Gamecrate review, "Best Kickstarter game yet"

This game was my first and last kickstarter (too stressful, imo. Just gonna stick to normal amazon pre orders from now on.)

I have to wonder if this kickstarter has set the bar too high for future kickstarters.
Even backers seem to love hating on it from what I can see on the internet.

It's a good game and I'd wager to say that IGA mostly succeeded in what he set out to do with it. But, it's pretty true that it's been one hell of a bumpy ride and the game is suffering from a few things, like the chest bug, sometimes an enemy won't be recorded, random bits of missing dialogue, just saw Dojima mention lots of game breaking freezes in the second half for him, audio cuts sometimes, Anne is still odd, Shinobi Garb states it silences your footsteps and that's untrue, (I'd let that pass, but if you can have minor things do minor laugh worthy things to Miriam, then why not mute her steps?)

A good KS game? For sure, despite the bumpy and tricky road to get here, but BEST KS game? Debatable.

I hope I'm not sounding fanboyish for being happy as a lark that IGA did what he set out to do, though and that was to revive Castlevania in some fashion and to show naysayers that he could pull it off. My hopes are this game's success will allow Artplay to become its own publisher, as well, so that we may even be able to see some new IPs from the team.

I can't call the game bad, it would be unfair and objectively wrong. In fact, I'm having a good time because I really missed this formula. But overall I'm pretty far in and I'm really disappointed compared to my expectations. 

The frustrating thing is, I've spent a lot of time defending the game from the very first demo when everyone treated it like it was the worst thing ever, but now it's basically reversed. I see these glowing reviews, perfect scores, talking about "best metroidvania", "Game of the year", "Best Kickstarter" and I play the game and I simply don't feel that way, not even close. It's also sad because on one hand I'm happy for Igarashi because the game is doing good and he deserves success, but I'm not happy because the next Bloodstained game could eventually be just like this one, because this is what people wanted and are showing it. It's pretty clear, at this point, that I wanted/expected something a bit different.

I might elaborate my rants in one elaborate post when I finish the game, for anyone who'd wish to read it. 

The thought just occurred to me......perhaps a good part of the reason for the 'rave' reviews, such as the gamecrate one, could be due to the constant comparison with MN9? I've been seeing, even after launch, quite a bit of discussion on how this is so much better than MN9, how it plays better and so forth.

Just a thought as to what 'may' be jading people a little bit to some of the more.....lackluster aspects of RotN. I agree with Ciel and purifyweirdshard though. The game is good for what it is and it's great to see vania revived, but so much more could've been worked on/polished up and that's my hope for if they make a sequel. Now that they've gotten this.....'test run' out of the way, they know what they're working with and what to be able to improve upon. Especially with distribution, so we don't get another Linux/Mac/Vita fiasco, as well as code/key distributions. Also, Ciel, did you mean how some of those areas seem.....full of static or too much shine? Some parts do appear a bit too shiny or plastic, especially wall breaks.

I think some tweaking around with any further game or games Iga and the team work on will happen now that everyone is more familiar with what they're working with and now that Dico has no part of it.

It's been hard to stay on the edges here and not spoil too much of the game, but I appreciate the honest and nuanced opinions here. That's why I wanted to try to stick around as much as I could, even with the random spoilers lurking about. There have been a lot of opinions out there on Youtube and websites varying from the game is a "masterpiece" to "very good." I get the impression that I will enjoy it a lot and might even rate it as high as a 9 out of 10 (or no lower than an 8), but I also get the impression that it will not be flawless or check off every box. Perhaps by the time I play it, it will be closer to that with the inevitable patches and DLC, though.

In the end, I don't know that I ever expect flawless, anyway, as layered projects have so many things that can go wrong, yet the overall vision can still shine through. Though obvious and expected, it is strange suddenly hearing opinions from those who didn't involve themselves in the development cycle at all, and so everything is fresh for them. One thing to note, that I've seen in at least a handful of reviews, is how Bloodstained sort of feels par for the Castlevania/IGAvania course. It's interesting to hear that. It almost makes me think of this game as being "just another Castlevania release" from the GBA/DS era rather than it being the start of this big revival. At most, it sort of reminds me of the launch of Lament of Innocence. But what I'm saying is, if it hadn't been for the loss of the Castlevania IP, it could be that this game would just be seen as another Castlevania release to be taken for granted, rather than fully standing out. That's perhaps sort of what IGA set out to do...but on the other hand, I thought it was supposed to boldly go beyond that on some level.

And as freddythemonkey seemed to suggest here, if it falls into that sort of pattern, it might not be good for its own brand long-term, because it could be that the straight-up SotN formula has its limits. (I know I began to tire of it so much by 2005 that I waited a while to play DoS and PoR, and never got around to the somewhat different OoE...yet.) Even so, Bloodstained lured me back as a proposed "best modern version" of the genre (and its iconic trappings) that we never got. Its comprehensive extras, like the still-to-come Classic Mode and the already-released prequel/spinoff retro game were the icing on the cake, I believed.

Freddy, you just went through the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, so I'd be curious to know what your feelings are for Bloodstained in relation to that. (IIRC, it was your first time going through all of Super Castlevania IV.) I remember discussing those games a bit with you in that's game's thread. And I've stated before that really Circle of the Moon and Symphony of the Night are the only "IGAvanias" that land in my top ten Castlevania entries; at the least, I sort of wanted this game to be a super-sized SotN, with its sense of atmosphere and mystery.

I'm interested to hear more spoiler-free opinions to see how this all turns out, how the franchise moves forward, and if/when we'll see a true Konami response. But when I do get to play Bloodstained, I hope to enjoy it and not find it some kind of repetitive slog of grinding through hallways. I wouldn't imagine that based on the demos and preview videos.

The thing is, as Ciel pointed out, they already had time to work on all of that since last year's beta demo feedback. One can hope they'd be able to toss in some hot fixes in future patches, but they are also fairly focused on the 13 dlcs. So that alone may hinder things a bit.

That's because Ciel is linking from the old forums url instead of what we're using now (bloodstained.forums.net). I would recommend everyone update to the forums.net one, as it has a current/verified security certificate and is the official one now.

bloodstained.forums.net/thread/3830/update-bookmark-site

@bloodymiri
That picture feedback is from the beta backer demo which was asking us for said feedback. The final product is the result of them working on the graphics and bringing in WayForward to improve it (refer to the famous "poop" trailer for comparisons).

The team used the feedback in that thread and the other official spots rather than the youtube comment snips. Angel and myself gathered those in the span of an hour one night well after the work had been done lol (they were actually pretty hard to find)