) I'm pretty sure Bloodlines, meanwhile, is a title that would fit in the 2-7 area, based on my limited experiences with it. It's practically a poster child for the kind of creative set-piece scenarios and encounters I miss in the later exploration-centric IGA games. The rest of the absentees on the list, though, I have serious doubts about making it very high in my personal favorites.)

So, for another perspective, a summary of my Castlevania journey is basically like this: I would say that Simon's Quest, Dracula's Curse, and Super Castlevania IV got me interested in and attracted to Castlevania. Dracula X SNES and Castlevania 64 made me realize how much I love the series. Circle of the Moon and Symphony of the Night kept me intrigued with the series. Aria of Sorrow and Lament of Innocence kept my curiosity going with their storytelling. Curse of Darkness and Dawn of Sorrow began to make me very concerned about the direction of the series, in an odd mix of macro-level stagnation and micro-level flavor-of-the-month mechanics. Judgment and Lords of Shadow 1 made me feel the series had really hit a wall and lost both its confidence and way, experimenting in non sequitur, unproductive ways and borrowing too much from other games/genres.

And so now we arrive at Bloodstained in my own journey, which is filling the gap and getting me back to some baseline of quality for a Castlevania-ish game, but doesn't seem to me to be the long-term solution to what I was feeling.

But for many, I can also understand that it is getting things very close to their ideal and highest expectations for a Castlevania-ish game. And if I were Konami, I wouldn't really try to emulate it wholesale, because Bloodstained has kind of already covered that ground.